- Amazon has shifted the deadline for the launch of the web version of Alexa+
- A company spokesperson told The Washington Post that it’s still fine-tuning Alexa+ for the web before rolling it out to test users
- Despite delaying its release, the reasons for this decision remain a mystery and an exact launch date is yet to be revealed
When Amazon announced the AI-upgraded Alexa+ voice back in February, the company promised a lot of new improvements, including new listening powers and wider compatibility with smart home devices – but once again, Amazon has pushed back one of its biggest features.
Amazon had previously revealed that a web-based version of Alexa+ would be among the slew of new upgrades for the voice assistant. However due to a last-minute change on the company’s part, the launch date for the rollout of Alexa.com has been extended, despite the app version of Alexa+ already being available to early-access users in the US.
According to The Washington Post ($/£), which had access to documents from inside Amazon, the company may have “underestimated the work needed to launch Alexa.com”. Now, according to the company documents, the web version of Alexa+ will arrive “no sooner than July 31”, meaning that test users are going to have to wait a little longer for it to drop.
Despite this claim, Amazon spokesperson Lauren Raemhild told The Post that Alexa.com hasn’t been delayed, and “will be available with Alexa+ Early Access this summer”, which suggests by the end of August. She added that Amazon is “continuing to fine tune the experience as (we) expand to more customers”, but an official date still hasn’t been announced.
The push-back remains a mystery
This latest delay to the wider Alexa+ rollout means more frustration for Amazon customers waiting to try the new smart assistant. The company claims to have released “90 percent of the features announced in February.”, and as of June, Alexa+ has been rolled out to over one million test users in the US.
If the launch of Alexa.com has been delayed, and if the reason for the delay is indeed related to the sheer amount of work and testing required to get Alexa+ fully off the ground it wouldn’t come as a surprise, as we’ve seen this happen with Apple’s plans to launch its AI-enhanced Siri voice assistant.
As mentioned, an official launch date for Alexa.com has yet to be announced, but if we were to guess at a timeframe we’d expect it to arrive no later than August 31 – that’s if Amazon keeps its promise that the rest of the Alexa+ Early Access features will arrive before the end of the summer.
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