Amazon Alexa Mobile Accessories: A New Alexa-Enabled Product Category with Dev Tools Coming Soon
Millions of customers around the world have invited Amazon Alexa into their family, adding far-field voice control to rooms throughout the home. As customers fall in love with the convenience of using voice for hands-free control of their smart home, get weather updates, play music, and more, device makers have requested ways to integrate Alexa into mobile products that enable customers to take Alexa on-the-go.
Today, we’re excited to announce the Alexa Mobile Accessory Kit, a new way to bring Alexa to portable, on-the-go devices such as hearables, headphones, smart watches, fitness devices, and more. The kit enables OEMs to add Alexa to their devices with minimum investment in hardware or integration efforts.
With the Alexa Mobile Accessory Kit, OEM development teams no longer need to perform the bulk of the coding for their Alexa integration. Bluetooth audio-capable devices built with this new kit can connect directly to the Alexa Voice Service (AVS) via the Amazon Alexa App (for Android and iOS) on the customer’s mobile device. Customers who connect their devices with the Amazon Alexa App can take advantage of all the great features available through AVS, including streaming media, smart home capabilities, thousands of Alexa skills, calendar management, weather updates, and more.
Device makers who want to enable their Bluetooth audio-capable device to connect to Alexa for a hands-free voice experience will be able to leverage this new developer toolset later this year. You can sign up to be notified when it’s made available.
Last year, Amazon introduced the AVS Device SDK, enabling OEMs to integrate Alexa directly into their connected products. The new Alexa Mobile Accessory Kit is an alternative solution for device makers who need a lightweight method to build on-the-go products that access Alexa by pairing via Bluetooth to the Amazon Alexa App.
Several device makers have already begun developing Alexa Mobile Accessories to enable a hands-free Alexa experience on their products. OEMs such as Bose, Jabra, iHome, Beyerdynamic, Bowers and Wilkins, and AVS Solution Providers Linkplay, SUGR, and Libre Wireless are committed to bringing an enhanced Alexa-on-the-go experience to their Bluetooth audio-capable products this year.
Device makers building connected Wi-Fi products can continue to integrate Alexa directly into their connected devices using the suite of APIs and development tools from AVS. Amazon provides developers with access to a suite of resources to quickly and easily build Alexa-enabled products, including APIs, hardware development kits, software development kits, and documentation. Through AVS, device makers can add a new intelligent interface to their products and offer customers access to a growing number of Alexa features, smart home integrations, and skills. Just ask, and Alexa will respond. Visit the AVS Developer Portal to get started.