I hope they’re successful. We need more fun gadgets. Phones, tablets and computers are all so boring and functional now.
The real problem is that tech produced by corporations, whose explicit goal is to minimize input labor/time/salaries and maximize revenue, does tend to slowly degenerate into repetitions of itself.
When software is treated as a handmade thing, it transcends its inherent value as a tool, it becomes an ornament, a sentimental object, a type of self-expression.
When you design software as a product, intent on copying your competitors exactly to satisfy the investors, even if that market niche is taken, software becomes boring.
You can build a culture out of trash, but it will only be a trash culture.
(in all seriousness, voice devices are a crucial affordance or adaptation for some disabled users. i ordered one of these (somewhat impulsively i admit) to evaluate it for a family member with a neurodegenerative disease who uses alexa to a degree that seems almost insane to me but it allows him to navigate his daily activities.)