Analysis of the UK Amazon Alexa marketplace (June 2020)

Amazon Alexa market National markets

The UK has the highest rate of adoption for Amazon Alexa in the EU. It’s also home to a vibrant voice developer community. Explore these top skills to see what works (and doesn’t) with Europe’s most active Amazon Alexa marketplace.

Explore the data:

Data at a glance*

Date: June 11th, 2020
Total number of skills: 28 355
Flash briefings : 3 176
ᵇᵉᵗᵃSkills with in-skill purchases: 276
Exclusive to the UK marketplace: 4 903

* These numbers may not represent all skills on this marketplace

Top skills

Hot takes

???? HUGO.FM dominates the UK marketplace’s most rated skills.
???? The TVGuide skill is an interesting use case that is very popular in the UK, but not in other markets. I wonder why it hasn’t taken off elsewhere.
???? The Mind Reader skill is somehow popular despite its 2 out of 5-star rating. Maybe has something to do with users asking their Alexa device for a magic trick and the skill getting automatically invoked?

IconSkillDeveloperInvocationDescriptionRating countRatingReview count

Only in the UK

Hot takes

???? People are not happy with the BBC skill and are very vocal about it in the reviews.
???? Christmas Countdown could probably be very popular in other regions by adapting for different timezone (currently works on UK time).
???? Mood Booster from Upside is very popular but has 0 reviews. I expected at least one review along the lines of “This really made my day!”, but good for them either way.

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Flash Briefings

Hot takes

???? TuneIn tried to “borrow” a bit of BBC’s brand power with “BBC from TuneIn”. This apparently backfired and the skill is currently sitting on a 1.6 out of 5 rating. Though most people in the reviews don’t realize it’s a TuneIn skill, so they’re blaming the BBC and TuneIn’s image isn’t tarnished.
???? The Gaming Observer is easily the most popular/best-liked Flash Briefing. Ironically, other Flash Briefings with more significant budgets (especially from SKY) are not nearly as well-liked.
???? A surprising number of Flash Briefings have 1 out of 5 ratings. The most common complaint is that they don’t have new content or it’s simply the Alexa voice reading headlines.

IconSkillDeveloperDescriptionRating countRatingReview countRandom review

ᵇᵉᵗᵃSkills with in-skill purchases

Hot takes

???? The top skills with ISP are from well-established voice developers.
???? 119 of these skills have no ratings (43%), a similar ratio to the US marketplace.
???? 39 of UK skills with ISP are “Remember when” skills from N.E.S Voice Skills (the most prolific developer in this category), 38 of which have no ratings.

* Sound skills generally offer ISP, but were not included due to a technical issue.

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