Alexa in Hong Kong

Smelling some new trends.

Here’s a quick recap of the Global Sources and Hong Kong Electronic Fair shows last week. The spring editions of the shows aren’t as big as the fall but there’s still an amazing mix and concentration of hardware tech companies.

• Aromatherapy lamps / scent diffusers are everywhere.
• Fewer robots than in previous years / at different shows.
• Alexa was everywhere.
• USB-C cables and support are on their way en masse.

In terms of Alexa, first there were tons of Alexa Voice Service-enabled speakers:

There were about half a dozen hubs that were selling the fact that they could be controlled through Alexa’s Home Automation API…

Then one of the cooler devices was a speaker that was designed around the Echo Dot…

What’ll be exciting is when AVS (and maybe Google Assistant SDK) jumps off of these speaker devices and into other form factors. Maybe at the fall shows?