Quote:
Originally Posted by frahse
It seems to be an Apple product delivered by Amazon, and I am curious as to where and how the money currents flow.
I am a Prime member, so I get some things from Amazon on Alexa, and Fire without additional cost, bu some things on Alexa or Fire cost extra.
So the question here for the above subject works out to be.
Pay money for the echo devices, and then:
money for the Prime membership or NOT,
then money for the extra Amazon service for some other items?
Money for certain Apple services: from the customer,
to Amazon, to Apple, to other as yet unspecified entities.
It could get complicated.
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There is no added charge to the consumer.
Amazon doesn't handle any money or play any role between Apple and the consumer.
This isn't an Appstore deal with a 30% vig attached.
Alexa skills don't cost anything. Not to the user. Not to the developer. It's a (mostly) open system. (They even have ways for consumers to craft their own private skills, like command line batch files or scripts.)
And Amazon makes no money directly off them. The only cost to the developer is the billable time spent crafting the skill, which is relatively minor since the skills are little more than macros making API calls.
And Echoes aren't tied to Prime: you can buy an Echo and subscribe to AppleMusic and Amazon sees no more money than the price of the Echo. If that. Because you don't need an Echo to use Alexa.
Apple isn't paying Amazon and users aren't paying for using Alexa to reach Apple Music just as they don't pay for using it to reach Amazon Music, Pandora, or Spotify. It's the equivalent of using a browser: the skill is the equivalent of a web page. In this case, all it does is log you into the Apple Music account and forward the processed voice commands one way and the music stream the other.
The money here isn't in the connection but in expanding the, ahem, Echo-system. The win for Amazon is Apple's implied recognition that Alexa users are important enough to break away from their traditional Apple Hardware-only business model. That puts the Alexa ecosystem on a par with Android and Windows as platforms that *must* be supported, even if they compete with Apple's own products. It means Apple decided that expanding the reach of AppleMusic is more important than selling their own connected speaker.
There are a *lot* of Echo devices out there. A whole lot more than Apple speakers. This gives AppleMusic a chance to compete on equal terms with Spotify, Pandora, and AmazonMusic which were already accessible via Echoes and other Alexa devices.
Tech industry coopetition at its finest.