Company / division: Amazon
Amazon Reported to be Working on Next-Generation Echo for Fall Release (Jul 13, 2017)
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Siri Usage Reported to Fall as Alexa and Cortana Grow (Jul 12, 2017)
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Amazon Talks to Developers About Providing Transcripts of App Interactions (Jul 12, 2017)
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★ Amazon’s Third Prime Day Grows 60% Again, Echo Devices the Big Sellers (Jul 12, 2017)
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Amazon is Offering Installation and Consultation Services for Smart Home (Jul 10, 2017)
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Amazon Said to Have 85 Million Prime Subs in the US (But Probably Has Fewer) (Jul 7, 2017)
New research Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) suggests that Amazon has 85 million Prime subscribers in the US, based on a recent survey. That number feels quite a bit too high to me – my analysis of Amazon’s year-end 2016 financials suggested a number closer to 70 million globally, which of course includes at least a few million subscribers in other countries. A survey I did a year ago suggested that a majority (over 60%) of households in the US didn’t have Prime, so it would be a massive turnaround in just a year for a similar percentage to have a Prime subscription. So I take the overall number with a pinch of salt while acknowledging that the directional stuff is correct. One interesting secondary data point is that 28% of Prime households are using the newer monthly subscription option rather than the annual option – that also feels a little high, but it’s indicative that people are drawn to the benefits of that option, including the smaller one-time outlay, the flexibility of a month-to-month subscription, and the familiarity of that model.
via GeekWire
Amazon and DISH Reportedly Discussing IoT or Other Wireless Partnership (Jul 6, 2017)
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Amazon’s Alexa Now Has 15,000 “Skills” (Apps) (Jul 5, 2017)
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Amazon’s Twitch Adding New Features on Mobile App (Jun 29, 2017)
Amazon’s Twitch streaming service is adding a bunch of new features to its streaming app in July, something I missed yesterday. The big addition is streaming live video (though not the usual gameplay video) from the mobile app itself, something which will be useful for direct-to-camera or other vlogging-type content which Twitch is trying to push as it expands beyond its core historical gaming video roots. Twitch also touted 83m downloads of its app, though with just under 10m daily active users, that number feels a bit irrelevant, and merely highlights the fairly small percentage of people who’ve tried the app who use it daily. The 9.7m daily active user number is also a great illustration of how niche a video platform Twitch remains, though it’s clearly very important to the users it does have: they spend an average of 106 minutes per day on the site, which is huge. But given YouTube’s recent 1.5 billion monthly user announcement, it’s clear that Twitch is still a marginal player in the overall video space, even if it’s a much more significant one in the gaming segment specifically. Something else I’d never really looked at before but is stark once you do look is the fact that there’s basically no sign anywhere on Twitch that it has anything to do with Amazon, even on the About page. So it’s clear that, though Amazon likely has some integration plans in mind longer term, for now it’s very much running as a separate independent entity, much as Zappos always has in the e-commerce space.
via TechCrunch
★ Amazon Echo Show Reviews Suggest Solid Performance, Limitations, Creepy Factor (Jun 26, 2017)
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Amazon Launches Prime Wardrobe, a Mix of Home Try-On and Clothing Box Service (Jun 20, 2017)
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★ Amazon Announces Intention to Buy Whole Foods for $13.7 billion (Jun 16, 2017)
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Amazon Considered a Bid for Slack (Jun 15, 2017)
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Amazon Provides Partial Fix for Alexa Voice Calling Privacy Issue (Jun 13, 2017)
One of Amazon’s big missteps with its launch of calling and messaging features through its Alexa assistant was the assumption that its users would be happy to receive calls and messages from anyone who had their number, without the ability to block or screen those contacts first. It’s now issued a partial fix, which allows users to block others from calling or messaging them, but still doesn’t appear to have moved to a double-opt-in model under which a user would have to accept someone’s request to connect first before communication can occur. That means it still opens users up to calls and messages from exes and others in way many won’t be comfortable with. That’s how this should have worked from the beginning and the model Amazon should be adopting now.
via GeekWire
Major Tech Companies to Send Leaders to Trump Administration Tech Summit (Jun 9, 2017)
The Trump administration is holding the first meetings of its American Technology Council, led by Trump son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner, later this month. Despite the recent contretemps between the tech industry and the administration, it appears most of the largest companies will still send senior leaders to the meetings, including CEOs or chairmen in many cases. Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Intel, Cisco, and others will all send at least one senior representative to the meetings. That’s a sign of the realism that still prevails at these companies despite broad opposition within their ranks to any kind of collaboration with the government. These companies still have policy objectives the government can and likely will help with, and disengaging entirely over those issues where there’s disagreement isn’t likely either to drive meaningfully different policies in those areas or achieve their broader goals. But that will make for some uncomfortable times for these leaders, most of whom looked pretty awkward at the first pre-inauguration meetings with Trump and his team. And these companies will face continued criticism from within Silicon Valley and elsewhere for their perceived compliance with the administration regardless.
