7 Amazon Initiatives Driving Its $59.7 Billion Sales Figure in Q1 2019

Amazon initiatives continue to maintain strong financial growth in the competitive technology space. In its recently published financial report, Amazon confirmed that its sales grew by 17% to touch $59.7 billion in Q1 of 2019. The company is currently guided by its principle of customer obsession, vast scale of innovation and operational excellence across its operations.

In this article, we tell you about the seven exciting Amazon initiatives from the last few months that have directly driven sales, enabling the tech giant to sustain its leadership position in the industry.

The Drum Beat of Being the Fastest Provider of Machine Learning and AI Capabilities

In the past eighteen months, Amazon has launched more than 200 significant Machine Learning capabilities.

Machine Learning capabilities and AI-driven commerce are key to Amazon’s continued financial success in Q1 of 2019. Recently, Amazon announced 13 new Machine Learning Services and Capabilities, including a custom chip for Machine Learning inference, and a 1/18 scale autonomous race car for developers. This demonstrates the company’s commitment to diving deeper into the new realm of Cloud, Quantum Computing and Deep Science. These announcements continue the pace of Machine Learning innovation from AWS.

Customers using these new services and capabilities include Adobe, BMW, Cathay Pacific, Dow Jones, Expedia, Formula 1, GE Healthcare, HERE, Intuit, Johnson & Johnson, Kia Motors, Lionbridge, Major League Baseball, NASA JPL, Politico.eu, Ryanair, Shell, Tinder, United Nations, Vonage, the World Bank, and Zillow.

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The Success of Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K

In October 2018, Amazon announced the launch of Fire TV Stick 4K. Amazon Fire Stick 4K is branded as a powerful 4K media streaming device for TV and Alexa Voice. Today, Amazon Fire TV  has over 30 million active users already.  Currently, Fire TV Stick 4K plays thousands of HD channels, apps, and Alexa skills. In addition, users can watch more than 500,000 movies and TV episodes on Fire TV.

Alexa, Alexa, and more Alexa in Your Language!!!

Amazon managed to grow its sales further in Q1 by expanding Alexa features internationally. The company launched Echo Show in France, India, Italy, and Spain.

In addition, the launch of Echo Input in India and Australia further expanded the horizon for existing Alexa users. With Skype calling coming to Alexa, users in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Mexico took an instant liking to the product. By exploring voice search and AI in regional languages such as French in Canada, Amazon grew its base of French Canadian customers significantly.

In the coming weeks, Amazon also plans to release Alexa in Brazil later this year. Amazon Developers are already revving up their app development models to build skills using the Brazilian Portuguese voice model.

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Amazon and Google’s Partnership

Amazon initiative to partner with Google is focused on Primer Video customers. Together, the partners are launching the official YouTube app on Amazon Fire TV devices and Fire TV Edition smart TVs. The partnership will also provide the Prime Video app for streaming to Chromecast and Chromecast built-in devices. In addition, Prime Video will also be broadly available across Android TV device partners, and the YouTube TV and YouTube Kids apps are also slated to come to Fire TV later this year.

Popular broadcasting initiatives such as the launch of MLB.tv as a subscription on Prime Video Channels offered Prime customers seamless streaming access to regular season out-of-market baseball games, both live and on-demand.

The Prime Membership and Holiday Season Sales

Prime membership has changed the way people shop and buy online. Amazon and Whole Foods Market announced a series of price cuts, offering new lower prices on fresh produce for all customers and expanded Prime benefits with more exclusive weekly deals on popular products across departments. By offering an unmatched pace of delivery and services at low cost during regular and during sale season, Amazon managed to reach more than a million Prime members in the US alone.

A majority of Prime members in the U.S. have access to free one-day shipping or faster, and Amazon today announced that Prime FREE Same-Day Delivery and Prime FREE One-Day Shipping expanded this year to more than 10,000 cities and towns coast-to-coast. Plus, Prime members in more than 30 cities have access to free ultrafast delivery through Prime Now, where customers can shop many of the same products and deals that are available on Amazon.com and receive them in as little as an hour.

Amazon announced Shipment Zero, the company’s vision to make all customer shipments net zero carbon, with the goal of making 50% of all shipments net zero by 2030. To track this progress, Amazon will share its company-wide carbon footprint as well as related goals and programs later this year.

Serpentine Rise of Amazon Web Services as a Preferred Digital Transformation Partner

And, Blockchain is Included here!

Amazon Web Services (AWS) business has evolved its approach toward enabling partners and customers with better platforms. Today, AWS offers over 125 fully featured services for computing, storage, databases, networking, analytics, Machine Learning and AI. It also provides featured services for Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR and AR), media, and application development at relatively lower costs. Recently, National Australia Bank (NAB) selected AWS as a long-term strategic cloud provider, with a goal of migrating more than 300 applications, including some core banking systems, to AWS by the end of 2019.

AWS announced several new customer commitments and major migrations during the quarter. Their new customers include Gogo, Inc., Lyft, Second Spectrum, L.A. Clippers, Standard Bank Group and Vertafore, the Guinness Six Nations Championship, and Volkswagen.

In fact, Volkswagen is joining forces with AWS to transform automotive manufacturing, powering the Volkswagen Industrial Cloud, and integrating more than 30,000 facilities and 1,500 suppliers and partners in Volkswagen’s global supply chain over time; and Ford and Autonomic, creators of the Transportation Mobility Cloud (TMC), selected AWS to power TMC and become the standard connected car solution for Ford vehicles, giving automotive manufacturers and software developers the cloud infrastructure needed to build innovative connected vehicle services at scale.

New AWS innovations such as the Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive, Open Distro for Elasticsearch, Amazon WorkLink, Concurrency Scaling for Amazon Redshift and Amazon EFS Infrequent Access (IA) are slated to further boost Amazon’s sales for businesses of all sizes and scale.

The company also officially launched its blockchain roadmap by announcing the Amazon Quantum Ledger Database (QLDB) and Amazon Managed Blockchain.

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What is Amazon QLDB?

Amazon QLDB provides a high-performance, immutable, cryptographically verifiable ledger for applications where multiple parties work with a centralized, trusted authority to maintain a complete, verifiable record of transactions.

What is Amazon-Managed Blockchain?

Amazon-Managed Blockchain is a fully managed blockchain service that makes it easy and cost-effective to create, manage, and scale blockchain networks for multiple parties to transact in a decentralized manner without the need for a centralized, trusted authority.

Global Initiative to Reduce Carbon Footprint

Though not directly related to sales, Amazon’s environment-friendly initiatives can’t be missed today.

As part of its long-term goal to power all AWS global infrastructure with renewable energy, Amazon announced three new renewable energy projects. These projects — in Ireland, Sweden, and the U.S. — are expected to generate over 670,000-megawatt hours of renewable energy annually. The new projects are part of Amazon’s long-term commitment to achieve 100% renewable energy powering the AWS global infrastructure. From being the leading force driving AI innovation to enable the development of Smart Cities, Amazon’s current Sales growth is a positive sign for the Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service industries.