• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, June 23, 2017

At an Amazon brick and mortar store over the weekend, I watched shoppers check out Amazon’s line of Echo products.

At the moment, that’s just the taller Echo and the small Echo Dot, the lower end version of the devices that provide access to Amazon’s Alexa.

Coming are the Echo Look, available exclusively by invitation, and the Echo Show, the new $229 device with screen, which starts shipping next week.

One couple attempting to interact with Alexa was having a bit of a rough time, not having any idea of what to ask Alexa or how to ask.

The reality is that voice assistants are still relatively new to the market and there’s a learning curve.

However, the learning curve follows product awareness, and that area still has a way to go.

For example, just over half of consumers have even heard of Amazon’s Echo Show, despite the major announcement a while back. Even fewer have heard of the Amazon Echo Look, which has a camera for consumers to get a quick look at their wardrobe before heading out. According to a new global survey by Bi Intelligence, here’s the status of product awareness:

• 76% -- Apple HomePod
• 52% -- Amazon Echo Show
• 44% -- Amazon Echo Look

While this looks like great news for Apple, only 5% of likely buyers of its smart home devices said they would buy it as soon as they can, according to the survey of 1,100 consumers.

The Amazon Echo Look doesn’t fare any better, with only 3% of consumers saying they would buy it as soon as they could. Even worse, most (82%) said they would either probably or definitely ever buy it.

Interestingly, while the Amazon Show has relatively low awareness, 7% of consumers will buy it as soon as they can, with some of those already having preordered the device.

Plenty of all three of these devices will be flooding the market, at least to the retail level.

Now it will be up to IoT marketing dollars to get the word out.