Alexa becomes most popular smart home device in UAE and Saudi Arabia

Customers are turning to Alexa to control lighting, air conditioners, TVs and cameras

Staff Report

DUBAI: Customers are turning to Alexa and it [Alexa] has become the most popular smart home devices categories in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, an industry expert said.

“The UAE and Saudi Arabia are embracing cutting-edge technologies with palpable excitement. We’re humbled by the adoption pace of Alexa and our smart home devices, welcoming ambient intelligence into daily lives across the region. Ambient intelligence weaves together AI, devices, and services for an experience greater than the sum of its parts,” Dr. Raf Fatani, Regional General Manager, Alexa, Amazon MENA, said.

Alexa’s customers in the UAE and KSA are making use of integrated smart home hub in Echo devices, with support for a variety of standards like Zigbee, Sidewalk, Thread, Bluetooth, and Matter, enabling easy control of compatible lights, locks, and sensors.  

Growing adoption

According to Amazon stats, a total of six million smart devices are integrated into the everyday lives of Alexa customers  in Saudi Arabia and the UAE in 2023 and have initiated nearly 130 million smart home actions and over 100 million requests to listen to music, Quran and podcasts, totaling more than 70 million hours of listening.

Throughout  2023, Alexa turned the lights on and off over 24 million times in homes across the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Customers in these two countries turned to Alexa nearly 9 million times to control their air conditioners only by using their voice, the second-most frequently used device category.

Customers from the Middle East usually have multiple compatible devices connected to Alexa, demonstrating the growing adoption of voice-enabled home automation.

There was a more than 50 year-on-year increase in smart home customers in 2023 vs 2022, with a 90 per cent year-on-year increase in number of smart home devices connected to Alexa.

No wonder Alexa heard “I love you” over two million times in 2023, and received 60,000 marriage proposals!

Fatani said that they are excited to be at the forefront of AI advancement in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, with an unwavering passion for customer obsession here.

“We’ve invested in local talent and resources to tailor our products for these markets, ensuring Alexa and our devices cater to unique customer needs.”

New feature

Amazon has recently added a new feature for customers in UAE and KSA to enable the multi-view option. This allows customers to see live feeds from up to four cameras, including Ring, on their multimodal devices. Customers can also ask Alexa to show their recently active cameras or all those belonging to a specific group, with a command such as “Show my Living Room cameras”. 

Mohammad Meraj Hoda, VP of business development – MEA, Ring, said that Ring is driven by the goal to provide our customers with peace of mind.

“We continue to focus on making homes more intuitive, as well as making it easier to connect and control devices so that everything works together effortlessly.”

The most commonly used lighting brands in smart homes in the UAE are Smart Life, Xiaomi, and Surplife. In the television segment, the top brands connected to Alexa are Samsung, LG and Broadlink IR Remote. For cameras in the region, Ring, Eufy, and TP Link reign supreme. When it comes to climate control, customers in the region turn to Smart Life, LG, and Honeywell.