The Amazon Echo Is Winning the Race to a Screenless Future

The Amazon Echo is an unlikely hit. After all, the world's largest online retailer hasn't always won its bets on hardware. And a gadget that relies solely on voice? Yet Amazon has by one estimate sold some 3 million of the squat cylinders since the Echo launched in November, 2014. The company doesn't share sales data, but it did say Alexa, the voice-activated software that powers Echo, is active in millions of places, including smartphone apps and other Amazon gadgets.