Amazon’s Alexa is coming to your iPhone

Amazon’s shopping app has always supported voice search, but today’s update allows iPhone owners to tap into Alexa’s skills-of which there are thousands. The update will relegate Alexa to a little microphone icon inside the Amazon Shop app. For example, if you added items to a shopping list through your Echo, it would appear on the app’s shopping list. It will also be possible to ask Alexa questions related to sports, people, dates, geography or better still stream kindle music and books. With Siri enabled, you can say “Hey Siri!” and your iOS device will hear you and listen to your command. These integration range from controlling a bunch of smart-home devices to ordering food delivery from Grubhub. You’ll be able to ask the assistant nearly anything you’d normally be able to ask through a device like the Echo.

But users will not be able to use Alexa as a full replacement for Siri. Amazon Prime memebrs also get access to music included in their prime subscriptions.

The “skills” are in fact apps created by several developers in order to carry out tasks through Alexa. Why Amazon opted to equip its shopping app Alexa features instead of the main Alexa app is still a bit unclear, but that’s beside the point. The virtual assistant can also spell, define words, complete conversions, and make simple calculations. iOS users can use Alexa Skills and leverage its smart home functions as well as check news, weather and traffic real time.

Amazon is moving deeper into Siri’s territory by making its voice assistant available outside your home, and without requiring anything more than the smartphone you already have.

Earlier this week, Amazon lowered the entry barrier for developers looking to extend the assistant by launching a promotion that lets them host Skills on its cloud platform at no charge up to a certain point.