At Amazon, we think there’s always more we can do to delight our customers, even if it doesn’t happen overnight. Ten years ago, we announced Frustration-Free Packaging, a multi-year effort to end “wrap rage” – that feeling many of us experience when trying to open a hermetically sealed plastic clamshell case. We have years to go before every package is frustration free, but the team is making great progress. Since introducing Frustration-Free Packaging, we’ve eliminated more than 500 million boxes and more than 244,000 tons of packing materials.
Now, we’re eager to solve a similarly challenging problem: smart home setup.
Frustration Free Setup is an initiative that aims to make setting up all types of devices as easy as plugging them in. We believe that smart home should make your life more convenient, setting up devices shouldn’t make your life harder. It will take us years to make setting up your smart home absolutely simple, but we’re excited for the challenge.
We started on this journey last year with Echo Plus and Zigbee simple setup, giving customers the ability to setup Zigbee devices like connected light bulbs with a simple request, “Alexa, discover my devices.” Since then customers have done this millions of times.
Now, we’re taking two new steps in our mission to simplify setup: Amazon Wi-Fi Locker and Wi-Fi simple setup.
Wi-Fi Locker lets you choose to securely save your Wi-Fi passwords to the Amazon cloud so you can set up new devices without fumbling to remember and type in your password. We first launched this feature exclusively for Amazon devices, and customers have already chosen to securely store tens of millions of credentials in the locker. Now we’re expanding this service to non-Amazon smart home devices.
For many customers, Wi-Fi simple setup makes smart home device setup as easy as opening the box and powering on the device. Behind the scenes, we’ve done the hard work to make the customer’s experience delightfully fast and straightforward.
Available for customers starting today, the new Amazon Smart Plug is the first device to ship with Wi-Fi simple setup, with other devices like the AmazonBasics Microwave to follow. But, as with all big challenges, we know we can’t solve this alone. So, we’re making Amazon Wi-Fi Locker and Wi-Fi simple setup available to developers. Companies like Belkin WeMo, TP-Link, and Linksys have already committed to supporting Wi-Fi simple setup to help simplify connecting devices for customers. And, as more developers adopt Wi-Fi simple setup, the customer experience will get better and better.
We look forward to hearing your feedback on these features as we continue working to make setting up smart home devices as convenient and delightful as using them.
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