Amazon Echo is Now Available for Sale in France, and it’s half price right now
Amazon Echo, Dot and Spot smart speakers are now available for pre-order in France with shipments scheduled to start the week of June 11, 2018. And, they are all listed at half price. Echo has a list price on Amazon.fr of €99.99 but is selling today for €49.99. The Echo Dot is listed at €59.99 and offering pre-order pricing of €39.99 and the Echo Spot smart display will be listed at €129.99 but is available today for just €64.99. An Amazon spokesperson indicated that the Spot will start shipping next month. This appears to be the lowest price Echo Spot has ever best listed for purchase.
Amazon released the Alexa Skills Kit for France in March 2018 so developers could get a head start building voice applications for French consumers. The official media release listed a number of companies that have built Alexa skills for French speakers and several device makers that will support Alexa in French.
- Alexa Skills for France announced from: Marmiton, franceinfo, Netatmo, Legrand, La Fourchette, Philips Hue, Uber, Domino’s Pizza, TP-Link
- Alexa-enabled devices are expected for France from: Boulanger, Sowee, Harman Kardon, Sonos, Ultimate Ears, Netgem, Archos
Alexa’s Growing Global Reach
Voicebot had speculated last month that Amazon was likely to launch Echo products in advance of June 18th when Apple’s HomePod smart speaker will start shipping in the country. Amazon has been first-to-market with a smart speaker product in five countries and has never been third or followed HomePod. Arrival in France brings Amazon Echo availability with native Alexa language localization to 10 countries. The company also sells Echo smart speakers in over 80 countries without language localization. Current and announced availability for Amazon Echo, Google Home and Apple HomePod are listed in the table below.
| Country | Amazon Echo | Google Home | Apple HomePod |
|---|---|---|---|
| Australia | 2018 | 2017 | 2018 |
| Canada | 2017 | 2017 | June 2018 |
| Denmark | TBD 2018 | ||
| France | 2018 | 2017 | June 2018 |
| Germany | 2016 | 2017 | June 2018 |
| India | 2017 | 2018 | |
| Ireland | 2018 | ||
| Italy | 2018 | ||
| Japan | 2017 | 2017 | |
| Korea | TBD 2018 | ||
| Mexico | TBD 2018 | ||
| Netherlands | TBD 2018 | ||
| New Zealand | 2018 | ||
| Norway | TBD 2018 | ||
| Singapore | 2018 | ||
| Spain | TBD 2018 | ||
| Sweden | TBD 2018 | ||
| United Kingdom | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 |
| United States | 2014 | 2016 | 2018 |
Voicebot has inquired as to when Alexa French localization will be available for Canada. I am told that Canadian users can set French as their default language, but they won’t have the country localization and will only have access to skills from the French Alexa skill store. There is no announced date for French language localization for Canada.
Amazon Echo’s expansion into France comes just two weeks after research firm Canalys reported that the U.S. fell below 50% of smart speaker sales by unit volume for the first time in Q1 2018. With new smart speaker launches in India, France and elsewhere, the second quarter is promising a continuation of that trend. Smart speakers now represent a global market and have a global audience.
