Amazon announces a record-breaking holiday, “tens of millions” of new Prime subscribers

Amazon had another record-breaking holiday season, the retailer announced this morning. The company says it added “tens of millions” of people who signed up for Prime memberships, both paid and on a trial basis in the U.S. Its worldwide customers also shopped and ordered more items than ever before, including “millions more Amazon devices” compared with this time last year. The device best-sellers, as on Black Friday, again included Amazon Echo speakers and Fire TV.

Specifically, Amazon said its top devices sold over the holidays were the Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick 4K, and the Echo.

Millions of Fire TV devices, Fire tablets and Kindle devices were also sold. Smart home devices sold in record numbers as well, with best sellers including Amazon Smart Plug, Ring Video Doorbell 2, TP-Link Kasa Smart Plug Mini Outlet, and the iRobot Roomba 690.

The lower-cost Echo Dot has consistently been an Amazon top seller thanks to its lower price point, and Amazon’s hefty discounts that help push undecided shoppers into impulse buys.

Over Black Friday weekend this year, for example, Amazon’s Echo Dot became the No. 1 selling product across Amazon from any manufacturer, not just Amazon’s own best-selling device. That speaks to Amazon’s ability to leverage its retail site to push its own hardware – a potential competitive advantage as the smart speaker markets heats up between companies like Google, Apple, and Chinese manufacturers like Alibaba and Xiaomi.

In the U.S., Amazon currently leads the smart speaker install base, but internationally it’s losing ground to Google and others.

In addition to smart speakers and other Amazon devices, consumers this year also bought top sellers like L.O.L Surprise! Glam Glitter Series Dolls, fashion items from Carhartt, Bose QuietComfort Wireless headphones, and more.

The retailer doesn’t share its sales numbers, but often announces new records have been set. To some extent, these continual “record-breaking” sales can be attributed to Amazon’s expansion of Prime, which most recently became available in Australia, Singapore, Netherlands and Luxembourg, in addition to the U.S., U.K., Spain, Mexico, Japan, India, Italy, Germany, France, China, Canada, Belgium and Austria. More Prime memberships, simply put, will translate into more Amazon sales.

That’s why Amazon’s larger goal is not just serving online shoppers as any other e-commerce site does, but wooing these shoppers with other services – like Prime Video, Prime Music, free e-books and more – to become Prime subscribers. This holiday season, the retailer said that tens of millions of customers signed up for trial and paid Prime memberships.

Though Amazon had traditionally kept the number of Prime members under wraps, this April it finally announced having hit the milestone of over 100 million paid Prime members. Some analysts now expecting that number will continue to grow at a rapid pace – as much as 35 to 40 percent per year. Over the next decade, Citigroup predicts Prime subscribers will reach 275 million.

A large part of Amazon’s Prime strategy today is its ability to reliably ship products on ever-tighter timeframes. Over the holidays, for example, Amazon was offering up to Christmas Eve delivery in select markets where its same-day delivery service Prime Now is available.

Amazon shares were up this morning as a result of its holiday sales announcement.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/26/amazon-announces-a-record-breaking-holiday-tens-of-millions-of-new-prime-subscribers/

If you don’t have time to clean up, you don’t have time to cook

Professionals understand that the project is the whole project, not simply the fun or urgent or interesting part of the work.

There are countless productive shortcuts along the way. But not finishing the project isn’t one of them.

       

from Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/589252968/0/sethsblog~If-you-dont-have-time-to-clean-up-you-dont-have-time-to-cook/

We are all poets now

Poets use words (and silence) to change things. They care about form and function and most of all, about making an impact on those that they connect with.

Every word counts. Every breath as well.

In a world filled with empty noise, the most important slots are reserved for the poets we seek to listen to, and the poet we seek to become.

       

from Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/589163252/0/sethsblog~We-are-all-poets-now/

Alphabet spins off moonshot project Malta with backing from Gates’s BEV fund

Malta, the renewable energy storage project born in Alphabet’s moonshot factory X, is now on its own and flush with $26 million from a Series A funding round led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures.

Concord New Energy Group and Alfa Laval also invested in the round.

Project Malta launched last year in Alphabet’s X (formerly Google X) with an aim to build energy storage facilities that can support full-scale power grids. The independent company spun out of Alphabet is now called Malta Inc.

Malta Inc has developed a system designed to keep power generated from renewable energy or fossil fuels in reserve for longer than lithium-ion batteries. The electro-thermal storage system first captures energy generated from wind, solar, or fossil generators on the grid. The collected electricity drives a heat pump, which converts the electrical energy into thermal energy. The heat is stored in molten salt, while the cold is stored in a chilled antifreeze liquid. A heat engine is used to convert the energy back to electricity for the grid when it’s needed.

The system can store electricity for days or even weeks, Malta says.

Malta is going to use the funds to work with industry partners to turn the detailed designs developed and refined at X into industrial-grade machinery for its first pilot system.

