Now that Amazon's Alexa voice service has 15,000 Skills, the platform stands to grow even further, helped immensely by the fact that Amazon is expected to control 70 percent of the entire smart speaker market this year, surpassing Google Home and other devices featuring voice control.
But what's a platform without developers flocking to make apps for it? To that end, the company is taking steps to beef up its developer community with "Alexa Dev Days," which it'll launch with Intel. The sessions begin this month in Seattle, branching out to Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, New York, and more going forward. The Dev Days event series will also hit European cities, including Manchester, Dublin, Munich, and more.
Amazon Alexa Dev Days Schedule
Amazon describes the program as a series of free, interactive events sponsored by Intel, which lets developers participate in hands-on experiences that'll teach them how to create voice experiences, the latest in user interface design, and the latest industry trends.
Amazon has posted the full lineup on a dedicated Alexa Dev Days program. It will begin on July 19 in Seattle, followed by Chicago on July 25, Dallas on Aug. 1, Boston on Aug. 8, and so forth. The sessions will occur throughout the year up to early 2018. Per the current session lineup, the courses vary from introductory and advanced levels.
The introductory course level will target developers who already know how to code but haven't had much experience in building voice control apps, while advanced course level will target those who likely have already know the nooks and crannies of creating for voice platforms.
An Amazon trainer will guide each session, taking developers through the whole process and mechanics of building apps for Alexa with the use of skill design tool and AWS Lambda. Each session is followed by a focus on the design process, which will let developers throw ideas around and discuss with one another.
"At Amazon, we believe that natural user interfaces, like those based on speech, represent the next major disruption in computing," says Alexa VP Steve Rabuchin.
Amazon Can Dominate The Voice Apps Market Further
Amazon basically already has the numbers down. With 15,000 Skills for its Echo range of devices, it's the most crowded marketplace for voice apps, leaps and bounds larger than Google Assistant and Microsoft Cortana.
Alexa Dev Days can trawl more developers inward, ensuring these folks know how to properly make functional voice apps. This way, Amazon can do a number of things: expand its voice platform greatly, further capture the voice apps market, and offset crapshoots that proliferate the Skills store.
