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"Amazon's popular voice assistant Alexa ended 2018 with 40,000 developers in India and 20,000-plus skills as the US retail giant raced to capture the smart speaker market in the country." ""We want Alexa to be everywhere. We want anybody, through a voice command, to do any task. Alexa's engineering team builds alarms and shopping lists, but a lot of customer experiences can be built by developers. We don't want to restrict Alexa skills building to only Amazon," said Dilip RS, country manager for Alexa skills, Amazon India."

"Amazon Pay users in India can now ask Alexa to pay their utility, internet, mobile and TV bills, according to TechCrunch. Indian Amazon Pay users can take advantage of the cross-platform functionality with any Alexa-enabled device, not just first-party devices like the company's Echo smart speakers. This means even headphones with Alexa built-in support the functionality."

" Voice continues its rise as the new user interface-and it's a global phenomenon. Half of online consumers now use a Digital Voice Assistant (DVA), with people in China, the UAE, India and Mexico leading the way. The use of standalone DVAs (ie smart speakers such as Amazon Echo, Google Home and Apple HomePod) in the United States has outstripped embedded DVA use in smartphones and other devices. Based on anticipated purchases, standalone DVA is now on track to be one of the fastest adopted technologies in US history. While there is concern around privacy and data collection from DVAs, if companies focus on establishing trust and transparency, they will see overall growth."

"Multilingual mode is aimed specifically at bilingual homes where two languages are frequently used at the same time. Until now, Alexa could only understand and speak one language at a time, and switching to another language requires adjusting the settings in the Alexa app. In multilingual mode, Alexa can respond to a question in the language it is asked. The setting comes in pairs based on country. For now, it is limited to English and Spanish in the U.S., English and French in Canada, and English and Hindi in India. More languages are currently in the works, according to Amazon."