Everyone loved those Tom Tom or Garmin GPS units because they bought novel new features that were instantly useful. Most cars didn’t have them built-in back in 2003 and no one had smartphones so they were the hot new gadget. But they were in the car, not of the car. They didn’t integrate with anything else.
The automakers weren’t about to ignore the fact that people appreciated this new GPS utility. So they built-it right into the automotive environment so that they could make money off of it as opposed to Tom Tom. And Google and Apple didn’t hesitate with including it in their OS right from the start.
The Echo doesn’t really bring much to the table outside of a really good antenna array. Outside of that, it’s like a waiter bringing everyone what they really want. It seems like it shouldn’t be long before Apple and Google will simply incorporate all of it’s features.
Portable GPS died because people didn’t really want to worry about a third device that had a narrow skill set. So once they could get the same thing from their car or phone those GPS units were forgotten.
The same argument applies to the Echo. Not only is it imminent that Apple and Google catchup to it’s abilities, they should be able to far surpass it. The amount of data that our smartphones have on us is deeper and more useful.