Amazon's Alexa is everywhere, even in your smartphone

A lot of money is getting poured into personal assistants and services in the war of popular smart home control interfaces. If the winner of this market will be the company with the most ubiquitous voice-controlled assistant, though, Amazon might be the closest to the finishing line.

Now, the company allows people to control their smart home devices, among other things, using its smart assistant Alexa through a smartphone app called Lexa. This is possible thanks to Alexa’s open-sourced API. Although Amazon might prefer people use their always-listening Echo products to do this, the company might be content just getting more people addicted to Alexa.

The company also uses its AI to boost its e-commerce efforts. This makes Amazon's smart products part of a more holistic approach that ties into a broader ecosystem. While the company recently produced Dash buttons for dozens of new products, allowing people to order new products with the press of a button, it also now lets people order products directly through Alexa.

When Amazon released the Echo, people were quick to realize the potential it had to serve as the central hub for a smart home. Now Alexa is getting put on all kinds of devices, though. The company has released two portable Echo, the Amazon Tap and the pocket-sized Echo Dot. The company has also put Alexa on its Fire TV sticks. Its approach to producing low-cost hardware for people to use like its $50 Fire tablets gives people more reason to use Amazon services, as well.

Beyond its Alexa products, though, Amazon is not producing much in the way of smart home products. The company wants to be central to the smart home experience, but it's leaving most of the hardware to other companies. China companies seem to be doing a pretty good job producing many different options for “connected” devices these days. Other companies like Google's Nest, Samsung and Apple are fighting for the premium side of the market. Some China companies, including Haier, are also involved in making more premium “connected” products. If Amazon's Alexa is successful in winning the hearts of smart home consumers before the market matures, though, everyone else will have to play nice Amazon's AI.