Amazon is seriously taking Alexa to a whole new level as the intelligent voice assistant has reached a new milestone.
Alexa, Amazon's intelligent voice personal assistant, has reportedly reached almost 20,000 skills, if not past it, in both the US and its international markets like the UK and Germany. In the US alone, Alexa skill count already reached 15,069 on 30 June.
In a report published by Voicebot earlier in the week, it outlined the growth of Amazon's smart assistant which had doubled from 7,000 on 3 January. The publication noted that "there are thousands of skills in the UK and Germany as well."
Some of these skills, however, are exclusive to these European nations while some already exist in Alexa's home country. This is particularly a setback for Voicebot to get the accurate figure of unique Alexa skills. Despite that, it estimated "the number is surely nearing 20,000 if not already past it."
Google Assistant may have superior characteristics against other smart assistants. For one, it in information search more than Alexa. In terms of skill count, Google Assistant has fallen short as it lags behind Alexa. Its skills counterpart, voice apps, has 378. Microsoft's Cortana, meanwhile, placed last with 65. In June, Google added only 74 voice apps to Assistant while Microsoft just 7 to Cortana. This is way too far from Amazon's bump on Alexa with 2,776 new skills in the same month.
In stark contrast, Google Assistant is restricted when it comes to performing tasks while Alexa's skills are less useful. But the more skill count an intelligent assistant has, the bigger chances a user can find something beneficial or useful, Voicebot said.
Looking at these companies' developers communities, Amazon is definitely not on the advantageous side as both Microsoft and Google have as much voice application developers in force.
"Neither Google nor Microsoft seems to have effectively activated their developer communities and generated excitement about voice," states the publication.
