Anyone can now create Alexa skills in a matter of minutes (AMZN)

unveiled

Amazon’s been striving to add personalization methods to the Alexa experience, and Alexa Skill Blueprints plays into this effort. Amazon in November 2017 introduced the ability for Alexa to respond to custom phrases as well as be programmed to carry out multiple actions from one input. In the same month, the company also rolled out the Your Voice by Amazon feature, which makes it possible to create up to 10 distinguished voice profiles, enabling Alexa to personalize its responses for everyone in the home.

The rollout of Alexa Blueprints could serve as a major advantage in securing Amazon’s long-term success in the voice assistant space.

It expands Alexa’s abilities, allowing for a more personalized experience.
The introduction of Alexa Skills Blueprints marks a departure from the company’s prior strategy, in which only third-party developers had access to the tools to create Alexa skills. And by not solely relying on third parties to create skills, Alexa could become more appealing to consumers than ever before.
It could spur Alexa skill adoption.
One of the main issues with Alexa is the lack of adoption of skills — while Alexa has access to more than 30,000 skills, about 53% of consumers use only one to three of them, while 14% of consumers haven’t even enabled one
,
to Dashbot.
But with the option to create Alexa skills, consumers will be more involved in the Alexa ecosystem, potentially motivating them to seek out more third-party skills.
It gives Amazon a leg up over its rivals.
Amazon’s competitors, such as Google, Apple, and Samsung, currently don’t offer this level of customization to their customers. Allowing anyone to create custom voice apps will
ultimately make Alexa a stronger competitor in the voice assistant landscape.

Bolstering Alexa’s capabilities could help Amazon sustain its early lead in the smart speaker market. Amazon commanded a 72% share of the total US installed base of smart speakers in 2017. By enabling the average person to create customized Alexa skills, interactions with Alexa-enabled devices like the company’s Echo smart speakers should grow as Alexa becomes more useful to consumers.

, Business Insider's premium research service, has written that explores the two major viable voice app stores. It identifies the three big issues voice apps are facing — discoverability, monetization, and retention — and presents possible short-term solutions ahead of industry-wide fixes.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

Discusses the solutions being offered up by today's biggest voice platforms.
Presents workaround solutions and alternative approaches that could catalyze development and evolution ahead of wider industry-wide fixes from the platforms.

Anyone can now create Alexa skills in a matter of minutes (AMZN)

JOIN OUR PULSE COMMUNITY!