Earlier this year, Amazon said that there were now more than 10,000 ’skills’ available for its Alexa voice assistant – its equivalent of apps for smartphones.
Now that figure appears to have swelled to more than 15,000. That’s according to news site Voicebot, which has been counting the number of skills available for Alexa in the US.
In its analysis, the site notes that 20% of those skills are ‘flash briefings’ – audio roundups from news sites. Voicebot also makes the comparison between Alexa’s burgeoning catalogue of skills, and the slower growth of ‘voice apps’ for Google Assistant and Microsoft Cortana.
“Google’s Voice App count on June 30th was 378, up 24% in June. Microsoft trailed even further behind at 65 and that represented only 12% growth at a time when you would expect more rapid expansion,” claimed the site, noting that Alexa skills grew by 23% in June, nearly matching Google but from a much larger base.
“Neither Google nor Microsoft seems to have effectively activated their developer communities and generated excitement about voice…”
At the time of writing, only 470 Alexa skills are in its ‘music and audio’ category though.
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