Once a modest online seller of books, Amazon is now one of the largest companies in the world, and its former CEO, Jeff Bezos, is the world’s most wealthy person. We track developments, both of Bezos and Amazon, its growth as a video producer, the popular Prime service, as well as its own hardware, which includes the Amazon Kindle e-reader, Amazon Kindle Fire tablets, and Amazon Fire TV streaming boxes.
The company temporarily paused flights of its Prime Air delivery drones on Wednesday morning following two back-to-back crashes involving a crane. But airborne deliveries in the West Valley Phoenix Metro Area have resumed and Amazon is “confident that there wasn’t an issue with the drones or the technology that supports them.”
Amazon Fresh and Happy Belly are now one private label brand: Amazon Grocery. Altogether, the new Amazon Grocery brand has more than 1,000 items, most of which Amazon says are under $5.
The new model, announced yesterday, is the $39.99 4K Select. It’s pricier, yet it has worse specs than the $24.99 Fire TV Stick 4K (the Select is missing Wi-Fi 6, Dolby Vision, Atmos, and other features). The best value under $50 is still the Wi-Fi 6E-ready 4K Max.
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And no more chunky side bezels!
These new Echo devices may have just won Alexa Plus a permanent place in my smart home.
Amazon is bringing facial recognition to its latest Ring 2K and 4K cameras and doorbell. Familiar Faces lets you enroll friends and family, so you’ll get a notification saying “Emma is at the front door” if it’s someone you know. Google has had a similar feature on Nest cameras for years, but this is the first Ring hardware with facial recognition.
The feature will be available first for dogs in November, and will work for cats and other pets in the future.
I’m in line with Len Edgerly, of the Kindle Chronicles podcast, discussing what we expect to see today. New Kindles and Echo Shows are at the top of our list. I’ll be live-blogging from the event, so stay tuned!
Alexa Plus is already rolling out. Now it’s time for Amazon to put some great hardware behind it.
As Amazon prepares to launch new hardware this week, it needs to push Alexa to the next level.
Current AI spending means the industry needs $2 trillion in annual revenue by 2030, according to estimates from Bain & Co. That’s “more than five times the size of the entire global subscription software market,” write Eliot Brown and Robbie Whelan. But there’s a plan: 1. Build data centers. 2. ???? 3. Profit. Anyway, I’ve been wondering about this for a while now.
Amazon will pay $2.5 billion to settle a lawsuit with the FTC over how it handled Prime subscriptions and cancellations. But, would you believe it, the company says it and its executives “have always followed the law.” I guess it was just feeling generous!
swrobel:
Let me guess: it’s the ol’ “we admit no wrongdoing, but on an unrelated note, here’s $2.5B”
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