Round up #192: Best Books of the Year, Amazon Sidewalk

Round up #192: Best Books of the Year, Amazon Sidewalk

The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.

Amazon’s Q3 financials disappointed…but it’s okay now

When Amazon announced its Q3 results on October 24.

recorded webcast

the stock dropped enough that Jeff Bezos reportedly was no longer the world’s richest person…but that only lasted about a day. 🙂

According to

CNN.Money’s Amazon quote

the stock is up about 2.47% over the past 30 days.

Amazon’s brag sheet…er,

press release

has more details. Sales were up (naturally), but yes, income was down. However, they’ve introduced several initiatives which have a lot of potential in the future. Certainly, I’m not worried about them…although I’m also not dependent on them for income.

Amazon announces the best books of 2019

Amazon has announced their

The Best Books of 2019 (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

These are the features and categories:

Featured in Best Books of 2019

• Top 100: Print Books
• Top 100: Kindle Books: the two lists are very similar at the top…I think they used to be more different when more books were released without Kindle editions. The number one book? The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (at AmazonSmile*), the Booker Prize winning sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale
• Celebrity Picks (including: Stephen King; Sally Fields; Admiral McRaven; Kobe Bryant; Louise Penny; John Waters; Dav Pilkey; and more)
• Editors’ Holiday Gift Picks

Best of the Year by Category

• Biographies & Memoirs
• Business & Leadership
• Children’s Books
• Cookbooks, Food & Wine
• History
• Literature & Fiction
• Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
• Nonfiction
• Romance
• Science
• Science Fiction & Fantasy
• Teens & Young Adult

Disney+ has launched

As I had written I thought would be the case, Disney and Amazon worked out their differences enough for Disney+ to be available on the Fire TV family. I’ve written my first impressions on my other blog, The Measured Circle:

Disney+ on Fire TV: 1st impressions

Amazon Sidewalk

In this

Amazon dayone blog post

from September 27, Amazo announced a new communications protocol they call Sidewalk. This is one of those things which may make a big difference in the future. It’s the use of the 900 MHz band to enable smart devices to have a network that goes outside the home, but not as far as a SmartPhone would do. I don’t think there’s been enough notice of this.

It will mean that you can have your Ring camera further away from the door (we love ours…we’ve seen two deer come right up on the stoop in the middle of the night, and we are not in a wild area), which is great. They are promoting it for a device they’ll release called Fetch, which will be able to geolocate your dog (or other pet). That’s great: it can let you know when your dog leaves your yard.

In the future, though, they clearly intend the networks to intermesh…your neighbor’s Sidewalk (although probably not your neighbor) will know when your dog is nearby.

That means, hypothetically, that the police could eventually get data about where people are or were. Yes, they can do that now with a SmartPhone, so maybe it doesn’t matter, but it does seem like there will be another way to track things. That can certainly be a good thing, but I’ve just been surprised not to see more comments about it.

Amazon future>>engineer

This one seems like a great program, like Amazon giving back!

It’s a way for people from “underserved and underrepresented communities” to get help in studying computer science. One important part of it is that you can apply for $10,000 a year 4-year college scholarships (so, $40,000 altogether) right now. It goes down to K-8, but I wanted to call attention to the ability to apply at

Amazon future>>engineer

Certainly, this could help Amazon in the very long run…not only producing more engineers, but making people more comfortable with robotics and AI. Still, a lot of people could benefit who never ended up working for Amazon (well, for the college scholarship, there is a paid summer internship at Amazon after their freshman year in college). Deadline to apply is January 17, 2020, 3:00 PM CT.

What do you think? Worried about Amazon Sidewalk? What do you think was the best book of the year? Watching Disney+? Feel free to let me and my readers know what you think by commenting on this post.

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

Bufo’s Alexa Skills

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other organizations, begin your Amazon shopping from a link on their sites: Amazon.com (Smile.Amazon.com)

 

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Round up #175: Alexa Kids Edition, Prime will still be a bargain

Round up #175: Alexa Kids Edition, Prime will still be a bargain

The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.

Amazon Prime will be cheaper than Netflix Standard on May 11th

Amazon Prime (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

is an incredible deal…and that will continue to be true after a price raise effective May 11th for new subscribers (the price increase goes into effect for renewals on June 16th).

The annual price is going up to $119 from $99. Yes, that’s a significant increase: about 20%. The last increase was in 2014 from $79 annually to $99…that’s a bigger increase in terms of percentage, about 25%.

It’s noteworthy, though, that it’s still just about $10 a month ($9.92, approximately). Standard Netflix is $10.99 a month (they have a cheaper one at $7.99…only one screen at a time, and no HD). Hulu is $7.99 a month…ad-supported (with commercials). No commercials on Hulu? $11.99 a month.