via Bloomberg
Amazon Wisely Nixes its Unlimited Cloud Storage Service for Consumers (Jun 8, 2017)
I occasionally see Apple criticized for not simply giving away iCloud storage, and some of those critics will occasionally point to Amazon’s generous offering of unlimited storage for $60 per year as evidence that Apple could do more in this direction. However, Amazon has now announced that it’s discontinuing the offer and moving entirely to tiered pricing along the lines of what others offer. I can’t say I’m surprised – unlimited anything is always a dangerous business model, because it will always attract the heaviest users, who will massively skew the overall economics. That’s true for all-you-can-eat buffets, unlimited wireless data plans and unlimited cloud storage. That’s not to say neither Amazon nor Apple shouldn’t be generous in the amount of storage they provide at various priced tiers, but it is to say that giving away either large amounts of storage for free or unlimited amounts for a fixed price are both bad ideas. Charging at least a nominal amount for storage teaches consumers that it has a cost (which across hundreds of millions of users can be substantial), while capping usage at various price tiers avoids abuses of the system. Unlimited as a pricing strategy is always much more about peace of mind that actual usage anyway – literally no-one needs unlimited anything – everyone’s usage tops out somewhere, and providing the right pricing and flexibility between offerings should meet all use cases across the spectrum. Despite this change, both Amazon and Apple are now offering pretty generous allowances of storage at various reasonable prices, which is the way it should be, and the prices per GB will continue to come down over time, as they also should.
via USA Today
Amazon Channels Accounts for Big Chunk of HBO, Starz, Showtime Subscribers (Jun 7, 2017)
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Amazon, Kickstarter, Reddit and Mozilla Will Protest Net Neutrality Changes July 12 (Jun 6, 2017)
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Amazon Offers Discounted Monthly Prime Subscription for Low Income Households (Jun 6, 2017)
Amazon has begun offering a discounted monthly Prime subscription for low income households. Specifically, it will offer those who receive food stamps a $5.99 per month option, compared to the standard $10.99 per month or $99 per year options. In a survey I did just over a year ago, it was very clear that lower income households were far less able to benefit from the subscription explosion and services like Prime than their wealthier counterparts – the chart linked here gives the summary of penetration of Prime by income, and the article here explains the rest of the detail, though it’s behind the Techpinions paywall. The reality is that it’s tough for households with low or unpredictable incomes to commit to annual subscriptions and even monthly subscriptions, so lowering the cost of the monthly option will make it more palatable while giving customers the flexibility to start and stop their subscriptions on a monthly basis. The WSJ article here focuses on Walmart as the target here, and that’s obviously a reasonable angle given Walmart’s success with lower-income shoppers, but this is really about expanding the addressable market for Prime, regardless of who’s currently capturing those customers. The Prime “flywheel” continues to be Amazon’s strongest competitive weapon, and bringing more households and the people who live in them into the base of Prime subscribers will continue to benefit Amazon enormously.
via WSJ
Amazon Reportedly Working on Cheap Smartphones for India (Jun 5, 2017)
I haven’t really seen this picked up anywhere yet, as it’s coming from a lower-profile news site, but it’s a fascinating bit of reporting. It suggests that Amazon is working on low-cost smartphones for India and potentially other markets, which would run the standard version of Android rather than Fire OS. That’s a huge shift from the Fire Phone strategy, but a sensible one given how poorly that phone performed and how hard breaking into the smartphone market is for brand new operating systems. But the target would also be very different, with a focus on low-end phones in emerging markets. Given how hard Amazon is pushing to take a major share of the Indian e-commerce market right now, building its ecosystem in other ways makes a ton of sense. The one part of this that seems a little odd is that Alexa allegedly isn’t on these phones. That’s likely partly because it’s not available in India at all at the moment, but this whole strategy only really makes sense if these phones put Amazon services front and center. Otherwise, Amazon is entering a crowded and fiercely competitive market increasingly dominated by Chinese companies, so it’s not worth it unless it’s going to meaningfully benefit the Amazon ecosystem and help grow its base of loyal customers in India and elsewhere.
via Gadgets360.com