Amazon is the world's leading vendor in the smart speaker market and as of Q2 2021, controlled 26.7% of the global market. At the center of that success is the growth of Amazon Alexa, a truly innovative voice technology platform and a major source of inspiration at Blutag since the beginning of the company.
"The very first version of Blutag was designed to allow you to ask Alexa a question about a product, and the system would then send you an email. So the first demo that we did was like, "Hey, Alexa, I'm looking for some black dresses to wear to a cocktail party in a couple of weeks." At the time, our platform would respond: "Hey, I found you some recommendations. Let me send you an email," said Shilp Agarwal, Blutag Co-Founder and CEO.
"It would generate and send an email, like a personalized newsletter based on that search. So that was the initial product that we had. Alexa has evolved so much in the time since, and we knew: "Okay, let's integrate with Shopify first. So we created an integration with Shopify and then set towards getting our system to work with other ecommerce platforms such as WooCommerce."
Since Blutag's earliest days, developing superior ecommerce solutions for Amazon Alexa has been a significant focus. We were proud to celebrate Amazon Alexa's 7 years and look forward to many more years of innovation and inspiration. Blutag and Amazon Alexa are the perfect pair for businesses looking to achieve superior results.
On November 6th, 2014, Amazon unveiled a powerful voice assistant technology named Amazon Alexa, or simply Alexa for short. Since then, the automatic speech recognition, natural language processing, and artificial intelligence that made the Alexa cloud-based voice service has revolutionized the way people worldwide interact with technology using the power of speech.
Currently, Amazon Alexa enjoys a dominant share of the U.S. smart speaker market. The entry-level products such as the Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Studio, and Amazon Tap speakers developed by Amazon Lab126 have become fixtures in homes and businesses across the country. 70% of all smart speakers currently in use feature the Amazon intelligent personal assistant voiced by Colorado-based voice actress and musician Nina Kralle.
Every day, more and more customers are being initiated into using Amazon Alexa to handle their normal daily activities. Once adopted, few can ever imagine not using voice assistant technology. In 2020, conditions caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic vastly accelerated smart speaker adoption rates, and 166.2 devices were shipped globally. Thus far, in 2021, there have already been 186 million smart speakers devices shipped.
The success of Amazon Alexa is truly revolutionary and continues to transform the way people around the world connect with technology. Over the last seven years, Amazon's Alexa has played a significant role in building consumer confidence and helping people realize the immense potential of voice technologies to transform how we work, live, and enjoy our free time.
As of October 2021, sales across Amazon.com accounted for more than 41% of all online purchases made in the United States, making Jeff Bezos' company the most successful online retailer by an extensive margin. When shifting focus to the expansion of Amazon's international business models, the company capped off a breakout year in 2020 with a commanding 7.7% control of the entire global ecommerce market.
The Amazon Alexa virtual assistant interface is the perfect example of these values. Amazon did not simply create a voice assistant technology. Instead, it has revolutionized the world of business by delivering individuals and development teams worldwide to build their own solutions using the interface as a launchpad for their own creative innovation.
Amazon Alexa allows its users to develop personalized voice-powered processes and applications that deliver highly user-specific experiences. In this way, Amazon has created a new way for its customers to access its products and services and designed a new method for businesses worldwide to connect with their favorite brands.
Alexa is hugely influential and highly disruptive for all the right reasons. By creating a new way for people to interact with technology and usher in the ambient computing revolution, Amazon is transforming life as we know it.
As successful as Amazon Alexa has been over the last seven years, we believe the best is yet to come. The COVID-19 pandemic has vastly accelerated the adoption of digital technologies and created an incredible landscape of opportunity for online retailers. 2020 was the most successful year of all time for online businesses, and 2021 is well on track to meet and even exceed those high hopes and expectations set last year.
Overall retail sales are up 16.3% compared to the high-water mark set last year during the height of the global pandemic and subsequent lockdowns that drove so many customers online. The good news is that now that so many customers have made the switch, there is not much reason to believe they will go back to shopping the way they had before the start of this unprecedented period.
Online sales have increased by a massive 10.2% since last year. That has led to incredible growth and truly disruptive success for companies like Amazon. And while it could be said the "clock is ticking" and "time is running out," in truth, there are incredible opportunities available for businesses looking to acknowledge the Amazon Effect. It is an opportunity to develop more highly personalized user experiences across online brands.
Blutag was founded to deliver superior results for ecommerce brands using Amazon Alexa. Implement a turnkey white label solution to engage and retain your highest value customers better.
