Amazon's Auto SDK Boosts Presence in Car Infotainment Space
Amazon’s AMZN strong efforts toward integration of Alexa into cars are in sync with its strategy of strengthening footprint in the voice assistant market.
Recently, the company has unveiled Alexa Automotive Core SDK or Auto SDK, its first software development kit which will help the car developers to incorporate Alexa into cars seamlessly. The software is available for free on GitHub.
Alexa with the support of Auto SDK will feature streaming music, making phone calls, providing directions via navigation system, weather updates, home control, searching for restaurants and theatres and many other Alexa skills in cars.
With the latest move, Amazon strives to deliver the same hands-free voice controlled experience that people enjoy at home with Echo devices and Alexa, while travelling by car.
These features will assist the company to attract car makers for integration of Alexa into cars. Consequently, this will aid the company’s top-line growth.
Coming to the price performance, shares of Amazon have returned 61.3% on a year-to-date basis, outperforming the industry’s rally of 31.5%.
Alexa – Key Catalyst
The company’s increasing focus toward advancement of Alexa will help it in gaining momentum in the market.
Per the data from Market Research Future, the global market for voice assistant is expected to grow at a CAGR of 39.27% between 2017 and 2023 and to reach $7.8 billion by 2023.
We believe improving skills of Alexa will help Amazon in reaping benefits from this rapidly growing market.
The Alexa Skills store currently offers more than 45K skills created by third-party developers. Additionally, customers are allowed to use Alexa to control more than 13K smart home devices from over 2,500 unique brands.
The company also introduced new machine learning tools for developers to make Alexa skills more advanced. These skills along with Auto SDK will be able to showcase the features of Alexa in the vehicle infotainment space. This holds immense growth prospects considering the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI).
In fact, car companies like BMW, Toyota, Ford, Hyundai, General Motors are already working with Amazon to integrate Alexa into their cars.
Moreover, Alexa skills have been already incorporated into many vehicles of Ford, Toyota and Mercedes Benz.
Amazon.com, Inc. Revenue (TTM)
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Strengthening Competition
The above-mentioned points will surely provide competitive advantage to Amazon against other major players like Apple AAPL, Alphabet’s GOOGL Google, NVIDIA NVDA and SoundHound.
Apple’s Siri is integrated in its CarPlay which offers similar facilities that Amazon’s Alexa Auto is aspiring to provide. Reportedly, Toyota’s Entune 3.0 infotainment system includes Apple CarPlay and now it is working on the integration of Alexa into it.
Further, there is Google Assistant in Android Auto that aids people in playing music, getting directions, making calls and controlling home in a smart way with the help of voice commands.
Then there is SoundHound’s Houndify platform which is integrated in Hyundai cars for voice automation facilities. Additionally, NVIDIA’s DRIVE which is an autonomous computing platform for vehicles also supports car infotainment systems.
Notably, Amazon’s Auto SDK which ensures fast and easy deployment of Alexa into cars is in sync with the company’s efforts to strengthen competitive position and improve market share.
Amazon sports Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
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