Skills Made Alexa

When the Echo launched in 2014, Alexa could do thirteen things. Five years later, she could do over 100,000. Developers built them all. This is a tribute to the skills, the builders, and the ecosystem that turned a smart speaker into a platform.

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When Amazon launched the Echo in November 2014, Alexa could do thirteen things 1. Play music. Set timers. Answer questions. Read the news.

Six months later, Amazon released the Alexa Skills Kit, a free SDK that opened the platform to any developer who wanted to build something new 2. What happened next was one of the fastest developer ecosystem expansions in consumer technology.

From 130 to 100,000#

By December 2015, there were 130 skills 3. By June 2016, 1,000 4. By September, 3,000 5. By February 2017, Alexa crossed 10,000 6. Developers were adding 51 new skills per day in 2017, accelerating to 85 per day in 2018 7. Amazon celebrated 100,000 skills worldwide in September 2019 8.

Jeff Bezos put the skills count in his shareholder letters, next to Prime and AWS. In 2018: developers had "doubled the number of Alexa skills to over 80,000" and "customers spoke to Alexa tens of billions more times in 2018 compared to 2017" 9. In 2017: "more than 30,000 skills from outside developers" alongside 4,000 smart home devices from 1,200 brands 10.

None of those 100 million Alexa-enabled devices 11 shipped with 100,000 features built in. Developers built them.

Not the Smartest, but the Most Capable#

In the early days, Alexa wasn't the smartest assistant in the room. Loup Ventures ran annual IQ tests asking 800 questions across five categories, and Google Assistant consistently scored highest: 88% correct answers in 2018 versus Alexa's 61 to 73% 12. Google had native translation through Google Translate, including a real-time Interpreter Mode for bidirectional conversation across 27 languages 13. Alexa had no built-in translation at all until December 2020. Google had the Knowledge Graph. Apple had deep iOS integration through Siri.

Skills closed these gaps.

Translation skills like Translated, which accumulated 4.5 million installs 14, gave Alexa users access to 37 languages. Weather skills like Big Sky, powered by the Dark Sky API, offered street-address-level precision with minute-by-minute forecasts, barometric pressure, UV index, and pollen counts, capabilities that actually surpassed Alexa's built-in weather.

"Big Sky pumps a big dose of steroids into Alexa's weather forecast." 15

In a single week in February 2016, Domino's launched pizza ordering 16, Spotify brought on-demand streaming 17, and Uber added ride-hailing 18. In the span of days, Alexa went from a speaker that played music and set timers to a platform that could order dinner, stream any song, and get you a car.

By January 2019, Alexa had roughly 57,000 skills in the U.S. Google Assistant had 4,253 Actions, just 7.5% of Alexa's count 19. Apple's Siri remained largely closed to third-party developers. Alexa's AI wasn't as sharp. But Alexa could do more things, in more categories, for more people, because developers made it so.

The Skill Store's Most Popular Category: Games#

Games became the largest skill category, with 6,648 skills by September 2018 20. Amazon's own Top 10 Skills list for 2019 confirmed their pull: seven of the ten most popular skills were games or quiz apps 21.

Jeopardy!, launched December 30, 2015 as a Sony Pictures Television intern project, became the skill that made voice gaming real. Over one million players. Over 52,000 reviews. The first skill to implement in-skill purchasing 22. Song Quiz by Volley reached over 30 million homes 23. Question of the Day by Matchbox.io grew to hundreds of thousands of monthly active users and was recognized as the number one game on Alexa, successful enough that Volley acquired the entire company in 2022 24.

The Magic Door started as a weekend project between Laura and Andy Huntwork. Twelve months later: a 200-scene, 30,000-word interactive adventure with character voices and hundreds of sound effects, ranked second in Games in the U.S. Skill Store 25. Beat the Intro, a UK music quiz, was announced as Alexa's 10,000th skill 26. Escape the Room made Amazon's Top 10 of 2019.

These skills turned Echo devices into something families gathered around on weeknights. A smart speaker became something people looked forward to using.

The Sound of Sleep#

Nick Schwab, a Ford engineer, built Rain Sounds to drown out a noisy neighbor. He grew Invoked Apps into a portfolio reaching nearly two million monthly active users, with over 44,000 reviews averaging above 4.7 stars 27. A Pulse Labs analysis found that 95 of the top 100 most-reviewed music skills were ambient noise or sleep sounds 28.

Todd Moore of TMSOFT engineered his White Noise skill so users would "never hear an audio gap during playback, which can wake you up if you're asleep." A 22% free-to-paid conversion rate. Revenue doubling each year since 2019. The Alexa skill grew to represent 18% of all TMSOFT revenue 29. Nicola Erbacci started building skills in high school and grew Smart Skills to over 1,000 skills, with his most popular titles reaching at least 500,000 active customers each month 30.

Ambient sounds became one of Alexa's defining use cases, and Amazon didn't build a single one of them. Developers did. Every night, millions of people kept their Echo plugged in and active on their nightstand because a handful of independent creators solved a problem no one anticipated.

Morning Routines, Meditation, and Bedtime#

Flash Briefings launched with the original Echo with just three news providers. By October 2018, the category had grown to over 5,000 skills 31. NPR, BBC, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters: every major news organization built one. Users stacked multiple sources into personalized morning playlists. Edison Research found that 42% of smart speaker owners used their devices weekly for news by 2019. "Alexa, what's my flash briefing?" became the sentence that started the day in millions of households, a daily habit built entirely by third-party creators.

