Amazon Echo Show is Selling for $129 Through Prime Day
Amazon Echo Show is currently listed for sale for only $129.99 for Prime members. That is $100 off the standard list price and represents a new low price for the Alexa-enables smart display device. Amazon had previously discounted Echo Show with prices ranging from $149.99 – $179.99. And, last week the company introduced a new charging station for Fire HD Tablets that claims to transform them into an Echo Show-like devices. The new discounting brings Echo Show to price parity with the more popular, clock-like Echo Spot smart display.
Will There Be and Echo Show 2.0?
Voicebot reported in June that only 5.9% of smart speaker owners had opted to purchase one of the only two smart displays (i.e. smart speakers with screens) available in the market today. Even when you looked just at Amazon Echo owners, the level of smart display ownership rose only to 7.7%. After a year of availability, smart displays have yet to capture any significant consumer adoption momentum and Amazon is not selling Show devices in any new markets where Alexa became available after September of last year. The data also revealed that Echo Spot was outselling Echo Show by a 2:1 margin. As a result, we can see that Echo Show has not taken off in a segment that has yet to capture consumer enthusiasm.
So, is the latest fire sale on Echo Show more about selling off inventory permanently or moving inventory out of warehouses to make room for a second generation device with more features at a lower standard price point? The recent move by Amazon to introduce Show Mode to Fire HD Tablets and the launch of the Fire TV Cube bringing Echo Show-like features to televisions suggests that Amazon may be transitioning away from the stand-alone device to purpose-built smart display solutions. However, this could be a risky proposition given that several Google Assistant-enabled smart displays are scheduled to launch this year. Each of those products has a similar design to Echo Show and it could create a product portfolio gap for Amazon if the form factor suddenly becomes popular and they have discontinued the device.
The Echo Show sale ends on Prime Day. It is a good guess that the company will either launch a new model at that time or go all-in promoting the Show Mode with Fire HD Tablets and Fire TV Cube. What do you think? Let me know on Twitter.
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