Amazon.com Inc. is continuing its quest to make its Alexa voice assistant available in every device form factor and price point. 

The next addition to the company’s product line, Bloomberg reported today, could be a premium Echo smart speaker that will compete with Apple Inc.’s HomePod and Google Home Max. The latter two devices’ main edge is their high-fidelity audio. Amazon is apparently going down the same path with the premium Echo device.

Bloomberg’s sources describe seeing prototypes that are noticeably wider than existing models. The large body is said to pack at least four tweeters, specialized speakers that can reproduce high-frequency sounds in music with robust clarity. Tweeters are always accompanied by other speakers, such as a subwoofer for playing deeper notes.

Apple’s HomePod features seven tweeters spread out evenly around the base of the unit and subwoofer near the top. The Google Home Max has two of each. The details in today’s report suggest that Amazon’s premium Echo will be somewhere in between, except perhaps with more modern hardware since both its competitors’ devices launched over a year ago.

Amazon has spent the past few years expanding the Echo brand into a sprawling line of gadgets of different sizes and prices. Yet the family still only represents only a small cross section of the Alexa device ecosystem, which spans numerous different product categories. And it’s continuously growing. 

Word emerged last year that Amazon was working on an Alexa-powered domestic robot aimed at the consumer market. Bloomberg’s sources provided an update on that project as well, saying the company had planned to launch the assistant this year but fell behind schedule. Amazon has reportedly pulled engineers from other hardware programs to speed things up.

Development is apparently far enough along that several prototypes have already been produced. According to the tipsters, they’re about waist-height and use artificial intelligence-powered cameras to find their way around a room. The robot also has Alexa-powered voice features that allow it to be summoned with spoken commands, though it’s still unclear what function the system would serve in homes. 

Photo: Amazon