What's next for Amazon Alexa? We're about to find out

FILE - This file photo provided by Amazon shows an Amazon Echo Show on display in a living room setting. With Echo Show, Amazon has given its voice-enabled Echo speaker a touch screen and video-calling capabilities as it competes with Google's efforts at bringing "smarts" to the home. Amazon has been ramping up efforts to get more people to shop using the Alexa voice assistant on Echo speakers and other Amazon devices. It seems rather doubtful that Amazon will bring out its own branded smartphone again anytime soon, as I wrote in this piece yesterday. We all know how the Amazon Fire Phone introduced in 2014 was a high-profile flop, relegated to the scrap heap a year later.