Alexa Tops Apple’s App Store

Notch yet another win for Amazon and Alexa.

Shortly after reporting the Echo Dot was Amazon’s top seller during holiday 2017, Alexa, the artificial intelligence (AI) that powers the Dot, notched a victory of its own. According to reports, Alexa jumped to the top spot in the Apple App Store this holiday weekend, and it has remained there ever since.

This is Alexa’s first time in the number one spot. So many consumers purchased or received Echo Dot devices over the holidays, in fact, that it is presently sold out on Amazon. Customers must add their names to a waitlist and live with the uncertainty of delivery “soon,” according to Amazon’s site. Alexa Buttons are also sold out.

As a point of comparison, Alexa’ rank in the App Store had been somewhere between 60 and 90 in the earlier part of Q4. All those downloads point at new owners, too, as those adding a new Echo to an existing line-up would already have the app. The Alexa app serves no purpose other than to work with Echo devices, so there is little chance non-owners went on a downloading binge.

Amazon had achieved high App Store placement before, as Amazon managed to notch the number four spot on the list last Christmas. The U.S. wasn’t the only success story for Echo this year, either. In the U.K., the app hit number two and climbed to number five in both Germany and Austria. Google saw the app for its own smart speakers move from number 38 on Christmas Eve to number six on the U.S. App Store (and climb from number 21 to number 6 on Google Play).

But Google’s app doesn’t just work with the smart speaker: It also works with the popular Chromecast.

In other words, Christmas seems to have put Amazon even further ahead than it already was in the smart speaker race. Google is trying, but Amazon is running — and fast.