Amazon's Daniel Rausch has delivered great news for owners of existing Echo and Fire TV products – they should be compatible with Alexa+ when it finally rolls out globally.
Speaking in an interview, he said that "97% of devices" will support the AI assistant.
It's fair to say that the rollout of Alexa+ hasn't gone as smoothly as Amazon would initially have hoped. However, there's some great news for device owners that are patiently waiting – it will more than likely work on your existing products.
Speaking to TechCrunch during CES, Amazon's vice president of Alexa and Echo explained that the new, AI-powered assistant will work on the vast majority of devices already in homes.
"97% of devices we ever shipped can support Alexa+," said Daniel Rausch – which is a mammoth amount of products it could potentially end up on. Amazon is claimed to have shipped more than 600 million Echo and Fire TV products since it started making its own hardware more than a decade ago.
This hopefully reduces some of the confusion surrounding Alexa+. Amazon has recently started to tag certain devices as being ready for the service, but has rarely discussed legacy products. It has lead some into thinking only new Echo and Fire TV models will be compatible.
That's not the case though, it seems. And once Alexa+ starts to roll out wider and to additional regions (it's limited to the US at present), it could serve a much bigger user base than originally thought.
Where are we at with Alexa Plus right now?
Of course, that all depends on the assistant being made available outside the States.
Although Amazon claims that "10s of millions" now have access, that's only through an opt-in program that's restricted to American users. It has also been beset with issues over the last year, with some critics saying it gets basic requests wrong.
However, this slow rollout should be of benefit to future users. Amazon will be learning from issues that have arisen and the wider community should get a better version when it eventually does arrive.
And considering it'll be free for all Amazon Prime members ($19.99 / around £14.99 per month for everyone else), it will be easy and cheap enough to try out.
