Lenovo has made an Amazon Echo lookalike, but with better speakers

Lenovo has made an Amazon Echo lookalike, but with better speakers

Lenovo, the world’s largest PC maker, is getting into "smart" speakers. The company just unveiled the Lenovo Smart Assistant, a tall, tubular speaker that has Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa built in. Lenovo says it worked directly with Amazon to integrate Amazon’s Alexa Voice Services, which are expected to show up in a wide variety of products at this year’s CES.At first glance the Lenovo Smart Assistant looks, well, like Amazon’s own Echo speaker (unlike the Google Home, for example, which looks more like an air freshener). And the Smart Assistant will work pretty much the same way as the Echo: you’ll be able to use your voice to ask Alexa to read the news, play music, set timers, and so on. But there are a few notable differences between Amazon’s own speaker and Lenovo’s variant.

For one, the color schemes are different, with Lenovo offering the Smart Assistant in light green, gray, or orange fabric. The microphone portion of the speaker is designed differently, too, jutting out from the top of it rather than lying flat like the Echo; Lenovo says this is for ventilation, to cool down the Intel Atom processor inside. Also, this is minor, but Lenovo’s Smart Assistant has eight far-field microphones, compared to the Echo’s seven.But! Lenovo is also offering a Harman Kardon edition of its Smart Assistant speaker, addressing one of the biggest knocks on the Echo speaker and the Google Home: while they’re nifty voice-control devices, they’re not actually great... speakers. The Harmon Kardon edition is more expensive, but for people looking for a more premium sound, that might be the way to go.One unclear aspect of Lenovo’s Smart Assistant is exactly how its compatible software will work. Amazon’s Echo connects with Amazon’s own Alexa app, which is primarily a setup and manager app for the speaker, but also keeps a log of everything you ask Alexa for. Lenovo says that Smart Assistant users will have to set up the speaker using Lenovo’s app for iOS and Android, but couldn’t answer whether queries made through the speaker will be logged in Lenovo’s app.

The Smart Assistant speakers will start shipping in May of this year. The regular version costs $130, less than the $180 price of Amazon’s Echo speaker and the same price as Google’s Home speaker, which uses Google’s own voice assistant, not Alexa. The Harman Kardon speaker will cost $180.In addition to the "smart" speaker, Lenovo is also shipping a six-terabyte networked storage drive, and a compatible app that uses facial recognition tech for automatic photo-file sorting. The Smart Storage device also ships in May, and will cost $140.

Amazon halts sales of Indian flag doormat after visa threat

Amazon halts sales of Indian flag doormat after visa threat

Amazon.com (AMZN.O) removed doormats resembling the Indian tri-color flag from its Canadian website on Wednesday, after an Indian government threat to rescind visas of the U.S. company's employees if they did not stop selling the product."Amazon must tender unconditional apology," India's external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said on Twitter. "They must withdraw all products insulting our national flag immediately.""If this is not done forthwith, we will not grant Indian Visa to any Amazon official," she added. "We will also rescind the Visas issued earlier."The doormat, sold by a third-party on Amazon's Canadian portal, was taken down late on Wednesday."The item is no longer available for sale on the site," a spokeswoman for Amazon said in an email.Amazon's portal in Canada sells doormats fashioned around other national flags, but under Indian law any desecration of its flag is punishable with fines and imprisonment.Amazon's official support account on Twitter had earlier responded to angry user comments on Twitter by saying the mats were not being sold on their Indian portal and the concerns had been escalated.Swaraj tweeted that she had asked the Indian High Commission in Canada to take up the issue with Amazon, after it was brought to her attention by a Twitter user from India's financial capital of Mumbai.Swaraj is a prolific user of the social media website and often responds to tweets directed at her.Amazon is making a huge bet on India and has vowed to invest more than $5 billion as it takes on home-grown Flipkart and Snapdeal for a bigger share of the world's fastest growing internet services market.In an event attended by Indian premier Narendra Modi in Washington last year, Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said India was the company's fastest growing region.(Reporting by Sankalp Phartiyal; Editing by Euan Rocha, Elaine Hardcastle and Alexander Smith)

Amazon to pay C$1.1 million to settle Canada pricing case

Amazon to pay C$1.1 million to settle Canada pricing case

The Canadian unit of Amazon.com (AMZN.O) will pay a C$1 million ($756,658.60) fine to settle an investigation into pricing activities on its website that gave an inaccurate view of how much consumers could save, Canada's competition watchdog said on Wednesday.After a two-year investigation, the Competition Bureau found that Amazon's practice of comparing its prices to regular prices on its Canadian site gave consumers the impression that the website was selling items at a price lower than the general market.The Competition Bureau said Amazon relied on its suppliers to provide list prices without verifying their accuracy and advertised the savings on its site and in other places.Amazon has already made changes to the way it advertises regular prices on its Canadian website to more accurately show potential savings, the watchdog said.In addition to the penalty, Amazon will pay C$100,000 toward the Competition Bureau's costs.Amazon officials were not immediately available for comment.(Reporting by Leah Schnurr; Editing by Andrew Hay)

