Amazon records another huge quarter thanks to Alexa and the cloud

Amazon's been under quite a bit of stress recently, as it deals with fallout from its facial recognition tech, ongoing privacy concerns with its Echo hardware and its Prime Day not going as well as intended. But with so many businesses under its umbrella, Amazon still raked in plenty of dough to keep the company going. According to its second quarterly report for 2018, Amazon's net sales increased by 39 percent to $52.9 billion compared to this time last year, which translates to an overall net income of $2.5 billion in just the past few months.

This includes sales from advertising, its own hardware products, the Prime Video service, plus sales from Whole Foods stores across the nation. Amazon doesn't typically break out sales by category, but it does seem like the company has been pushing hard on the Alexa side of things in the past few months. CEO Jeff Bezos' statement, reflects this:

"We want customers to be able to use Alexa wherever they are," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. "There are now tens of thousands of developers across more than 150 countries building new devices using the Alexa Voice Service, and the number of Alexa-enabled devices has more than tripled in the past year. Our partners are creating a wide variety of new Alexa-enabled devices and experiences, including soundbars from Polk and Sonos; headphones from Jabra; smart home devices from ecobee and First Alert; Windows 10 PCs from Acer, HP, and Lenovo; and cars from automakers including BMW, Ford, and Toyota."

The latter point is especially interesting, as it shows the company is not just relying on its own Echo hardware to spread the word of Alexa. By integrating Amazon's personal assistant into a wide range of products, the company is betting on the ubiquity of Alexa to sustain its already-strong ecosystem, which will hopefully stave off any competition from the likes of Google.

In the lengthy Highlights section in the latest earnings report, the company called out several announcements in the past few months, such as the Fire TV Cube streaming set top box and the next generation of Fire TV smart televisions that will be available on Best Buy as well as Amazon. Also notable is that despite the aforementioned Prime Day glitch, the company says it recorded the most single-day sign-ups for its Prime service than on any other day in Amazon history. This is even despite the higher $119 annual price for Prime. That said, the second quarterly earnings report does not include any Prime Day sales figures.

As always, Amazon's Web Services is a big contributor to the company's bottom line as well. This past quarter, the company added more enterprise AWS customers to its list. They include Ryanair, Epic Games, zulily, 21st Century Fox, and Major League Baseball.

We'll update this post further details if any from the earnings call later this evening.

Source: Amazon



via Engadget RSS Feed https://ift.tt/2NNWndQ
RSS Feed

If New feed item from http://www.engadget.com/rss-full.xml, then send me

IFTTT

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Evernote cuts staff as user growth stalls

Image
Note-taking app Evernote has fallen on hard times of late, culminating in its latest spate of job cuts impacting 15 percent of its workforce (54 employees). CEO Chris O' Neil -- an ex-Googler who took the reins in 2015 -- announced the firings at an all-hands meeting earlier today, reports TechCrunch . In a message on the Evernote blog , O' Neill admitted he'd set "incredibly aggressive goals" for the company in 2018. He continued: "Going forward, we are streamlining certain functions, like sales, so we can continue to speed up and scale others, like product development and engineering." The layoffs follow an exec exodus just weeks ago and the company's recent brand refresh (complete with a refined logo and wordmark). But critics are more concerned about its product, especially the free tier, which they claim lacks the perks to...
Read more

The best air conditioner

Image
By Liam McCabe This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter . When readers choose to buy Wirecutter's independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its work. Read the full article here . After six summers of researching, testing, and recommending window air conditioners, we've learned that quiet and affordable ACs make most people the happiest—and we think the LG LW8016ER will fit the bill in most rooms. This 8,000 Btu unit cools as efficiently and effectively as any model with an equal Btu rating, and runs at a lower volume and deeper pitch than others at this price. Little extra features like a fresh-air vent, two-axis fan blades, and a removable drain plug help set it apart, too. The LG LW8016ER is a top choice for an office or den, and some people will find it quiet enough for a bedroom, too. If our main pic...
Read more

We won't see a 'universal' vape oil cartridge anytime soon

Image
Pre-loaded cartridges of cannabis concentrate are currently among the most popular means of consumption, and for good reason. They're discreet to use and easy to handle, a far cry from the dark days of 2016 when we had to dribble hash oil or load wax into narrow-mouthed vape pens by hand. But, frustratingly, an ever increasing number of oil cartridge manufacturers employ one-off design standards so that their products won't work with those of their competitors, thereby locking customers into proprietary ecosystems. We've already seen this with nicotine vaporizers -- which has a seen a massive rise in "pod systems" in the last few years, each outfitted with a unique canister and battery built to be incompatible with those of their competition. Is it too late for the burgeoning cannabis industry to set a universal standard for their product designs? ...
Read more