Amazon Alexa Android TV Integration – Supports Select Sony Bravia TVs

Amazon has released the voice assistant Alexa on a select range of Android TVs. The first lineup to get this voice assistant is Sony Bravia in select markets. Alexa will be available as an app on the Play Store integrated into the Bravia TV interface and this gives access to advanced features that can be controlled via voice using any Amazon Echo speaker that you use already.

As per Android Police, Alexa support will be rolled out to specific models in Sony Bravia portfolio in countries such as the US, UK, Spain, Ireland, Germany, France and Austria. The list of compatible TVs can be seen on the respective country-specific Sony Bravia pages.

Rivalry With Google

Google and Amazon are rivals in the smart devices and TV market segments. While Amazon offers its Fire TV Edition smart TV platform for OEMs, Google has been quite successful with its Android TV in many markets across the world. Also, its virtual AI assistant called Google Assistant, which is present on Android smartphones is the selling point of some of the smart home hubs and speakers including the Google Nest lineup. Notably, Google Nest is none other than the pre-existing Google Home smart speaker product lineup.

Amazon's smart speaker lineup with Alexa support have been doing well in the market. Though Alexa is not available on Android smartphones, it still becomes a contender to Google in the TV market. It looks like Amazon is testing the waters to see how it can sell in this category.

Cross-platform Functionality

As of now, the only way to use Alexa on an Android TV is to plug in a Fire TV stick. While this let users to execute commands including playing or pausing a show or control the volume levels, it failred to register the comments related to the underlying interface of the TV. This means that users cannot control or change DTH channels or active input source on the TV.

Our Take On Alexa For Android TV

Now, with the launch of Amazon Alexa on Android TV, it is possible for users to do all these. This is none but cross-platform functionality and it will be interesting to see how this will work out. We need to wait to know how this will work out and how Amazon Alexa will be compatible with the Android TVs.