Yeah, Amazon misread the demand on Echo's. They've supposedly ramped up production now, so with any luck those of us still on the outside looking in will get one soon. They'd earlier misread demand for a Fire phone in the other direction and assumed there'd be a great demand for it, only to find out there wasn't and ended up with a warehouse full of the things. That's one of the big challenges in technology. You never know where the demand will be.
Amazon is now largely alone in the home based personal assistant category, so they aren't under undue pressure. If/when Apple/Google/HP/Sony/Microsoft come out with a similar product (and you know they will) then Amazon will have to be ready to compete head to head. They could be building a huge installed base right now if they had the product available, but having gambled and lost on the Fire phone they were a bit antsy launching a whole new product category. I suspect they now realize how big the Echo can be and are racing it to market. The potential is huge and the more they get out before the competition arrives the better for Amazon.
The 2015 CES (starting 1/04/2015) will likely show off similar products by other manufacturers in some stage of development and Amazon would be smart to get Echo's in the hands of consumers before they hear of other options. The CES is a toy show for techies and I'd be shocked if some/many of the big manufacturers don't have an Echo like product (at least in prototype form) ready to show off. Heck, if I was attending and I was a Sony, Microsoft, Apple, HP, or Google I'd cobble together some sort of Echo like device and lots of add-ons (stereo speaker, IR remote transceiver to make the device into the ultimate voice activated universal remote, outlet/switches controlled by the device, etc.) just for the buzz it would generate. The consumer side of an Echo isn't all that much. It's largely a speaker, microphones, and some minimal processing/data transfer hardware. The real work happens back with the servers connected to the Echo. Make a pretty box, say it'll rival or surpass the Echo and throw it out there for the show goers to ogle and you'll slow the adoption of Echo and give consumers an alternative to wait for. Echo owns the market now, but that won't last long. Any of the competitors who comes out with a comparable product will likely get a lot of buzz out of the CES and steal Echo's thunder. Amazon better get Echo's into the hands of consumers quickly if they want more market share.
Fly!!! Eagles!!! Fly!!!
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