Jeff Bezos reveals that over 100 million people now subscribe to Prime

[midian182]

Amazon has never been open about the number of people who subscribe to its Prime service, but in Jeff Bezos’ latest annual shareholder letter, the CEO spelled out just how many members it now boasts: over 100 million globally.

Up until now, it’s been left to analysts and market research firms to estimate Prime subscriber figures, with companies putting the number somewhere between 60 million and 90 million last year. In 2013, Amazon did give a very vague Prime statistic, saying that it had “tens of millions” of members. Now, we know that 13 years after the service launched, a massive 100 million people feel the annual or monthly fee is worth it for the fast, free shipping, access to streaming videos and music, and more.

Bezos added that last year was a record for Amazon, as more people joined Prime than any previous year, including 4 million in a week in late 2017. Additionally, the company shipped more than five billion items with Prime worldwide. Launching Prime in new locations such as the Netherlands, Mexico, and Singapore will have contributed to those massively successful 12 months.

Amazon has in the past faced criticism for allegedly pushing some employees to breaking point and allowing a toxic working environment, but that might be the price for what Bezos calls high standards.

"How do you stay ahead of ever-rising customer expectations? There's no single way to do it – it's a combination of many things. But high standards (widely deployed and at all levels of detail) are certainly a big part of it," the CEO wrote in the letter.

"So, the four elements of high standards as we see it: they are teachable, they are domain specific, you must recognize them, and you must explicitly coach realistic scope. Building a culture of high standards is well worth the effort, and there are many benefits."

With Amazon's quarterly earnings report set to be announced on April 26, expect to learn more details about the state of the company next week.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/74230-jeff-bezos-reveals-over-100-million-people-subscribe.html

 

[Reachable]

Sorry, but cruelty as the price for high standards doesn't cut it.

 

[Burty117]

Can I just say, we really need to stop calling it "free" shipping. Prime costs to get access to unlimited next day delivery. Notice how Prime costs for this privilege. It's not free.

 

[senketsu]

Can I just say, we really need to stop calling it "free" shipping. Prime costs to get access to unlimited next day delivery. Notice how Prime costs for this privilege. It's not free.

exactly what I was going to say if it wasn't said already. I must have patience because I am not on Prime and always choose the truly free shipping. Sure if it is from an Amazon Marketplace some items can take awhile, but it doesn't bother me.
IMHO for all Bezo's talks about high standards, as a heavy Amazon user (blame selection in my city of 1.4 million) I find Amazon is going downhill. In Canada they have started using a shipper that is so low quality I don't know how they continue to exist. Add in the problem with Amazon selling forged products (like when Apple bought a bunch of Apple products on Amazon and found 90+% were not made by Apple), it is troubling. I've had excellent customer service though.

 

[Badvok]

Can I just say, we really need to stop calling it "free" shipping. Prime costs to get access to unlimited next day delivery. Notice how Prime costs for this privilege. It's not free.

Totally agree but it should be noted that "free" was the article writer's word, Amazon themselves don't call it free, they just say 'Unlimited One-Day Delivery'. The confusion probably comes from their checkout page which shows the delivery as a 'FREE' option for that order if you have already subscribed to Prime - which is IMO correct since that delivery is free of charge.
I also get annoyed with all the 'X% Extra FREE', or 'Buy One Get One FREE', or 'FREE xxx when you buy yyy' that the ASA has repeatedly refused to do anything about.

 

[p51d007]

I subscribe because I buy enough to offset the cost, plus I watch a TON of stuff on prime video.

 

[wiyosaya]

IMHO for all Bezo's talks about high standards

LOL! Saying Amazon and high standards in the same sentence by anyone is, IMHO, an oxymoron. Their product search has been total junk for years. The search is designed for people who just cannot help themselves pushing the "buy" button. The search sometimes returns what you want, but it also sometimes returns a lot of crap that is only somewhat related to what you are searching for. If you are not careful, you end up getting something that you thought was different.

Many places, like B&H, sell the same products cheaper and with excellent free shipping. I go there more, now, than I do to Amazon. In fact, I will even go to Barnes & Noble for books rather than Amazon even if it costs more. And the free shipping at Amazon is a total joke. Often, orders placed with the truly free shipping sit for days before they even ship.

I would not be surprised if most of the prime subscribers have subscribed for content rather than products. I am only using Amazon as a last resort for buying anything these days.

As I see it, it is buyer beware with Amazon.

 

[Kenrick]

Its not all about one-two day free shipping, it got prime video, prime music, twitch membership and loots, unlimited photo storage (very handy), subscribe and save, %discount baby essential items like diapers, exclusive discounts, etc., and this is all in one year. I see value in this membership.

With all these 100 million membership contributing to the his wealth, I hope he come back to the community especially for the warehouse workers.

 

[wiyosaya]

I can buy a 3TB hard drive for less than the yearly subscription price and not have to worry that someone is clandestinely mining my cloud data. For me, that is a better solution for storing things like pictures and other important items especially since once I have paid the price, I do not need to keep paying year after year.

 

[toooooot]

I can buy a 3TB hard drive for less than the yearly subscription price and not have to worry that someone is clandestinely mining my cloud data. For me, that is a better solution for storing things like pictures and other important items especially since once I have paid the price, I do not need to keep paying year after year.

I wanted to do that for a long time now, but after years of poor quality drives from both WD and S-gate, I feel it it is a bad idea storing my videos and pictures on the drives that could fail within 1 to 2 years. I figured I d need at the very least 2 drives for raid 1 plus a drive for quick replacement. Then with each failure, the price of storage would go up. So I have concluded that to store my media on a personal storage server would be too expensive if I invested in top quality drives and a device to put them in, or too risky and then again expensive if my drives were purchased from an unlucky model series and started to fail on me.
The speed of transfer would be awesomely fast though. But it is just Flickr for now.

 

[Burty117]

I wanted to do that for a long time now, but after years of poor quality drives from both WD and S-gate, I feel it it is a bad idea storing my videos and pictures on the drives that could fail within 1 to 2 years. I figured I d need at the very least 2 drives for raid 1 plus a drive for quick replacement. Then with each failure, the price of storage would go up. So I have concluded that to store my media on a personal storage server would be too expensive if I invested in top quality drives and a device to put them in, or too risky and then again expensive if my drives were purchased from an unlucky model series and started to fail on me.
The speed of transfer would be awesomely fast though. But it is just Flickr for now.

I've had a HP Microserver Gen8 since it's release with 4x 4TB WD Red's. Not a single failure or sign of failure.
It was quite a big investment though, I'll give you that. Haven't regretted it though, all my Blu-rays, DVD's, Photo's etc... All in Plex.

 

[IAMTHESTIG]

Make that 99.999 million. I cancelled my sub... I have lately found a good portion of the things I used to buy off Amazon cheaper at other places, both online and in-store. I didn't care much for Prime Video, I only had it to watch The Grand Tour, but one thing that really pissed me off with Prime Video is it isn't Prime at all, just about half the crap you wanna watch you STILL have to pay for. Ridiculous I think. I didn't use any of the other services so I could no longer justify the cost, especially after they switched to $8.99/month which cost me more.