> If they want to salvage Alexa, they need to forget shopping and start doubling down on the smart home and assistant experience. The problem with this approac

> If they want to salvage Alexa, they need to forget shopping and start doubling down on the smart home and assistant experience. The problem with this approach is that the vast majority of their installed base don't care about the smart home features. The highest margins in smart home equipment are in the high end, as usual. However, Alexa explicitly targeted the mass consumer market. Many of those folks are completely satisfied with a couple of those "smart" switching plug things, which are dirt cheap and totally commoditized. Many others live in apartments, and thus their options for home en-smarttening are very limited. Even if they wanted to go for a costly, sophisticated smart home setup, they can't. Other folks just don't give a damn about smart home tech and are totally satisfied with a thermostat that they must use by walking over to it. Maybe I'm wrong, but my instinct is that Alexa's reach is incompatible with a business model of selling smart home products for profit.