Amazon
Amazon's stock price is up 1.34% at $951.22 on Wednesday, with a portion of those gains coming after the company announced several new hardware products at a launch event.
Shares were higher by about 0.9% before the event.
At the company's product launch event, it announced updates to its popular Echo line of devices, as well as others. Here is a quick roundup of the new products.
- "All New" Echo: The new version of the popular echo device is shorter than its predecessor, and looks a bit nicer too. It comes with improved sound quality due to dedicated subwoofer and tweeters. It will cost $99.
- Echo Plus: This one looks like the old Echo device, but is silver. Amazon says the Echo Plus will have better sound than its other smart speakers and will act as a dedicated hub for your smart home devices. It costs $149.
- Echo Connect: It's a little box that you put between your landline and your Echo speaker. The device lets you make and take calls through a traditional phone service on the smart speaker. It costs $35.
- Echo Buttons: For $20 for a two pack, you can buy buttons that let you interact with your Echo speakers. Amazon demoed a trivia-style game where the buttons acted as buzzers.
- New Fire TV: It's an update of the company's previous streaming box. It will cost $69 and supports 4k and HDR formats.
- The Best For Last: While Amazon won't be producing it directly, its voice assistant will be featured in future versions of the Big Mouth Billy Bass, the popular wall-mounted talking fish.
Amazon also announced a partnership with BMW to put its Alexa assistant into future versions of the company's cars.
Amazon is up 26.13% this year.
