The Voice Revolution Redux: Alexa says we’ll talk to her 146 trillion times per year

With everything going on this week with my family, I’m just going to have to cancel this week’s Livestream Q&A Chat. We’ll plan on doing it Monday next week. More details to come. Sorry all.

I’ve explained before how we’ve reached peak swipe (see my report from last summer called “Peak Swipe: Why Alexa is Apple’s greatest threat” pasted at the bottom of this article), where people won’t be looking down and swiping their phones to control the apps inside of them. Likewise, the remote control is dead. The Voice Revolution has killed it. The latest and probably the biggest dagger into the heart of the remote control is Amazon’s new Fire TV cube which, as CNBC, succinctly titles their article about it: Amazon’s new Fire TV Cube lets you ask Alexa to change the channel.

And as Amazon explains it on the page where I just placed my own pre-order for the Fire TV Cube, you can “control your TV, sound bar, cable or satellite box, receiver, and more with just your voice.”

But more importantly, with so many new Voice Revolution devices and applications in just your living room hitting all the time, we can all start to see the magnitude of the size of The Voice Revolution marketplace. That is, in the next handful of years, we’re going to see people engaging in The Voice Revolution hundreds of billions of times per day.

In The Voice Revolution book I wrote last year, I mentioned that:

“I keep coming back to voice-interactivity because nothing excites me like the opportunity I foresee over the next one to five years for those of us who bet on The Voice Revolution and its potential to change everything we do with content, work and each other over that same time frame. Billions upon billions of voice-interactive devices (not including smartphones and tablets) will be sold annually within ten years. That’ll mean an installed customer base of two billion people using voice-interactive devices (not including smartphones and tablets) and the “skills” that run on them by the year 2025 or so. Those two billion customers will be using these voice-interactive devices (not including smartphones and tablets) dozens of time each day. Doesn’t it just about make your mind go numb trying to fathom that kind of growth and potential marketplace?”

Now even though I’ve been the biggest Voice Revolution bull on the planet for several years now, do you notice how much I underestimated our daily interactions with voice-interactive devices? We’ll be using these voice-interactive devices “dozens of times per day”? Oops. It’s going to be more like hundreds of times per day.

I mean, just since I woke up this morning, I’ve:

1. Asked Alexa to play Regina Spector while I got ready this morning.
2. Held down the button on what will soon be my “old” Fire TV stick remote control to ask Alexa to change the channel on PlayStation Vue from ESPN to CNBC on my office’s projector.
3. Asked Alexa to do some math for me for this very article. “Alexa, what is 2 billion times 200 times 365.” She just told me that the answer is 146 trillion.
4. Asked Alexa to turn on my stereo that’s plugged into a smart outlet at my office.
5. Asked Alexa to play T Rex’s Children of The Revolution, Urban Dance Squad’s “Deeper Shade of Soul,” on Spotify and then to “Play Classical Music.”

And I don’t even have my Fire TV Cube yet.

All that said, I take it back — the remote control isn’t going to die entirely. You’ll still want to be able to change the channel or the volume with a remote control when you’re watching TV with a chatty family or other times too.

But the broader point is that we are going to see billions of people talking to their tens (or hundreds) of voice-interactive devices, cars, TVs, dryers, washers, thermostats and all kinds of other applications for voice-interactivity in a 5G world hundreds of times a day — not dozens of times a day.

Think about all those numbers. In the next handful of years, we’re going to see people engaging in The Voice Revolution at least hundreds of billions of times per day and hundreds of trillions of times per year.

Best plays on The Voice Revolution? As I’ve said all along, the best way is to invest in the winning Voice Revolution platform: Amazon and its Alexa. You can also check out the report I wrote last summer that highlights the Top 12 Stocks for The Voice Revolution.

Before I go, I want to thank all of you for the kind words and prayers and comments about my daughter Amaris. She is feeling much better as it appears they’ve found the correct antibiotic and she might even be headed home tomorrow.

Finally, here’s the article I wrote about Peak Swipe and how Amazon’s Alexa is an existential threat to Apple’s own platform.

Peak Swipe: Why Alexa is Apple’s greatest threat (And how Amazon anti-trust will play out)

August 1, 2017 by Cody Willard

The single biggest threat to Apple is existential, in that it is not any where near for the next two to four years out — the single biggest threat to Apple is the Amazon Alexa operating system.

The fact is we are probably at “Peak Swipe” right now. And we might be at peak iOS operating system in the smartphone world right now.

Amazon’s Alexa is something that in Apple’s worst case scenario has the potential to suddenly, overnight, in the next couple years, make developers stop focusing on developing iPhone apps. Or at least quit focusing on apps in the way they have been. Because you walk into your kitchen and call it up on your Echo Show. You walk into your living room and call it up on your TV in the corner or you call it up in the projector on your wrist or the eyeglasses your wearing with the reflector device on it.

