India is a crucial market for Amazon and this is evident from the amount of money and efforts the company is investing here. The introduction of Amazon Prime service and Prime Video were a great success for the company and Amazon is now expanding its portfolio in India by bringing Echo Dot and Prime Music.
In the world of Google Assistant, Cortana, and Siri, Amazon has its own digital AI assistant Alexa to take on them all. The Amazon Echo series of smart speakers come powered by Alexa and they can be used for controlling the smart home devices, lights, ask general questions, and much more. The smart speakers are a popular concept in the west but they are yet to take off in India.
Amazon seems to have taken the responsibility of giving the Indians access to these smart speakers. The company was expected to launch its smart speakers in India by the end of this year but some of the new reports suggest that the launch will happen a little earlier around Diwali, which falls in mid-October.
The reports suggest that Amazon has been testing the Echo Dot in its Bengaluru office for over a month now. At launch, it will only support English with the Indian dialect, while the other Indian languages like Hindi and Tamil will be made available later on via software updates. The Echo Dot will be compatible with a bunch of Indian apps offering local contents, most of which would be ones that had partnered with Amazon for Fire TV Stick.
Prime Music will be launched alongside the Echo Dot device and it makes complete sense as the smart speaker will be primarily used for music streaming in India. In the absence of the vast availability of home automation systems, the Echo Dot’s use will be limited to asking random questions and streaming music. Apart from Prime Music, Amazon will partner with Gaana, which is also a part of the apps available on the Fire TV Stick in India.
According to a report by FactorDaily, the Echo Dot device will be launched in India with a price between Rs. 5,000 and Rs. 6,000. Meanwhile, the smart speaker retails for $50 in the US, which is about Rs. 3,200. Gadgets 360, on the other hand, says that the device will be priced at around Rs. 3,000 in India. But if you look at the Fire TV Stick, which retails for $40 in the US and was launched in India at an inflated price by over 50 percent, the Rs. 5,000-6,000 mark seems apt for the Echo Dot.
