Amazon has ponied up a cool $26 million for a company that builds a voice recognition app called Evi—yes, essentially a Siri clone—prompting speculation about a forthcoming phone from Bezos and co.
https://gizmodo.com/report-amazon-is-possibly-maybe-building-a-smartphone-5969121
Evi, which runs on Android and iOS, was bought late last year, reports TechCrunch, though the deal has only just come to light. It’s actually the second voice recognition Amazon’s purchased—the other is Ivona. Greedy.
Inevitably, the deal is prompting much of the interent to jump up and down excitedly over the prospect of a forthcoming Amazon phone. But hold your horses. Firstly, $26 million isn’t too big a deal for Bezos, so it may not pay to read too much into the purchase. Second, Amazon could easily make use of voice recognition on its Kindles—especially the Fires—to help navigate through content. And third, if Amazon is planning a phone, it already had a voice recognition company in its arsenal, so the purchase doesn’t really tell us too much anyway. [TechCrunch]
