At the time of writing, the total count of Alexa Skills available in the US, which is also the biggest market for Amazon Alexa, has surpassed 30,000, with an average of 50 new skills getting published each day. Each of these skills is available under a specific category, and the Alexa Skills Store is currently letting the developers and users choose from 23 different major categories, as shown in the following screenshot:

At the time of writing (mid-2018), the most popular categories (the ones that have the most skills) among developers are:

• Games and Trivia: Hosts over 6,000 skills
• News: Hosts over 3,000 skills
• Music and Audio: Hosts over 3,000 skills
• Education and Reference: Hosts over 3,000 skills
• Lifestyle: Hosts over 2,000 skills

Among the top five, the distribution is as follows:

This should not come as a surprise, since these categories are equally as popular for smartphone apps. However, the difference arises when we go over the list of all 23 available categories (see Figure 7.1) and find a few specific categories, such as:

• Connected Car: Hosts over 34 skills
• Smart Home: Hosts over 972 skills
• Home Services: Hosts over 36 skills

These categories are pretty niche and hence have a lot more accommodation room and fewer competing skills. The lowest five categories, which have a lot of room for growth, are depicted as follows:

Surprisingly, at the time of writing, the Kids category has the fewest skills, which makes it developers' least favorite category to develop for, but on the bright side, it has the lowest amount of competition and a lot of room for growth.

So far, we have seen the various categories on the Alexa Skills Store and also outlined the most and least popular categories of all the available categories. Now, delving deeper into the categories, let's identify the best of the best, that is, the skills that are most downloaded/used among the top major categories.