Amazon has been releasing tablets since 2011 and over the last two years they company really hasn’t given users a reason to upgrade. The devices issued in 2015 actually have worse specs than the ones released in 2014. The saving grace for the Amazon tablet division was the $50 Fire that literary sold millions. The big question is, would you upgrade your existing Fire to get Alexa?
Android users have been using Google Now and Google Voice Search for years, but Amazon has never integrated a voice assistant into their line of tablets. Apple has Siri and Microsoft has Cortana, Amazon is the only mainstream vendor without a voice agent on their tablets.
So what is Alexa? It’s basically Amazons own voice agent that tells you the weather, reads your Kindle e-books cloud or plays your Prime Music collection. So far, Alexa has only been available on the Amazon Echo and the Tap, I think its about time Alexa should be added to the Fire and many people agree with me.
According to a Wall Street Journal report now being widely echoed and reinforced elsewhere, Amazon is working on a next-gen tablet device, codenamed “Knight,” with Alexa on board.
If Amazon is working on a new tablet with Alexa built into the core functionality, this might be a compelling enough reason to upgrade from an older model.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