Headspace launched its Alexa skill in January 2018 and by December 2020 had attracted 1.7 million users across 12.1 million sessions, with an 85% returning-user rate. It won the 2019 Webby Award 32. Stop, Breathe & Think, with 70+ guided meditations, made Amazon's Top 10 Skills of 2019 after accumulating 17 million emotional check-ins 33. These skills gave people a reason to reach for Alexa in their most private, vulnerable moments: at bedtime, in anxiety, during recovery. Guided meditation without reaching for a phone.

Kids, Toothbrushing, and Judge Lexy#

Chompers, by Gimlet Media and Volley, guided children through toothbrushing sessions with trivia, jokes, and stories timed to two minutes 34. When Amazon opened its first kids skills in August 2017, Sesame Street and Nickelodeon's SpongeBob Challenge were the flagship partners 35. The category grew to thousands. Edison Research found 88% of smart speaker owners with children reported their kids enjoyed Alexa.

Amazon launched a $250,000 Alexa Skills Challenge for kids, with entries from over 30 countries 36. The winner, Kids Court by Adva Levin, was a mock courtroom where siblings settle arguments before "Judge Lexy." Levin was a content writer with no coding experience who built it using a no-code platform 37. Animal Workout, which gets kids exercising by pretending to be different animals, made the Top 10 Skills of 2019.

Parents didn't buy Echo devices because of Chompers. But Chompers is why they bought one for the kids' room.

The Smart Home Flywheel#

Smart home was where the platform strategy paid its most durable dividends. Amazon launched Echo smart home control in April 2015 with Philips Hue and Belkin WeMo. Google Home didn't arrive until November 2016. Apple's HomePod came in February 2018 at $349.

By the time competitors entered the market, Alexa already worked with thousands of devices from hundreds of brands. By end of 2018, Bezos reported 4,500+ brands and 28,000+ compatible smart home devices in his shareholder letter. Manufacturers built for Alexa first because Echo had the largest installed base. Customers chose Alexa because it worked with more of their stuff. The cycle reinforced itself.

Fortune 500 on Alexa#

Capital One became the first bank on Alexa, launching at SXSW in March 2016 after an internal hackathon 38. Users could check balances, review transactions, and pay bills by voice. By late 2017, U.S. Bank, American Express, and Ally had followed. Domino's launched timed for the Super Bowl in February 2016, and by 2017 one in five UK customers using quick-reorder chose Alexa over the app 39. Starbucks Reorder compressed multiple app steps into a single voice command 40. Campbell's Kitchen was the first consumer brand on the platform, back in October 2015, generating 50,000 sign-ups and 174,000 recipe suggestions 41.

Mayo Clinic built a first-aid skill for self-care instructions 42. In April 2019, Amazon became the first voice platform to support HIPAA-eligible skills, with six healthcare partners at launch 43. HBO's Westworld: The Maze, with 60+ storylines and 36 actors, won the Grand Prix at Cannes Lions 2019, the first voice application to ever win a Cannes Grand Prix 44.

Each of these was a Fortune 500 company deciding that Alexa was where their customers were. And each one was a skill.

The Builders Behind the Skills#

Behind the category numbers were individuals.

David Markey, a Brown University student, built Word of the Day Quiz in a single day at a developer conference. He eventually earned $10,000 per month 45. Tom Hewitson, a former journalist, built Would You Rather in February 2017, got an unexpected call from Amazon about developer rewards two months later, and grew a six-person voice design studio within six months 46. Oscar Merry's Inspire Me skill earned over $30,000 in six months and led to the UK's first voice design studio 47. Gal Shenar's Good Night skill earned over $25,000 in its first six months.

"I was surprised to learn Good Night had become one of the most used lifestyle skills. From then on, I started investing more and more time in building new skills." 48

"I knew Alexa would be revolutionary, the next major leap forward in technology, and I could be a part of that." 49

That was April Hamilton, one of the first Alexa private beta developers in 2015.

"The world of voice is a beautifully evolving space. There is room for smart, creative people from all backgrounds to come in, influence it, and create all sorts of amazing new voice experiences." 50

That was Adva Levin, a content writer who won $25,000 with Kids Court without writing a line of code.

These developers built businesses, hired teams, and made career-defining bets on the platform. They believed in it, and their work is the reason millions of customers did too.

The Numbers That Tell the Story#

Tom Taylor, SVP of Alexa, on Alexa's fifth birthday in November 2019 1:

"There are now hundreds of thousands of developers building for and with Alexa."

Dave Limp, SVP of Devices and Services, at Fortune Brainstorm Tech in 2016 51:

"You know you have crossed a chasm when you get a fart skill."

900,000 registered developers. 160,000 skills. Over 500 million Alexa-enabled devices sold. A market share lead that held for five consecutive years 52. Customers who fell asleep to Rain Sounds, started mornings with Flash Briefings, played Jeopardy! with their families, meditated with Headspace, and ordered pizza from Domino's.

Skills didn't support Alexa's rise. They were the rise.

This post is a tribute to the Alexa developers who built the skills, the businesses, and the experiences that defined a platform. If you are an Alexa developer and you are experiencing issues with your skills today, visit our issue tracker or read about what SkillDevs.io is.

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