“Alexa, why can’t I buy you in Canada?”

That’s the question many early technology adopters here would like to ask one of the hottest gadgets in the U.S.

Virtual assistants combined with smart speakers and other devices were crowned the king of this month’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, but Canadians are still waiting to be heard, as many of these products are not yet officially available here.

Amazon’s Alexa, the online retailer’s virtual assistant, is right now considered to be the leader in the talkie war, which has mixed two of the hottest areas in technology — artificial intelligence and machine learning. We are familiar with virtual voice-activated assistants such as Apple’s Siri. But by unbuckling its assistant from phones — Alexa has been placed into speakers — Amazon has created a hub and can work with other smart-home devices.

Alexa really kicked off this consumer tech trend when it launched in 2014, with Amazon’s Echo speaker (followed up by smaller Dot and Tap products last year). People started talking to their speakers to play music, set reminders and timers and easily order items off Amazon just by asking.

Now Amazon appears to want Alexa everywhere. At this month’s CES, the annual trade show that sets the agenda for technology for the year ahead, voice control was everywhere. Amazon has licensed Alexa, so several other companies are releasing products featuring it, including LG, which is building it into the InstaView Smart Fridge, which comes with a 29-inch display and offers recipes based on the contents of the fridge.

Lenovo is partnering with audio company Harman Kardon to create a better-sounding product with Alexa, as one knock on Amazon’s speakers was inferior sound quality. GE even introduced a space-age-looking circular lamp with Alexa inside.

But while Alexa is readily available in electronics stores in the U.S., an Amazon spokesperson declined to comment when asked about when it might be available in Canada.

Amazon hasn’t released sales figures for its Alexa-enabled speakers, but this past Christmas the company sold out of its Echo products and issued a press release saying that it sold nine times more products this holiday season compared to the last one. Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, a Chicago-based analyst firm, estimated the company had sold 5 million units of the speakers by November 2016.

Those numbers have lit a fire under the company’s competitors. Near the end of 2016, Google launched a slate of hardware products, including the new Pixel phones featuring the company’s voice-activated assistant. Google also announced Home, its smart speaker with assistant, to directly compete with Amazon. They were released in the U.S. in December, but are also not yet available in Canada. Investment bank Evercore ISI recently estimated the company has already sold 500,000 Google Home units.

The company refused to comment on availability in Canada, but released a statement talking about the potential for this product. “It’s still very early for this technology — there’s been a lot of promise, but few can really deliver on this vision. Google has a unique blend of expertise in natural language understanding, deep learning, computer vision, and understanding user context, so we think we can make good headway. We can understand intent behind words to handle follow-up questions and complex, multi-step tasks. We hope to deliver, via Google Home, an Assistant that’s really useful to people.”

Microsoft is also getting in on the game; its assistant, Cortana, is also being used by several companies as the voice and interface for smart appliances, and will be available in Nissan and BMV vehicles.

While some comparisons show that Google Home can carry on more of a conversation than Alexa, Amazon’s product has had success thanks to its “skills” — what else it can do. Alexa reportedly already has more than 3,000 skills, and has integrated well with third-party apps. That’s one reason Alexa has become the hub for many people’s smart-home devices like thermostats, which can be adjusted just by talking to the speaker. Amazon has also started a $100 million (U.S.) fund to spur development of more voice-based interaction.

“It’s become this new interface that people now expect all of their smart home devices to comply with. So if you’re not in that game, you’re not really on the customer’s radar,” said Casey McKinnon, vice-president of product for Toronto-based Ecobee, a smart thermostat manufacturer that launched its Alexa skill in February of 2016. “We’ve actually seen a big lift in people buying our device because it does work well with Alexa, so it’s actually been quite good for business.”

But if Canadian manufacturers are already cashing in, why have Canadian consumers been left behind?

Amazon and Google are not talking, but one potential sticking point is language. Alexa used to be English-only, but in September 2016, the company launched the devices in Germany. French-language support and bilingual packaging are two oft-rumoured reasons for the hold-up.

Then there’s that fact that Canada is a much smaller market than the U.S., which often makes it less of a priority for U.S. companies. That said, there are early Alexa adopters here who bought their devices in the U.S. and brought them to Canada. They say that most of its features work north of the border, though one exception is the ability to easily buy something with a voice command. That still requires a U.S. credit card and address.

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McKinnon has an Echo, and notes one interesting foible of using it in Toronto — when you ask about the weather, you have to specifically ask what it’s like in Toronto, as opposed to saying the less formal “What’s the weather like?” a sign that it hasn’t been localized for the Canadian market.

“I can really empathize with Amazon as a company, because they want to bring the device to any country with the absolute best possible customer experience, and there are just little quirks about the device that it’s just not perfect,” says McKinnon.

“They have such very high standards for what they want to do, so I get it . . . There is a lot of work that goes into a country launch.”

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