Amazon Prime Day Continues Alexa’s Spread
Amazon’s fifth Prime Day was a big success once again for Alexa-enabled devices, becoming the biggest event ever for the e-commerce giant’s voice assistant. Prime Day, which actually ran for two days this year, served as a helpful boost for Amazon’s long-term goal of extending Alexa’s reach as far as possible.
Alexa Prime
Amazon sold more than 175 million items during Prime Day. While the company didn’t reveal the exact number of Alexa-enabled devices in that total, it was at least in the millions. Amazon did say it was the best sales period yet for its smart screen devices like the Echo Show. Voicebot’s analysis before Prime Day concluded yesterday showed that these smart displays were on backorder in some markets. In addition, hundreds of thousands of Amazon devices for children such as the Echo Dot Kids Edition were purchased according to the company. Amazon said Prime Day was the most successful 48-hour period for its products overall.
As expected, the deals for Amazon products were particularly tempting in terms of savings. That may not be the central reason people bought Echo smart speakers and similar products this week, but it all fits into Amazon’s larger strategy.
“There are many factors beyond utility that go into selling Echo products,” Voicebot’s Bret Kinsella explained. “Price-point, promotion, and consistency of availability across Amazon e-commerce markets are factors that offer Echo an advantage over other products in terms of sales volume on Prime Day. However, the outcome is the same regardless. Amazon just sold a lot more Alexa-enabled devices. That means a larger user base, more users with multiple devices, and in the end, more consumers with ready-access to Alexa.”
Mr. Alexa
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has never made a secret of his interest in pushing Alexa into more people’s homes. The voice assistant often plays a starring role in his speeches, and his quote from the earnings report early this year focused solely on Alexa and its potential. While his quote about Prime Day this year covered a few more topics, he did still start with the sales of Alexa-enabled devices after thanking the customers.
“We want to thank Prime members all around the world,” Bezos said in the statement. “Members purchased millions of Alexa-enabled devices, received tens of millions of dollars in savings by shopping from Whole Foods Market and bought more than $2 billion of products from independent small and medium-sized businesses. Huge thank you to Amazonians everywhere who made this day possible for customers.”
As has been noted in Voicebot’s previous reporting, Amazon’s many existing businesses operate separately, whether it’s Whole Foods, AWS, television production, or selling smart speakers. The one exception is Alexa, which is integrated into everything else Amazon develops and creates increasingly seamless links between them all while acting as a kind of central spoke for the company as a whole. That transformative power is increasingly obvious, and likely why Bezos always gives the first shout-out to Alexa when he talks about the overall company.
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