In 2017 the world will spend more than 17 trillion hours on apps. The world will spend at most a few million hours on Alexa devices. But therein lies the idea that Alexa is a great new disruptor. In a couple more years, you might be using the Alexa App on your smartphone to access “skills”, and you will also just be using the Alexa operating system on your television that Samsung sells you.

What we need to watch for is developers. There is an influx of developers right now, including the IAm App, that are building for Alexa.

At my company, The IAm App, we are now actively developing for Alexa. Of course, we are still developing for Apple too. Don’t get me wrong. We have more apps than ever coming out in the next three months for all kinds of celebrities joining the ones we already have in the store, including Jay Leno, Neil Patrick Harris, 50 Cent, Lauren Ash, Carl Reiner, Logan Paul, Sammy Hagar. All told, we have hundreds of new iPhone and Android smartphone apps coming out in the next few months. But we are also going to make sure you can pull the apps up on your Alexa Show or any other device with a screen that Alexa will be running in two years.

The question and potential of an Alexa-centric way of interfacing the web is there even if you are an iPhone user. Though to be sure, it is important to note that is the Alexa Show is built on Android. Which means Google/Android could be a huge beneficiary in what people are going to be accessing on a daily basis. They will be accessing Alexa “Skills” and/or Android-based apps and/or simple Alexa-based apps with voice interactivity, whether it is on their television or refrigerator or Echo Dot because they are talking to Alexa. And some of those skills will require Alexa to pull up an Android-based app.

So we are developing the IAm App for Alexa right now and I am learning a lot about this stuff. So I will know a lot more in coming weeks as we develop this skill for the IAm Apps on the Alexa Show. That is one of the reasons why by doing the IAm App that I benefit as an investor. I benefit from learning these trends and gaining insight and what we are using and who is supplying what. It is all part of it.

“Peak Swipe.” Copyright, Cody Willard 2017! You guys are my witnesses.

Since we’re on the topic of Amazon, let me answer the question I keep being asked about Amazon and anti-trust concerns. What I see happening is with anti-trust concerns and Amazon is this.

The Democrats will pretend they are going to go after Amazon for anti-trust, but it won’t really go anywhere because the Republicans and Democrats haven’t actually been actively anti-trust in decades.

Just last week, Chuck Schumer came out with a “Better Deal Platform” for the Democrats. To be sure, it drives me crazy when any Republican or Democrat like Chuck Schumer who has been in the system for decades says something like “The Republicans/Democrats have lost their way for years.” Well, the Democrats and Republicans have lost their ways for decades and people like that guy are part of the problem.) But the point being, one of the major bullet points that he focused on there (ie, that the propaganda that his PR people put together for him) is all about anti-trust.

Now remember that under Obama the beer companies and any other industry that wanted to and spent enough money lobbying Republicans and Democrats were allowed to roll up their competitors. There is almost a monopoly in beer in this country right now. That happened under Obama administration, under a Democrat administration. Then you read the Democrat’s new “Better Deal” and they are like “we have got to stop these mergers and acquisitions,” and they cite beer companies having been rolled up as an example! You can see why all this just drives me crazy because people are going to vote for these guys that have allowed the beer companies to become a monopoly because they are now propagandizing that they are now against that.

The point being you are going to see the Democrats really focusing on anti-trust and Amazon will be at least somewhat in the cross hairs of that. Since everybody recently has started talking about Amazon and anti-trust, the idea of Amazon and anti-trust is getting out there. And the Democrats and Republicans never have an original thought in their life. They just go with whatever looks like is going to poll better. If it looks like that is going to poll well (and I would think that Amazon anti-trust arguments will poll well — the reason the Democrats put that talking point in their new “better deal” thing is because it polls well) the Democrats are going to at least going to propagandize they are going after Amazon and other monopolistic/oligopolistic/dominant companies. Right now the people in power are the Republicans of course and it doesn’t poll well for them to go after anti-trust arguments. So they are glad to allow Amazon to do what it is going to do.

Finally, don’t forget that Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post.

So, yeah, I expect there will be a lot of noise around Democrats going after Amazon and companies like it. I don’t think it will get anywhere with Amazon though. And I am going to tell you right now, I hope the stock gets hit for like 20 or 40 percent off worries the government is going to crack down on some sort of anti-trust thing.

If there is one thing we know the Republicans and Democrats do not crack down on anti-trust. So they are going to let them do what they want to do. If the worry and fear gets built into the stock price, man I will take that opportunity to make Amazon my by far biggest position. If I could buy even more Amazon, which I’ve owned for years and at a much lower cost basis than today’s quotes — if I get the chance to buy more Amazon at $750 or 800 bucks in the next six months or year, I will do it. And Trading With Cody subscribers will be the first to know when I strike again. I don’t think I will get that opportunity though.

Why? Because of Alexa. Sure, there’s Amazon Web Services and there’s Amazon retail juggernaut and Amazon music and Prime and TV and movies and…but those are reasons I’ve owned Amazon for years already. The reason to own Amazon for the next five years is because Alexa is set to takeover the world.