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Amazon Experience Centers are now open in Lennar model homes in Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington DC with more coming soon. Customers can visit amazon.com/experience for more information and to find available homes to tour. Learn more about the Amazon Experience Centers in this new TechCrunch article by Ingrid Lunden.
Last week, we reported on how Amazon was leveraging a new relationship with home builder Lennar to expand its smart home business, specifically in the sale of home security services. Today, Amazon is taking the next step forward in that strategy: it’s launching a new chain of showrooms it’s calling the Amazon Experience Centers across Lennar model homes to demo and help sell its smart home devices, Amazon Dash Buttons, and other consumer electronics services such as streaming Prime Content with Fire TV.
The model homes will be fully connected up as Alexa-enabled smart homes, Amazon says, with customers able to walk through and see the full effect of being able to use Alexa to control all electronic and connected kit, from TVs and lights to thermostat and window blinds.
These Experience Centers will also become places where people can go to arrange for and order home services through Amazon Home Services, the company’s Thumbtack-style marketplace that lets people search for and book a range of in-home contractors for cleaning, fixing or helping in other ways.
The centers will open first in 15 model homes in the cities of Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington DC, and Amazon will be looking to strike deals with other home builders to replicate the model.
The Experience Centers, and the other work that Amazon is doing to provide a more in-person angle to its smart home strategy specifically is particularly important to the company’s smart home and consumer electronics strategy. If people are buying products to put into their homes, and many of those products represent the next generation of consumer electronics, it’s important for Amazon to provide more real-world touchpoints both to better sell and explain the services, and to help make consumers — the majority of whom will not be early adopters — more comfortable with the purchases.
Read the full article on TechCrunch
The Connected Home by Lennar is the first Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ Home Design that keeps you connected to the most desirable technology brand devices, all of which are included with your new home at an outstanding value. Learn more about how Lennar and Amazon have teamed up in this recent USA Today article by Elizabeth Weise.
VALLEJO, Calif. — The nation’s largest home builder is betting voice-activated digital assistants and smart devices will become as expected in a new home as garages now are.
Lennar announced Wednesday that standard features in its new homes will include built-in Wi-Fi, smart locks, doorbells, thermostats and lights — all controlled by Alexa, Amazon’s voice-activated digital assistant.
Each house will come with two Alexa-enabled smart speakers, an Echo Show and an Echo Dot. New homeowners will also get a free visit from an Amazon technician to help set everything up and teach them how to use it.
“This will be the hallmark of why we buy a new home,” said David Kaiserman, president of Lennar Ventures. “It’s an important step in the mass adoption of all these technologies.”
No other major builder has folded this still-evolving technology into all its homes. The announcement marks a major play to get what is still something of a cool, but not vital, technology into a broad swath of American homes.
It comes as Amazon, Google and Apple fight for market share in the smart speaker category. In 2018, about 18% of Americans will use a smart speaker at least once a month, digital marketing firm eMarketer found. Amazon holds 66.6% of the market and Google 29.5%. And it’s a bet that homeowners will find the convenience of a ready-made smart home outweighs any misgivings they have about giving one tech company even more information about their daily habits.
To get the word out to home buyers, Lennar and Amazon on Wednesday will open eight model homes across the country featuring the built-in technology.
Read the full article on USA Today
Amazon Experience Centers are now open in Lennar model homes in Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington DC with more coming soon. Customers can experience just how easy it can be to reorder household essentials with a press of an Amazon Dash Button, listen or watch Prime content with Fire TV or schedule on-demand home services through Amazon Home Services. Customers can visit a model home in person or learn more by going to amazon.com/experience. Learn more in this Fortune article by Grace Donnelly.
Amazon wants customers to give the Alexa a try, so they’ve partnered with Lennar to include the voice-activated technology in all their new homes.
The homebuilding company partnered with Amazon to create “Experience Centers” in their model homes that will allow customers to interact with the suite of Amazon devices — including Dash buttons, Alexa, and Echo — in a more natural living environment.
“This will be the hallmark of why we buy a new home,” David Kaiserman, president of Lennar Ventures, told USA Today. “It’s an important step in the mass adoption of all these technologies.”
Amazon chose to work with Lennar because it can showcase the Alexa experience within driving distance of millions of customers, Nish Lathia, general manager at Amazon Services, told Dallas News.
The model homes will be staffed with Amazon employees who can show customers the range of the company’s device offerings.
