Amazon is killing it in IoT/Smart Home. However, IMHO, they are making a bit of mistake by not allowing developers to monetize their platform (at least the last time I checked). There were also certain device functions that apps could not utilize (e.g. programmatically mute and unmute). I suspect they'll have a wall garden approach to their new Echo devices too ... if this was open, they'd win it all (again, just my opinion).
Amazon subsidizes hardware by collecting information on the users, so they can't open their hardware. It's ironic because, like uBlock on Chrome, only a small percentage would change the hardware/OS anyway -- and those are the people who could try radical experiments and show Amazon what works.
Hopefully Google, Samsung or Microsoft(?!) will sell open hardware/firmware that isn't subsidized by collecting information.
> The company's response to these hacks was to assert that users did not own the devices and had no right to modify or reverse engineer them. Threats of legal action against the hackers swiftly brought on more controversy and criticism.
Software mute/unmute has too much of a potential to be abused by 3rd parties in my opinion.
For your other comment, what kind of command-response skill could be monetized? Surely for the majority of use cases, the Alexa skill should remain free with your purchased/subscribed product on the other side? E.g. the "skill" to read NPR should always be free, but NPR is still monetized via subscription or commercials.
The only example that jumps out at me would be Amazon Echo Games, something like text-based adventures built for voice. Otherwise, skills themselves are just a gateway to an already monetized service, no?
This is not what you're taking about because it is not the Echo hardware, but I think Amazon lets hardware manufacturers access Alexa API from their devices, and those hardware makers can charge whatever they want (and could put whatever type of "app store" or "hackability" into their hardware, all of which could call the Alexa voice API: https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-voice-service
