Alexa, an Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) voice-activated assistant, will now be available in the company’s iOS shopping app. That means Alexa will expand its wings from the usual confinement of the Echo, which apparently has also become a top seller.

The voice-enabled assistant has come a long way into being where it is today. Initially, it was all about populating in other Amazon devices, the likes of Fire TVs and tablets. However, it has finally become part of the e-tailer’s own shopping app.

The tech giant is bringing the voice interface to its widest audience ever

Amazon has a massive audience and on the other hand, Alexa has been relatively homebound. Unlike Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s own digital assistant, Siri, Alexa has simple accessibility which involves the opening of the Amazon iOS app to turn it on. Next to the search bar is the normal icon search represented by a camera icon as well as a new mic icon that prompts the Alexa.

The search for products by shoppers using the Amazon app will be through vocal commands. It will also be possible to ask Alexa questions related to sports, people, dates, geography or better still stream kindle music and books. Word has it that the new feature is currently available only in the US market but it is not known how soon it will arrive in the UK.

Vocal computing is already widely used

There has been a quick embrace of vocal computing by the marker because other than Siri and Alexa there is also the Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google Home. Apart from Alexa, Amazon had also tried to introduce a Smartphone, the Fire Phone but the move was not successful.

Apparently, Google Home is known to be better at answering questions compared to Alexa. This is perhaps the reason why Amazon has to keep pushing it into the market by adding new roles into it. It remains to be seen what other roles the digital assistant will be given. In the meantime, Amazon’s stock was trading at $853.42 witnessing an increase of $0.45 or 0.05%.