Early data suggests Amazon’s Echo Show could be a hit with consumers (AMZN)

BI Intelligence’s Tech Adoption Indicator leverages BII's proprietary research panel to bring you quick insight on the potential of newly released products and services. For more data like this, sign up for a membership to BI Intelligence.

BIIFirst year sales of the Echo Show — Amazon’s latest Alexa-enabled smart home device — could surpass the entire installed base of previously released Echo products, according to exclusive survey data from BI Intelligence.

In fact, more than a quarter of the survey's respondents said they plan to snag the latest addition to the Echo line of connected speakers in the next 12 months. Based on that data, we estimate Amazon could sell at least 9 million of these devices in the year ahead. As context, the installed base of all previously released Echo devices is about 9 million, according to our estimates.

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The Echo Show is the first Echo device to feature a screen, which allows users to view streaming media from YouTube and Amazon, as well as make video calls. It also comes with all of the voice and Alexa capabilities of previous Echo iterations.

• 21% of the respondents said they plan to buy the Echo Show in the next year.
• 6% said they’ll buy the Show as soon as they can.
• 1% of the respondents had already pre-ordered it.

The addition of the screen seems to be a significant value driver — 50% of the respondents said they were excited by the new device and its capabilities. Additionally, 54% said they think the device would be useful. 

Here's why we think the Show will take off. To arrive at our estimate for the year ahead, we assume that consumers who buy the Echo Show will only buy one device per household. There are 126 million households in the US, and 28% of our respondents expect to own an Echo Show in the next 12 months. It's important to note that participants in BI Intelligence’s consumer panel tend to be younger, more affluent, and early adopters of new technology — so it’s not equivalent to general population data.

If we make the conservative assumptions that our data is representative of only half of US households and only half of respondents who said they would buy the Show will actually go on to purchase it, that comes to 9 million Echo Show devices sold in the next year. It remains to be seen to what extent Amazon will market the Show to both its Prime subscriber base and the general population, but it clearly has the potential to expand on the Echo's already substantial footprint. 

Consumers are more excited about the Echo Show than the Echo Look. In an earlier survey, only 39% of our surveyed respondents said they found the Look useful, and only 36% were excited by it. The Look includes a camera (not included with the original Echo) that allows users to take pictures of their outfits and receive fashion recommendations from artificial intelligence (AI) and stylists. However, the Look does not include a screen.

BI Intelligence’s Tech Adoption Indicator leverages BII's proprietary research panel to bring you quick insight on the potential of newly released products and services. For more data like this, sign up for a membership to BI Intelligence.

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