“We wanted customers to experience a real home environment that showcases the convenience of the Alexa smart home experience, great entertainment available with Prime, and Home Services,” Bhavnish Lathia, general manager, Amazon Services, said in a statement to TechCrunch. “We are excited to extend our relationship with Lennar with the launch of Amazon Experience Centers. As one of the nation’s largest homebuilders, Lennar offers the potential to enable this experience within easy driving distance of millions of customers.”
Amazon Alexa Will Come Built-In to All New Homes From Lennar via Fortune
Need some last minute ideas for a Mother’s Day gift? Consider the gift of technology. Whether the latest tablet, a new smart phone, or a voice-activated assistant, tech gifts make mom’s life easier. Ann Stych shares more gift ideas in this recent Business Journals article.
It’s true: Moms love tech.
If there’s something that can make her life easier without her having to to write code or read a multi-page manual, she’s all in.
The Consumer Technology Association found that 20 percent of moms hope to get a tech device for Mother’s Day, and while 93 percent of them want a device that has been around for a while, like a cell phone or tablet, 76 percent want something newer, like a voice-activated smart speaker, Fortune reports.
Amazon just announced a partnership with homebuilder Lennar to set up some model homes across the country as “Alexa Experience Centers.” The models will show potential buyers how the voice-activated virtual assistant can be used to help them control smart-technology enabled devices like the television, lights, thermostat and shades, per Chain Store Age.
Although soon we’ll be able to ask Alexa to turn on the TV to catch our favorite show, few of us are currently living in a fully tech-integrated HGTV smart home.
So for the time being, you might want to consider these other tech gifts to make mom’s day easier:
Continue reading the full article: The tech gifts moms want
Lennar and Amazon have teamed up and recently announced the opening of interactive Amazon Experience Centers within select Lennar model homes across the United States, including North Creek Ridge in Bothell. Now customers in the area can experience first-hand the convenience of Alexa smart home experience and more in a real home environment. Jeff Reynolds reports on Lennar’s connected homes and the future of smart home technology in this recent Seattlepi.com article.
The Nations largest home builder Lennar has partnered with Seattle’s own Amazon.com to feature fully automated smart homes. The announcement in the USA Today also featured some of my thoughts on the future of home automation. I spoke with Elizabeth Weise who covers Amazon, technology and computer security for the paper and online publication. We discussed a variety of topics including what I am seeing from buyers and sellers in regards to new home technology, home automation and more.
More on the announcement here:
Lennar announced Wednesday that standard features in its new homes will include built-in Wi-Fi, smart locks, doorbells, thermostats and lights — all controlled by Alexa, Amazon’s voice-activated digital assistant.
Each house will come with two Alexa-enabled smart speakers, an Echo Show and an Echo Dot. New homeowners will also get a free visit from an Amazon technician to help set everything up and teach them how to use it.
“This will be the hallmark of why we buy a new home,” said David Kaiserman,president of Lennar Ventures. “It’s an important step in the mass adoption of all these technologies.”
For many of you that follow the blog or our Facebook page, you would have noticed my enthusiasm surrounding the acquisition of Ring by Amazon.com. When Amazon acquired Ring.com it was abundantly clear to me that they were going to outpace their competitors like Google and Apple in the home automation race. With Amazon partnering with Lennar, they are sending the message to the rest of the homebuilders that demand for fully automated homes is picking up and they are going to the leader in the space. I see this transitioning into new condo projects as well.
Read the full article: Breaking News, Largest US Home Builder To Feature Amazon Alexa in New Homes
Amazon Experience Centers are now open at select Lennar communities in Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington DC with more coming soon. In a real home setting, customers can experience how Alexa, Prime and Amazon services come together to help them control smart home devices with just their voice. Learn more about the Amazon Experience Centers in this CNN Money article by Heather Kelly.
Amazon and home-builder Lennar are opening staged-homes filled to the brim with Alexa-powered smart-home products. Anyone can visit these new “Amazon Experience Centers” to see what it’s like to yell at a speaker to open the blinds, or push a button to order more toilet paper from Amazon Prime. The companies are launching the houses in 15 cities across the United States to start.
Lennar already has Amazon’s Alexa smart assistant pre-installed in all of its new homes. The company includes an Echo Show and an Echo Dot so homeowners can lock doors, change temperatures, and turn off lights with voice commands.
Its houses have a number of other smart-home gadgets to get people started, including a Sonos One speaker, a Ring video doorbell, smart locks, a connected thermostat, and a Samsung SmartThings hub.