BEV, the lead investor in Malta’s Series A round, was created in 2016 by the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, an investor group that includes Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, John Doerr, chairman of venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Alibaba founder Jack Ma, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, and SAP co-founder Hasso Plattner.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/24/alphabet-spins-off-moonshot-project-malta-with-backing-from-gatess-bev-fund/

Alphabet spins off moonshot project Malta with backing from Gates’s BEV fund

Malta, the renewable energy storage project born in Alphabet’s moonshot factory X, is now on its own and flush with $26 million from a Series A funding round led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures.

Concord New Energy Group and Alfa Laval also invested in the round.

Project Malta launched last year in Alphabet’s X (formerly Google X) with an aim to build energy storage facilities that can support full-scale power grids. The independent company spun out of Alphabet is now called Malta Inc.

Malta Inc has developed a system designed to keep power generated from renewable energy or fossil fuels in reserve for longer than lithium-ion batteries. The electro-thermal storage system first captures energy generated from wind, solar, or fossil generators on the grid. The collected electricity drives a heat pump, which converts the electrical energy into thermal energy. The heat is stored in molten salt, while the cold is stored in a chilled antifreeze liquid. A heat engine is used to convert the energy back to electricity for the grid when it’s needed.

The system can store electricity for days or even weeks, Malta says.

Malta is going to use the funds to work with industry partners to turn the detailed designs developed and refined at X into industrial-grade machinery for its first pilot system.

BEV, the lead investor in Malta’s Series A round, was created in 2016 by the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, an investor group that includes Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, John Doerr, chairman of venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Alibaba founder Jack Ma, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, and SAP co-founder Hasso Plattner.

from Microsoft – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/24/alphabet-spins-off-moonshot-project-malta-with-backing-from-gatess-bev-fund/

LetsTransport raises $13.5M to digitize and improve last mile logistics in India

India’s B2B supply chain is slowly shifting into the digital era. Following a $23 million investment for Moglix, which helps bring business and manufacturing procurement online, LetsTransport, a startup that brings increased efficiency to logistics and business transportation, has raised $13.5 million for growth.

Founded in 2015 by IIT Kharagpur graduates Pushkar Singh, Sudarshan Ravi and Ankit Parasher, Bangalore-based LetsTransport has surface level comparisons with Uber and other on-demand services since it pairs companies with trucks to carry out their last mile distribution.

But that is really a cosmetic comparison. LetsTransport offers a range of product modules to manage fleets, including intelligent routing. Then, on the business side, its unit economic are far superior to Uber and co since the business customers it caters are not cost-motivated and will happily pay for a consistent service with guarantees.

For the truck operations, the service is designed to increase their average utility and get more jobs completed in quicker times. Singh, the company’s CEO, told TechCrunch in an interview that operating partners are typically seeing 40 percent efficiency improvements with a 30 percent reduction in distribution cost for the brands and retailers on the other side. Routing, he explained, is currently “done primitively by the driver” which is where LetsTransport tries to add value.

The service currently operates in seven cities in India and it has been used by big name customers like Coca-Cola, Amazon, Metro Cash & Carry and Big Bazaar, while some 20,000 truckers have carried out jobs on its platform to date. To help sweeten its appeal, the company goes beyond providing work to help trucking operating with insurance, after sale care and other maintenance services.

This Series B funding round was led by Bertelsmann India Investments with participation from China’s Fosun International and others. The company’s other investors including Japan duo GMO Venture Partners and Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Venture Capital, as well as Rebright Partners and NB Ventures.

Singh told TechCrunch that the capital will go towards expanding to twenty new cities in tier-two India as well as looking into global opportunities.

“We’re trying to consolidate our position in India and [are] looking at products that can be offered internationally,” he said, explaining that markets in Southeast Asia and Africa could be in the pipeline. “The needs of an emerging market are quite similar… it needs a little localization but we have a great product.”

In particular, he added, LetsTransport has received expansion requests from its existing client base which would help when it comes to new launches. For now, though, the plan is to test specific modules in new markets before bringing other, more significant operational aspects of the business overseas.

Those modules could include the company’s smart routing system, which companies can deploy for their own transportation solutions. That’s a good way to reach new customers and develop a moat around those who use its marketplace business, too.

Pointing out that 14 percent of India’s GDP is spent on logistics — versus 7.5 percent in the U.S. — Singh is bullish that there is plenty of scope to digitize the system and make significant improvements to efficiencies.

“It’s a very large industry that’s ripe for disruption,” he said. “There are inefficiencies that should dead by now.”

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/24/letstransport-raises-13-5m/

A commitment to possibility

Pessimists are right.

Optimists are right.

Expectations have magical powers.

So many people to connect with, so many things to learn. Doors to open, helping hands to be offered.

The magic of our time is that forward motion multiplies and ideas can be shared like never before.

Of course it could all go sideways. The person who invented the ship also invented the shipwreck.

But today’s as good a day as any to commit to possibility.

       

from Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/589035530/0/sethsblog~A-commitment-to-possibility/