Amazon doubles deliveries in 2016 for third-party sellers

Amazon doubles deliveries in 2016 for third-party sellers

Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) shipped 50 percent more items during the past holiday season than the prior year for third-party vendors and doubled the amount for 2016 overall, the world's largest online retailer said on Wednesday.The data may offer hope to investors looking for Amazon to post a fourth-quarter profit when it announces results in the coming weeks.Seattle-based Amazon, known for its roller-coaster results in years past, had forecast that operating income would range from zero to $1.25 billion in the fourth quarter. The company said spending on warehouses and video production would drag on profits.Shares were up 0.6 percent at $758.48 in afternoon trading.Amazon said the 2016 holiday was its best-ever shopping season. But this was expected, said analyst Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research.More sellers are paying the company to store, pack and ship goods through its fulfillment service. Amazon more than doubled the items it delivered for other sellers in 2016 from the year prior to exceed 2 billion, a spokesman said.Active sellers using the fulfillment service rose more than 70 percent in the year, Amazon said. It did not specify the number of vendors or break down revenue.Amazon takes a cut of third-party sales, which were "record-breaking" in 2016, Peter Faricy, vice president for Amazon Marketplace, said in a statement."It's a positive data point, but there may be offsetting elements that they don't highlight," said BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis."The real interesting bit is the lead the company has built with their Echo devices and home automation," Gillis added. Shoppers can voice-command an Echo to buy goods online. Amazon's voice-command devices topped its best-seller list during the holidays.Amazon will likely beat its profit-margin forecast for the fourth quarter, Morningstar analyst R.J. Hottovy said in a note last week. Competition on pricing seemed less intense, and Amazon avoided fulfillment bottlenecks it suffered in 2015, he said.More sellers are paying the company to store, pack and ship goods through its fulfillment service. Amazon more than doubled the items it delivered for other sellers in 2016 from the year prior to exceed 2 billion, a spokesman said.Active sellers using the fulfillment service rose more than 70 percent in the year, Amazon said. It did not specify the number of vendors or break down revenue.Amazon takes a cut of third-party sales, which were "record-breaking" in 2016, Peter Faricy, vice president for Amazon Marketplace, said in a statement."It's a positive data point, but there may be offsetting elements that they don't highlight," said BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis."The real interesting bit is the lead the company has built with their Echo devices and home automation," Gillis added. Shoppers can voice-command an Echo to buy goods online. Amazon's voice-command devices topped its best-seller list during the holidays.Amazon will likely beat its profit-margin forecast for the fourth quarter, Morningstar analyst R.J. Hottovy said in a note last week. Competition on pricing seemed less intense, and Amazon avoided fulfillment bottlenecks it suffered in 2015, he said.According to Amazon, shoppers ordered more than 28 million items from third-party sellers this year on Cyber Monday, the fourth day after Thanksgiving, versus more than 23 million a year earlier.The company is assembling its own fleet of planes to supplement shippers like FedEx Corp (FDX.N) as orders rise.Amazon has loaded the aircraft with big but lightweight boxes, according to data reviewed by Reuters and interviews with airport officials around the United States, helping it dodge fees from cargo companies that are increasingly pricing by volume rather than weight.(Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler, Jeffrey Benkoe and Bernard Orr)

Amazon's Alexa moves in on Google's Android system

Amazon's Alexa moves in on Google's Android system

Amazon.com Inc’s digital assistant appeared almost everywhere at the CES technology show this week in Las Vegas, even making an unexpected appearance on rival Google’s Android system.Companies ranging from appliance maker Whirlpool Corp to Ford Motor Co unveiled products featuring Alexa, the digital assistant from Amazon that responds to voice commands.Most strikingly, Chinese firm Huawei Technologies Co [HWT.UL], which manufactures smartphones running on the Android operating system produced by Alphabet Inc's Google, announced that its flagship handset will come with an app that gives users access to Alexa in the United States.The adoption of Alexa by a prominent Android manufacturer indicates that Amazon may have opened up an early lead over Google as the companies race to present their digital assistants to as many people as possible, analysts said.Many in the technology industry believe that such voice-powered digital assistants will supplant keyboards and touch screens as a primary way consumers interact with devices.While the shift is only in the early stages, Google must establish a strong presence quickly, particularly on Android devices, to maintain its dominance in internet search, said analyst Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research.“To the extent that voice becomes more important and something other than Google’s voice assistant becomes the most popular voice interface on Android phones, that’s a huge loss for Google in terms of data gathering, training its AI (artificial intelligence), and ultimately the ability to drive advertising revenue,” he said.Alexa debuted on the Amazon Echo smart speaker, and Amazon is establishing a broad array of hardware and software partnerships around it.