“Honey, would you please talk to Alexa?”

The smart speaker platform had so much promise.  What started as Amazon Echo smart speakers in 2014 became familiarized to just “Alexa” on the premise humans are more comfortable talking to bots with human names.

But this once exciting Amazon product has been running on fumes the past few years.  As we recently learned in Edison’s Infinite Dial study – and backed by our newest Techsurvey presented to its stakeholders yesterday afternoon, sales of smart speakers have been essentially flatlining for some time now.  The reasons are numerous, but boil down to Amazon’s poor recognition of how these devices were being perceived by consumers and their subsequent failure to do anything about it.

You can see the flattening of smart speakers, in general.  And while Amazon’s version of these devices dominate here in the U.S., that hasn’t abated the slowdown in consumer adoption the past few years:

So what explains the slowdown in sales of these devices?  It’s certainly not price.  A brand new Echo Pop (pictured), the newest and smallest Alexa product was on sale this morning for $29.99.  At those prices, you could afford to put one in every room of your house – plus the garage.

But you probably won’t because if you haven’t let Alexa into your life by now, chances are you’re not going to.  Unlike most tech gadgets, our research early on indicated most people made up their minds about this product from the jump.  Spurred on by the bad publicity that accompanied Alexa in the first few months, consumers made their decision – and a majority opted not to bring these devices into their lives.

Back in 2020 and again two years ago, we asked our tens of thousands of Techsurvey respondents who did not own a smart speaker (of any kind), what drove the decision.  In the newer study, more than six in ten “Alexa-less” folks were asked to tell us the main barrier to purchase a smart speaker.

So as not to “lead the witness,” we made it an open-ended question and coded the responses.  Here’s how it shook out:

The top response – “Have no use for one” – is a convenient catch-all.  It’s the #2 response in both years – consumers citing “privacy reasons” for not buying one of these devices – that resonated with me.  That’s because I had been hearing it and variations of it for several years in focus and L.A.B. groups.

From group to group, the top excuse was the same, often word for word:

“I’m not bringing a device that will listen to my conversations into my own home.”

In many ways, these respondents were echoing (sorry) news reports about “Alexa” listening into conversations, and even reacting in bizarre ways to things people were saying.  In the early years, I even blogged about what was called “Laughing Alexa” because some of these devices would break out into giggles because of mishearing a command.  It became a meme, and a joke on the late night TV talk shows, as well as fodder for parody on shows like SNL.

But it wasn’t funny because once consumers form a negative perception about a new product, it can be hard to turn them around.  When consumers become even more concerned about their online privacy or they’re simply creeped out by technology, it’s a problem.  Amazon had to know about the public’s early fears over this product, especially as they began to take root.  But rather than address it, they continued to market Alexa in conventional ways, like this ad aimed at parents of young kids:

The irony, of course, is that while the majority of consumers will not spend even $30 for a product they don’t trust, many of the devices they DO willingly carry around or sit nearby are, in fact, listening in our conversations.  And that includes our phones, our cars, and even our TVs.

As PCWorld recently reminded its readers, “Any device with voice recognition has the potential to be used for active listening, with or without the owner’s knowledge or consent.”

And try this one radio peeps: Cox Media Group, the company that runs radio stations and is now owned by Apollo Global Management, has a tech product called “Active Listening.”  According to the same story in PCWorld, it’s “a tool that records and analyzes all conversations picked up by smartphone microphones and converts them into advertising suggestions.”

The story goes on to say that CMG has already used this service in partnership with Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and yes, Amazon, in the past.  PCWorld claims these companies used “Active Listening” or knew of its existence.

How pervasive is this eavesdropping technology?  A brand new story in Vox ominously answers this question with its title:

“Your TV is watching you”

Writer Adam Clark Estes says that pretty much every streaming OTT company is collecting our data and watching what we watch.  The only way out is to trade in your smart TV for an old dumb one where all you need is a terrestrial antenna.  But that means you’re missing out on pretty much everything.

Back to Alexa, why should anyone in radio shed a tear for Jeff Bezos and his company’s inability to garner even a 50-share of the smart speaker market?

Because as we learn every year in Techsurvey, “regular radios” are not-so-slowly-but-surely disappearing from people’s homes.  Our newest study reveals only three of four respondents have a working radio in their homes that they use.

As a result, radio broadcasters are increasingly dependent on mobile apps and smart speakers as platforms consumers can use to listen to traditional radio content when they’re in their homes.  The chart below from Techsurvey 2025 shows how this process is playing out over time:

And listening to streaming radio is a top “use case” for both mobile apps and smart speakers.  Thus, it’s in the best interests of broadcasters for both of these platforms to be both vibrant and healthy.

In the case of mobile, apps remain highly popular.  But smart speakers are increasingly challenged as well covered in this post.  To that end, Amazon appears to be planning an Alexa shift, moving the platform from a free service (once you buy the device) to a subscription model where “Alexa+” is beefed up with improved AI functions.

Given the congenital biases already against Amazon’s Alexa, it is difficult to fathom how this new service will be a success, as yet another company attempts to extract several dollars each month for subscribership.

And to that point, today – March 28, 2025 – is a special day for Alexa.  As Amazon notified its Alexa owners earlier this month, today is the last day its privacy feature “Do Not Send Voice Recordings” will exist.

Up until today, Wired reports it was possible to opt-out from Amazon sending customer commands to their cloud.  Not anymore.

It’s not like Amazon’s privacy track record has been stellar since the debut of its smart speaker product line.  They didn’t even offer the option of preventing the company from holding onto customer recordings until 2019 – five years after Echo’s debut.

Amazon has allowed its employees to listen to voice recordings in order to train its speech recognition system.  And the company had to settle for $25 million two years ago over a lawsuit claiming they stored children’s interactions with Alexa.

None of this bodes well for a radio broadcasting industry already challenged on multiple fronts.  In-home radio listening has been tepid for some time now.  If the Alexa product fails to turn itself around, it will suppress at-home consumption.

Is this a time when Google might step up with a robust marketing effort for its smart speaker line?

And is this another clarion call for radio broadcasters to more enthusiastically commit to its mobile apps efforts?

Absolutely.  We can no longer count on Alexa.