Book Image

Alexa Skills Projects

By : Madhur Bhargava
Book Image

Alexa Skills Projects

By: Madhur Bhargava

Overview of this book

Amazon Echo is a smart speaker developed by Amazon, which connects to Amazon’s Alexa Voice Service and is entirely controlled by voice commands. Amazon Echo is currently being used for a variety of purposes such as home automation, asking generic queries, and even ordering a cab or pizza. Alexa Skills Projects starts with a basic introduction to Amazon Alexa and Echo. You will then deep dive into Alexa Programming concepts such as Intents, Slots, Lambdas and maintaining your skill’s state using DynamoDB. You will get a clear understanding of how some of the most popular Alexa Skills work, and gain experience of working with real-world Amazon Echo applications. In the concluding chapters, you will explore the future of voice-enabled applications and their coverage with respect to the Internet of Things. By the end of the book, you will have learned to design Alexa Skills for specific purposes and interact with Amazon Echo to execute these skills.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
Title Page
Dedication
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Popular Alexa Skills


At the time of writing, the total count of Alexa Skills available in the US, which is also the biggest market for Amazon Alexa, has surpassed 30,000, with an average of 50 new skills getting published each day. Each of these skills is available under a specific category, and the Alexa Skills Store is currently letting the developers and users choose from 23 different major categories, as shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 7.1: Alexa Skills – categorical distribution

At the time of writing (mid-2018), the most popular categories (the ones that have the most skills) among developers are:

  • Games and Trivia: Hosts over 6,000 skills
  • News: Hosts over 3,000 skills
  • Music and Audio: Hosts over 3,000 skills
  • Education and Reference: Hosts over 3,000 skills
  • Lifestyle: Hosts over 2,000 skills

Among the top five, the distribution is as follows:

Figure 7.2: Alexa Skills – most popular categories

This should not come as a surprise, since these categories are equally as popular for smartphone...