Apps are so yesterday as the tech world talks up mad 'skills'

As the once-meteoric growth of mobile apps slows, and the typical smartphone user settles on a core of standard apps, developers are scrambling for the next big edge.

It may well already have arrived, but this time we are unlikely to see billion-dollar businesses emerge from an idea that can be summed up in one elevator ride. The app of the future is not about creating a new service, but rather about quick and intuitive access to existing services, products and even appliances.

And instead of calling them apps, these access methods will be called "skills". At least, if Amazon has anything to do with it. The e-commerce giant launched Alexa, its voice-controlled device for controlling other devices, two years ago, in the belief that voice would become the next big user interface. Apple had made a similar bet on its voice-controlled "virtual assistant" Siri, which proved to be little more than a novelty in its early versions.

But Amazon went a step further, opening Alexa to third-party developers, who were invited to come up with capabilities, or skills, for the voice platform. Today, its equivalent of the app store, the Alexa Skills Store, carries more than 4000 such capabilities.

That's a far cry from the millions of apps saturating the Apple and Google worlds, but the real power of skills is that they draw on a vast resource: the billions of "utterances" spoken by human beings.

The full potential of skills as the future of the user interface was brought home at the Amazon Web Services Re:invent conference in Las Vegas this week. Alexa Machine Learning head scientist Rohit Prasad presided over a session in which he introduced some of the world's most high-profile developers of Alexa skills.

He pointed out that, amid two years of continual customer feedback, Alexa had received 250000 marriage proposals.

"Clearly," he said, "people really do love this invention."

More significant, though, is the love from companies such as Intel and General Electric, which will build Alexa into their own chips and appliances.

Intel corporate vice-president and general manager Gregory Bryant explained the rationale: "We are making smart home technology more personable with voice. At Intel we've got a view that, in the long term, the smart home experience must be really responsive, perceptive and autonomous.

"We're making two big bets, one not glamorous or sexy, to improve connectivity into and around the home by investing in chips that deliver a better broadband experience."

Bryant also announced that Intel had begun producing reference designs - blueprints that any manufacturer can use - for Alexa-powered devices, starting with an Intel-based smart speaker.

GE Appliances chief technology officer Brian Pearson went a step further: he announced that GE had more than 70 appliance models with Alexa support built in.

He said the company could claim "among the most advanced Alexa skills in the industry", and the appliances could recognise up to 50 billion utterances.

"As unsexy as it may sound, integrating voice into your appliances is exciting. You'll be able to talk to your washing machine."

The market may not be holding its breath for that innovation, but it symbolises just how commonplace voice control is about to become.

Goldstuck is the founder of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @art2gee