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Amazon.com ( AMZN ) is doubling down on its voice-control tech Alexa as it wages a prolonged battle against Apple ( AAPL ), Google and others for a greater share of customer attention. The mighty, Seattle-based e-commerce firm announced Thursday that it was giving Alexa two new pieces of hardware that will beef up its roster of offerings. The voice-controlled household assistant will gain Amazon Tap and the Echo Dot. Tap is a smaller, portable version of Amazon’s original Echo speaker, which works like other Wi-Fi speakers to play music but also serves as Alexa’s cyber ears and voice. Unlike the Echo, Tap doesn’t need an electric outlet — it runs on a rechargeable battery. Like its larger sibling, Tap connects to phones and the Internet via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The Alexa-powered Tap requires people to press a button prior to commanding it to do things like order a ride via app-based car service Uber, read e-books and the news, and provide weather reports. Alexa can also operate, via voice commands, the growing number of “connected” home devices such as thermostats and lights, and perform dozens of other tasks. Tap will begin shipping at the end of March for $130. Amazon also announced the hockey-puck-like Echo Dot , which is basically a miniaturized version of its Echo without a large, high-quality speaker. It has a built-in smaller speaker along with a microphone and can connect to existing speaker systems via wire, or wirelessly by Bluetooth. Amazon is limiting Dot sales to existing Echo or Amazon Fire TV device owners; to get one, people will have to ask Alexa. Amazon’s stock was down a fraction to around 576 in afternoon trading on the stock market today . Amazon stock has an IBD Composite Rating of 80, where 99 is the highest. The stock more than doubled in 2015 but much like the rest of the market had a rocky start to 2016. But as the market has rebounded, Amazon stock has surged around 20% since Feb. 9. Executives have not disclosed to investors exactly how successful Amazon’s foray into voice-control tech is, but according to a Business Insider report , Echo vastly outsold the rest of the wireless speaker market in 2015. Amazon lists Echo as its #1 best seller in the home audio speakers section of its e-commerce site and notes that while Echo is available for orders now, it won’t actually be in stock again till March 12. The device debuted in 2014. Echo’s runaway success is not good news for other firms making voice-control plays. Apple, for example, has Siri — though unlike the Alexa-powered Echo, people must hit a button before activating Siri. Google has built a similar feature into its search engine and Android operating system. To activate the Google voice controller, people say, “O.K., Google” and proceed to command it to perform functions like setting appointments and timers. Google is a unit of Alphabet ( GOOGL ). Microsoft ( MSFT ) also has developed a virtual personal assistant called Cortana. Scalper1 News
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