Lennar announced the Echo integration last summer as part of the its “everything included” approach to selling houses.
Lennar is the largest home builder in the United States, and made almost 30,000 homes in 2017. It has long had fully staged model homes all around the country. Now it is letting Amazon transform some of them with even more of its products, from Fire TVs and security cameras, to Dash Buttons and Prime Music services.
Read the full article: Amazon shows off Alexa-filled homes of the future via CNN
Amazon recently announced the opening of interactive Amazon Experience Centers within select Lennar model homes across the country. Customers can visit Alexa-enabled smart homes and see the technology in a real home environment. Read more about the new Amazon Experiences Centers in this Bloomberg article by Prashant Gopal.
Looking to sell its customers on the latest and greatest smart-home technology, builder Lennar Corp. flirted with Siri. Now it’s decided to go steady with Alexa.
Lennar’s model homes — equipped with video doorbells, Sonos speakers and Amazon.com Inc.’s voice-activated Echo (known by its wake-word, “Alexa”) — will double as Amazon Experience Centers, the tech giant said Wednesday.
The builder, which announced a partnership with Apple Inc. in 2016, has switched to Amazon because of its white-glove installation services, which customers would normally have to pay for, said David Kaiserman, president of Lennar Ventures. For its buyers, Lennar now includes a visit from Amazon technicians to set up devices and customize how they interact with the two Echo speakers included with the house, he said.
Apple lovers shouldn’t feel jilted. While the homes are configured to work with Amazon’s Echo, customers can control them with any technology they choose — or none at all, Kaiserman said.
Full article: Amazon Sells Alexa’s Smart-Home Technology in Lennar Model Homes via Bloomberg
Lennar and Amazon have teamed up and recently announced the opening of interactive Amazon Experience Centers within select Lennar model homes across the United States, including Storey Park in Orlando, Florida. Now customers in the area can experience first-hand the convenience of Alexa smart home experience and more in a real home environment. Bill Zimmerman reports on the Amazon Experience Center in this new article from Orlando Sentinel.
Orlando is one of a handful of cities with Alexa-based smart home models that showcase Amazon‘s new partnership with a national home builder.
All new Lennar homes will carry the online retail giant’s trademark technology. The company’s model home is in the Storey Park subdivision east of State Road 417 and south of Dowden Road.
The setup allows people to speak to Alexa for controlling lights, thermostats, TVs, window shades and more, Lennar said in a statement — or see visitors at the front door on a TV in the home.
Integrated during construction, help setting up the technology for buyers is provided during a visit from an Amazon expert.
Other cities with the smart models include Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, with more planned. For details, visit amazon.com/experience.
Amazon Sells Alexa’s Smart-Home Technology in Lennar Model Homes via Orlando Sentinel
Lennar and Amazon have teamed up and recently announced the opening of interactive Amazon Experience Centers within select Lennar model homes across the United States, including University Place in Dallas, Texas. Now customers in the area can experience first-hand the convenience of Alexa smart home experience and more in a real home environment. Maria Halkias reports on the Amazon Experience Center in this new article from The Dallas Morning News.
Amazon has partnered with Lennar, the largest U.S. homebuilders, to open “Amazon Experience Centers” that showcase Alexa-enabled smart home capabilities in model homes nationwide. And Dallas was the pilot for the partnership that started last summer but was announced on Wednesday.
“We’ve tried to do this twice before and even once had William Shatner in commercials, but the technology wasn’t there like it needed to be and the customer wasn’t either,” said David Grove, Dallas division president for Lennar Homes.
Amazon Smart Home Services started installing its electronics in Lennar homes here in November.
“So far, we’ve activated about 180 homes and there are many others in the finishing stages,” said Jacquese Smith, Dallas manager for Amazon Smart Home Services.
The Amazon Experience Lennar home is located at 7946 Sunflower Lane. It’s in a new subdivision called University Place on Coit Road in Far North Dallas where several developers will end up building 700 homes. Lennar’s homes here are priced in the $450,000 to $550,000 range and come with commercial grade Wi-Fi ready to handle all the Amazon and other branded devices that a homeowner wants to install.
The Lennar model home is coincidentally within walking distance of the University of Texas at Dallas. It’s also in the neighborhood of a local site pitched to Amazon. The experience centers are also in Lennar homes in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington to start with and Amazon said it will be adding more.
Read the full article: Amazon skips the store and creates Alexa ‘experience center’ in model home near UT Dallas
