Hi this is Rob one of the founders of hiku. A buddy of mine pointed me to the discussion going on here, great dialogue.
Like many have mentioned, we find the appeal of a dedicated device tends to be embraced more by non-techies. We like to say hiku is more Kathie Lee (http://tinyurl.com/mxjxml8) than Engadget (http://tinyurl.com/nbpyg97).
The part of hiku that 'remembers for you' is in market now (scan/voice, list on your iPhone), shops for you is coming (integrated commerce).
If any of you are interested in playing around with hiku, we would welcome your feedback. We are backordered but will begin shipping again end of this month. Use hackhiku at checkout and we'll knock off $20 (limited to the first 10 people).
We use our API externally for retailer integration, and are considering making that public or at least opening up more private access. So if you are interested in someday creating something with hiku, we would welcome your input there as well.
And the hiku does what, exactly? One of the most useless websites I've ever seen. It barely has any details on what the hiku is or what it does; and if I wanted more info, I'd have to go to their support section on another domain to peruse their "FAQ".
I wonder if this will be the death of Hiku? Amazon's product is definitely going to be cheaper than $79 price for Hiku with (obvious) heavy ties into the Amazon ecosystem.
I suppose they could try to pivot and cater to a different ecosystem (Google shopping express, or the like), but seems like an uphill battle.
Maybe Hiku could offer their services to the rest of the world? From its homepage, I don't get it whether its business model requires tie-in with a retailer.
http://hiku.us/what-is-hiku/