Amazon bids goodbye to invites, brings Echo speakers offline

Amazon, the e-commerce marketplace has announced that Echo Dot, Echo, and Echo Plus will be widely available for purchase by all customers in India.

Echo devices are voice-controlled speakers designed entirely around user's voice. Just ask, and Alexa will answer questions, play music, turn the lights on and off, give sports scores, check the weather, call your friends and family and more. With far-field voice control, users can do all this from across the room using just their voice.

The brain behind

The digital voice assistant Alexa is the brain behind Echo devices. Echo users can now keep in touch with each other using the Alexa-to-Alexa calling and messaging feature. To make and receive calls using Alexa, users need to have supported Echo devices or the free Alexa app on their Android or iOS mobile phones.

To enhance the entertainment experience, Amazon has introduced the multi-room music feature that allows you to play and control music across multiple Echo devices at the same time. In addition, users can set up routines for Alexa to perform a series of actions from a single voice command, shop on Amazon.in using their voice, and choose from over 12,000 Alexa skills to enhance their Echo experience.

Amazon Echo Plus: How to Setup, Add Skills and Give Commands

Skills

Users can now use more than 1,000 new skills that have been added to the Alexa Skills Store in India since it went live on 31st October 2017. Many developers published skills with an Indian flavor, enabling customers to listen to devotional songs, finding diverse information ranging from Indian pin codes, Indian Presidents to Indian Railways PNR status, or playing Indian Tambola and Indian GK Quiz.

Over 12,000 skills are available currently. These include skills like Ola, Uber, Zomato, Goibibo, Tarla Dalal recipes, Times of India, The Indian Express, and GaneshaSpeaks. Alexa can also help you learn new languages like German, French, Spanish and more. Just say "Alexa, translate thank you into French", or "Alexa, how do you say happy to meet you in Spanish?" to hear the translation.

Pricing and availability

Customers can purchase Echo devices on Amazon.in and over 350 retail outlets such as Croma, Reliance, Vijay Sales, Crossword and more in 20 cities across India. Echo Dot is available at a price of Rs 4,499, Echo for Rs 9,999, and Echo Plus for Rs 14,999.