Amazon Echo is Now Shipping to Ireland – How You Can Tell Who Might Get Alexa Localization Next
Amazon Echo is now shipping to Ireland according to a blog post by Amazon’s lead EU Alexa evangelist, Max Amordeluso. Voicebot noticed that Ireland was inadvertently included in a list of supported countries last week, but the PR department wouldn’t confirm at the time. Today’s announcement includes a list of some Irish content providers that now have Alexa skills.
Popular Irish brands have already created voice experiences for Alexa, including RTE News, Irish RadioPlayer, and Ryanair. Alexa skills published in Ireland will be available to customers from the Alexa UK Skills Store.
The announcement also included a reference to several hardware makers that will soon include Alexa in their products.
Smart Home brands such as IKEA, Netatmo, Hive, Lightwave and Energenie have all announced that they are bringing their Alexa-enabled products to Ireland.
How to Determine Where You Will Find Echo Next
Ireland was interestingly not on the list of 89 countries that Amazon started shipping Echo to in December. These were international shipments that did not include language localization. Nor were Australia and New Zealand on the list. Consumers in both countries will be receiving their first Echo shipments next month.
What does that tell us? Well, if your country was not on that list, it may be because you are soon to receive Amazon Echo availability that includes language localization for Alexa. If you were on the list, I wouldn’t hold out hope for Alexa localization anytime soon. Some countries not on the list from December that might be able to expect localization in 2018 include:
- France
- Spain
- Italy
- China
- Brazil
- Mexico
- Indonesia
- Pakistan
There could be other commercial or operational reasons why Amazon is not shipping to those countries. However, these are all countries with large populations that could be attractive markets to capture new Alexa users. Today the Irish are in the spotlight. I expect to see a few more countries added very soon. My bet is that either Spain or France will be next. What do you think? Let me know on Twitter.
