's virtual assistant Amazon, Alexa, is one of the most competitive technologies on the market as you can find it in Echo speakers and a variety of smartphones including Huawei's Mate 9. AmazonNow plans to make Alexa available to even more users.
The Amazon app for iOS recently received an update that includes Alexa. The virtual assistant is now integrated into the app, and the update is expected to be gradually installed to more and more users in about a week.
You can use Alexa by simply tapping the iPhone microphone icon in the search bar. The virtual assistant answers questions, helps the user with online shopping, plays music on demand, offers access to the Kindle library as well as Amazon Music Unlimited, Prime Music.
Playback controls appear on the screen while the music is playing and the audio continues to stream. Alexa can also provide users with news, weather and traffic information.
It's proving quite useful for managing smart home devices and allows access to all the features found on Amazon's smart speaker line. It's unclear at this point whether Alexa will be included in a future update for Android.
Alexa is now making its way to a range of smartphones including the Moto Z, Moto Z Force and Moto Z Play. Last month, Motorola introduced the new Moto Mod, which offers enhanced audio with Alexa integration.
It should be noted that competition in the virtual assistant market is expected to become even more intense with Samsung's Bixby premiering on the Galaxy S8.
