I Bee listening to you
Bee, a little-known wearable that listens to (and records) your every conversation has been bought by Amazon in the retail giant’s latest foray into the wearable space. The purpose of Bee is to not only listen to conversations, but also be your intelligent assistant, answering your questions, summarizing daily activities suggesting o-do tasks trend and being able to recall earlier conversations. In other words, it is rather reminiscent of the now-dead AI Pin, but without the camera and with more recording. Financial details of Amazon’s acquisition have not been disclosed.
The Circana Take:
- We remain firmly convinced that AI-infused assistants are the future interface of choice for consumers, ultimately displacing the smartphone as the center of a consumer’s tech world (see The Evolving Ecosystem Report for more insight). The smartphone will become one of many devices that interact with the AI assistant. As such, Amazon’s acquisition of Bee makes perfect sense – and perfect timing with the launch of Alexa+.
- The name of the game for any AI Assistant will be to place the assistant on as many devices as possible so it becomes the most commonly available interface. Amazon has a head start here with a broad array of devices that already carry Alexa. Adding another wearable (Amazon already has the Echo Frames) will add to the risk for smartphones.
- The greatest challenge for Amazon is that Bee does almost exactly what most privacy-focused consumers fear that Alexa already does: listening to every conversation (with, these consumers believe, the singular goal of working out what we want to buy next). Amazon will have an uphill battle convincing consumers that this is not necessarily the case. The solution has to be (as with all tech) that the benefits outweigh the risk. And besides, the challenge is far from unique to one company. All AI Assistants have that potential “se case” too.
- Bee requires a linked smartphone to work. The connectivity and “brains” of the device are really an app. This is a significant limiting factor in the goal to displace the smartphone: leave the phone behind and Bee appears to be pretty dumb. Cellular connectivity and more on-device brains are required to really make devices such as Bee successful.
Nothing to wear?
Nothing’s sub-brand, CMF, has launched its latest smartwatch which is positioned as an entry-level fitness watch. Priced at $99, the Watch 3 Pro has updated health tracking as well as (of course) built-in AI coaching features. There are over 130 sports modes (11 more than the previous iteration), updated heart rate and sleep tracking, as well as blood oxygen tracking, stress tracking and more. The watch also comes with ChatGPT, allowing the wearer to ask questions, set reminders and record short voice messages as reminders.
The Circana Take:
- It’s an impressive watch for the price, but is unlikely to make much of a dent in the current landscape which is dominated by Apple and (to a lesser extent) Samsung. Many consumers first consider a watch by the same brand as their smartphone (the big exception being Garmin wearers) and Nothing has, well, nothing much of a customer base in the US.