Now, that’s comparing apples to oranges…actually, it’s more like apples to the entire produce aisle. 😉

Prime is so much more than just video, and they keep adding more things. Here are just some of the benefits:

• Prime Video (with HD and up to three at the same time…more than Netflix Standard)
• Prime Reading (read from a selection of about 1,000 books and some magazines)
• One free Kindle book to own each month (from a choice of usually six)
• Unlimited photo storage
• Free two-day shipping on many orders

and again, that’s not everything.

Even given all that, some people who perceive this as “over $100 a year” rather than “under $10 a month” will quit Prime over this, so why would Amazon do it?

We recently found out that Amazon has over 100 million Prime subscribers. That’s worldwide (and it’s very important to note that there are many more users than subscribers…if we count Significant Others, children, and so on, I would be confident that there are more people using Prime than the population of the United States), and this price change is for the USA. If the price raise was on 100 million subscribers, and it was $20…that’s 2 BILLION dollars. That’s significant, even to Amazon. 😉

They won’t just take that as profit: they’ll invest it in things that make Prime even more attractive to even more people. It’s not going to take much for those Prime buyers to make up the difference for any who do leave over this (which I think will be a tiny percentage).

I will say that if Prime was just video (which it isn’t), I find three major reasons why I don’t watch Prime as much as Netflix or Hulu:

• For me, discovery is a lot harder…it’s easier to find things I want to watch on Hulu or Netflix. That means that Prime video is pretty much a back-up plan
• There doesn’t seem like as much selection…Hulu for us is mostly current shows, Netflix is originals (I’m watching the new Lost in Space, for example), but we do watch older things on both
• Most of you probably don’t care about this, but Prime Video is not available to me in VAM (Virtual/Augmented/Mixed/Merged Reality) space…and I watch video in VR just about every workday (during lunch, which I exercise)

Some of you may be wondering if there’s a way to extend your current Prime subscription at the current price before it goes up. Well, this

9to5 Toys article by Patrick Campanale

has a convoluted method…but there is a comment from someone who said they tried it last time and it didn’t work. It basically involves canceling and buying a gift membership for yourself.

We’re just going to pay the $20 more…

“Keep My Songs” by Monday, April 30

Amazon is no longer going to store your previously uploaded music…unless you tell them to do it before Monday, April 30th.

You just have to go to

Your Account (at AmazonSmile*)

then go to the Music Settings and click the “Keep my songs” button. I listen to music like this a lot…oh, and this doesn’t affect AutoRip music or digital music you’ve purchased…it’s just outside source audio you’ve uploaded.

I know this is late notice, but I think everybody will have gotten an e-mail about it already. I just thought a back-up (so to speak) alert was worthwhile.

Amazon’s 2018 Q1 financials

You can get the details

here

by listening to the webcast recording and/or looking at the slides, but bottom line…they did great! They more than doubled their profit (due in large part to their web services), and sales were up 43%.

According to this

CNN Money graph

the stock is up nearly 3% in the past five days (the webcast was on the 26th)…and more than a third up over the year.

Investors like them…they really like them! 😉

In-Car Delivery

In this

press release

dated April 24th, Amazon announced that Prime members in 37 cities and surrounding areas with certain types of cars (Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, Cadillac and Volvo of particular kinds, and a connected car) will now be able to get packages delivered directly into the trunk of their cars…even when they aren’t they.

What they are doing is even better than what I wrote about as a joke in this April Fool’s Day post in 2017:

AFD News: Amazon to open brick-and-mortar department store

This can be a real game changer.

I can certainly see using this at work. With my car parked in a publicly accessible place, they could deliver something into my trunk with a four-hour limit (that’s on delivery day…it’s not that it takes four hours to get there.

Nice!

I can also see this on vacation, parked at a hotel. Of course, it would work at home, too. 🙂

What’s the cost for this service? It’s included in Prime! Worth ten bucks a month now? 😉

Kid-friendly Alexa

This

press release

from April 25th introduces the

Echo Dot Kids Edition (at AmazonSmile*)

and new Amazon FreeTime features for Alexa.

A lot of the parental control features are free, and then there is a paid “Amazon FreeTime Unlimited” tier ($2.99 a month), which gives more content use (certain Audible books, apps).

That’s what they have for Kindle books, too.

They didn’t create a new Unlimited product for Alexa…they added features to the existing plan. If you already subscribe, this is just an expansion of what you get.

This is a clever move…I’d recommend you take a look at the page. Oh, and the $79 for the Kids edition includes a free year of FreeTime Unlimited.

The “Alexa Brain” initiative

Alexa is going to get a whole lot more conversational and useful…and soon.

According to this

TechCrunch article by Sarah Perez

there are some major improvements ahead!

