Amazon hasn’t really changed the hardware of its original Echo speaker which it launched back in 2015. It has launched new Echo products but the original smart speaker has remained the same more or less. Perhaps it’s about time that the company launched an updated version of this product. That seems likely now that the original Echo is out of stock online.
You can’t just head over to Amazon right now and pick up one of the original Echo speakers. The Echo is a big part of Amazon’s hardware business so it’s rare for this product to go out of stock.
The company has been constantly offering the original Echo at a discount over the past few months. This can be taken as an indication of an impending update.
Launching a new Echo device would make sense for the company right now. It’s going to have a new smart speaker on the market just in time for the holiday season. It’s also going to have a new competitor to Apple’s HomePod which is also going to be released around the holiday season this year.
Amazon has said nothing about its plans for new Echo hardware at this point in time so nothing is set in stone just yet. It may just be that the company has ended up selling more Echo units than it expected to.