Amazon has ponied up a cool $US26 million for a company that builds a voice-recognition app called Evi — yes, essentially a Siri clone — prompting speculation about a forthcoming phone from Bezos and co.
Evi, which runs on Android and iOS, was bought late last year, reports TechCrunch, though the deal has only just come to light. It’s actually the second voice recognition Amazon’s purchased — the other is Ivona. Greedy.
Inevitably, the deal is prompting much of the interent to jump up and down excitedly over the prospect of a forthcoming Amazon phone. But hold your horses. Firstly, $US26 million isn’t too big a deal for Bezos, so it may not pay to read too much into the purchase. Second, Amazon could easily make use of voice recognition on its Kindles — especially the Fires — to help navigate through content. Third, if Amazon is planning a phone, it already had a voice recognition company in its arsenal, so the purchase doesn’t really tell us too much anyway. [TechCrunch]