Bonjour! Amazon (AMZN) Alexa and Echo speakers can now understand French and will arrive in France next week. The company said pre-orders on Amazon at discounted prices are witnessing enthusiastic response.
Amazon is the last to launch its voice assistant in France, where Alphabet’s (GOOGL) Google Assistant, Apple’s (AAPL) Siri and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Cortana have already made a huge presence. It is expected that with the popularity of services like Prime Now and same-day grocery delivery in the country, Amazon will attract a large number of customers for Echo speakers as well.
Last December, Amazon had released the Echo speakers in over 80 countries around the world, but it could only understand English. Last year, the e-commerce giant released Cleo to update the assistant’s understanding of different languages and dialects.
Alexa currently speaks only four languages – French, Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, and English – compared to Siri, which can speak 19 languages and Google assistant, which boasts of 16 including French. Google Assistant is expected to learn another 30 languages by the end of the year.
With the latest expansion, Alexa is now available in 10 countries – the US, Canada, UK, Australia, Japan, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, India, and France. Alexa and Echo will likely be arriving in the rest of Europe by end of this year or next year.