My immediate thought here is that Amazon still does not have a phone. They will never be a first class citizen on iPhone.

Sure, if you have an Alexa device in your kitchen, AmazonPods can rival AirPods in every way possible. But when you leave the house, that picture changes.

AmazonPods won’t have the pairing snappiness of AirPods when Amazon does not own both sides of the connection. Imagine you want to go for a run. Will AmazonPods pair with Apple Watch? Certainly, the connection with iPhone, Apple Watch, etc., will never be as easy as with AirPods.

I suspect AmazonPods will be cheaper than AirPods and will offer advantages when Alexa hardware is on the other end. Will those advantages be enough to pull Apple users from the comfort/snappiness of the ecosystem? We’ll see how this plays out.