Apple AirPods might soon have a new competitor in the form of Amazon

E-commerce giant Amazon is currently working on new Apple AirPods-like wireless earbuds, according to reports. A report has it that Amazon is planning to integrate Alexa voice assistant into its upcoming earbuds. With earbuds, Amazon might be making inroads into Alexa ecosystem. Currently, Amazon’s Alexa voice-assistant is available across the company’s Echo line-up of smart speaker’s line-up.

Initial reports suggest that in terms of the design, Amazon earbuds might bear a striking resemblance with Apple’s AirPods. However, Amazon’s primary focus might remain more on improving its audio quality, according to people familiar with this project. These are truly wireless earbuds so they are naturally expected to fit better in your ears without clips.

Amazon Earbuds are expected to help people order things online, streaming music and obtain weather information and more using voice commands on Alexa. While using earbuds, you can fire up Amazon’s voice-assistant by saying “Alexa.” We can also expect physical gesture controls. For example, tapping the earbuds in order to answer or end calls as well as switching between songs. Amazon Earbuds are expected to cost less than Apple AirPods.

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Amazon’s hardware efforts were sort of like a roller coaster ride in the past. We remember how Amazon’s Fire smartphone turned out to be in 2015. However, the Echo line-up of smart speakers emerged as extremely successful and profitable for the company and now, millions of users have been using Amazon Echo devices all around the world.

Amazon Alexa has been fairly successful. But it still has a long way to go when it comes to competition with Google Assistant and for a reason: Google is the champion of mobility and Android ecosystem unbelievably maximises the reach of its Assistant. That’s where Amazon is somewhat falling behind the competition, which is why the company’s focus remains on expanding its hardware and the integration of Alexa into different devices.

Certainly, wearables are the next set of devices to get smarter and Amazon might already be working in that direction. Much like AirPods and Galaxy Buds, Amazon earbuds are expected to come in a charging case that also doubles as a storage case for these earbuds.