Amazon Echo has only been widely available for about eight months, but it’s quickly turned into a sleeper hit. App development on the platform has skyrocketed, too. There are currently more than 200 third-party “skills” available for the Echo, ranging from stock-quoting capabilities supplied by Fidelity to New York City subway status reports. And there are more being added all the time. Earlier this month, the Echo gained the abilities to hail an Uber and order a Dominos pizza in the same week.
But it’s still early days for the platform, and with that comes a little bit of frustration. For instance, the Echo app is growing unwieldy, with its connected home settings (a considerable feature on the device) buried in its settings menu. In addition, finding skills is a very disorganized affair, with no real categorization to their capabilities, just page after page of listings.
But that’s another way the Echo is like the iPhone. When the Apple App Store launched, it was criticized for its poor organization. Will this connected speaker ever get to the 1.5 million apps that the iPhone has? Not likely. But 200 is a good start.