I bet that’s at cost tbh. You’d be surprised how cheap things have gotten. However, r&d and every single Alexa request costs money. So from day one, it’s losing money.
Think bigger picture. Imagine a panopticon spanning Ring.com camera networks and voice recordings telling you what's going on inside, with AI providing automated summaries of recent conversations. All delivered end-to-end by Amazon!
While I believe that this is actually a simmering threat to society, I have a lot of trust that the current slew of devices are not eavesdropping on you. I believe smartphones to be a much bigger threat.
I’m more worried about smart phones acclimating people go carrying tracking and microphones. But, we find those tools indispensable now, so instead, we seem to want to focus on smart speakers
I can get a wifi-enabled microcontroller delivered from China for $3.40 [1] including payment, picking, packing and delivery. And the product is at least $1 of that price.
I find it hard to believe Amazon is spending more than $2 on payment and delivery.