Amazon Echo beats Siri to "most admired" digital assistant

Amazon's IoT portfolio looks set to expand in 2016, according to this ZDNet insight, which shows a strong year in IoT for the online marketplace giant. Amazon's Echo home automation hub's digital assistant, Alexa, was voted the most admired of all, receiving a 67% admiration rating and beating competition from Apple's Siri and Microsoft's Cortana. Siri and Google Now both achieved 45% admiration scores, while Cortana and Facebook M languished, with the latter gaining just 18% positive sentiments. 

Amazon's Echo along with efforts like Dash are two front-runners in the smart home and if you couple the managed Internet of things cloud service from Amazon Web Service there's a stack that the e-commerce giant is likely to connect in the future.

The back-end Internet of things efforts are well known for Amazon. Amazon in October outlined its AWS IoT managed services. At the same time, Amazon was pushing its Echo as a holiday gift and rolling out Dash. Couple Amazon's core supply chain data and it's clear that the company could be a smartphone hub and position itself as a useful artificial intelligence helper to compete with the likes of Apple Siri, Google Now, Facebook M and Windows Cortana.

Adobe's data confirms that Amazon's IoT, smart home and artificial intelligence efforts can combine to create a stack from the cloud to the consumer.

In Adobe's 2016 predictions, the company served up data from its analytics tools and surveys. Here's a look at two slides on Amazon's front end tools. Siri is the most widely known digital assistant, but let's get real: Apple's voice is a hit or miss effort. Amazon Echo is getting more favorable social reviews. Facebook M, which is still in beta, is also viewed as a Siri rival.

Here's a look at the key figures from Adobe regarding digital assistants.

And here's a gauge of IoT device mentions on social for Amazon.

Simply put, Amazon has a smart front end to connect to its AWS backend with a ton of data it can exploit. Google is another contender, but the Google Now, On Hub and Nest connection is a bit fuzzier.

Where Amazon goes with IoT, artificial intelligence and smart home remains to be seen, but all the parts are there and can be combined to create a unique value proposition relative to where other tech giants--Google, Apple and Facebook--are going.

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