• Alexa will remember things you tell it, for future recall
• Alexa will have “context carryover”…in other words, Alexa will be able to stay on topic. If you say, “When was Stephen King born?” and follow it up with, “What’s his newest book?” it should be able to answer that
• Alexa will automatically launch “Skills” (the Alexa equivalent of apps) that will answer your question…even if you haven’t previously enabled it

Prodigious week, huh? 😉

I’m guessing some of you have opinions about these…feel free to share them with me and my readers by commenting on this post.

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You can be part of my next book, Because of the Kindle!”

---

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

Amazon Q3: they mention e-books, and the stock goes up ;)

Amazon Q3: they mention e-books, and the stock goes up 😉

Regular readers know, I don’t claim to have any special expertise in predicting the stock market, and especially in how investors will react to an Amazon financial call. The stock often goes down when Amazon produces results which are very much what I would expect them to do.

Yesterday, Amazon did one of their financial results call (this one for Q3 2017). Sales were up 34%.

They mentioned the growth of subsers (subscription services), specifically mentioning e-books. That means

Kindle Unlimited (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

They also mentioned how big

Prime Day (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

was, and how sales were apparently affected by it throughout the month.

However, I went back to my thoughts on the last report:

Amazon’s Q2 2017 Financials: Okay, investors, I get it this time

and they mentioned both of those last time, too!

AWS (Amazon Web Services) was way up, but that’s not anomalous either.

It’s probably because they did better than expected, but it’s always a bit odd to me that investors reward a company because the investors guessed wrong. 😉

The Q&A (Question and Answer) is always the most interesting part to me, and that was true this time, too. I will say that it felt quite relaxed, and the focus was where I, as a customer, would like it to be. It was about subsers, and Whole Foods, and Alexa, and investing in Prime Video (without an intent to add ads to it).

Investors liked it. According to this

CNN Money graph

the stock price went up 8.76% on Thursday. It’s up over 40%(!) overall this year.

I’ll be interested in hear what some of my more stock savvy readers have to say (which they can do by commenting on this post…I welcome comments), but I will say something.

Remember when Amazon was a bookstore that sold individual books to people?

What people see as Amazon’s strengths now really don’t have to do with that…and they are innovations, risks, and expensive investments. Web service, subsers, Whole Foods, and talktech…none of that connects to the kind of bookselling I did when I managed a brick-and-mortar bookstore. Amazon brick-and-mortar bookstores, while probably performing largely performing as expected, are not positioned as a profit engine.

That’s one of the thing that gives me confidence in Amazon (knock virtual wood). At least under Jeff Bezos, its success is not dependent on a single product or even a single market. It’s the philosophy of the company that makes it work, and that’s always been true.

•  Webcast
• Seeking Alpha transcript of the call
• Google news search for “Amazon”

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You can be part of my next book, Because of the Kindle!

---

 

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

Amazon’s Q2 2017 Financials: Okay, investors, I get it this time

Amazon’s Q2 2017 Financials: Okay, investors, I get it this time

Amazon just released their 2017 2nd quarter financials, and investors didn’t like it, dropping the stock 3.68% in a day:

CNN Money graph

Investors never seem to like what Amazon has to say (although the stock has gone up 39.49% this year). Well, they don’t like these Amazon financial reports generally at least, and not being a stock expert, that sometimes baffles me.

This time, though, I get it.

For one thing, Amazon is predicting a possible $400 million loss in the 3rd quarter (although it could also be up to a $300 million gain). I would assume that big a range of prediction isn’t attractive (“You’ll either win the race…or end up in the hospital” 😉 ), but it’s also a potentially big loss even without the range.

There were also these (not forwarding looking, but retrospective) results:

“Operating income decreased 51% to $628 million in the second quarter, compared with operating income of $1.3 billion in second quarter 2016.

Net income was $197 million in the second quarter, or $0.40 per diluted share, compared with net income of $857 million, or $1.78 per diluted share, in second quarter 2016.”

So, I can see how someone looking for steady gains would find this scary.

I can also tell you, I’m not going to just say everything is rosy and the investors are just getting  it all wrong.

However…

This is what Amazon does. It invests in the future (and in its customers) and looks long term.

If you want it to be a profit machine, that’s your mistake. 🙂

It’s worth noting that they did not include the proposed Whole Foods purchase in these calculations…while it still seems likely, it hasn’t happened yet and has been seeing some challenges.

One commentator noted that if it happened right now and all at once, it would pretty much wipe out their cash on hand.

If it does go through and Amazon does make it a success (again, I consider both of those likely), it will be a profit maker…which Amazon will then spend on some other future feature.

Prime Day (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

was giant, having unprecedented sales…but that, of course, actually hurts the bottom line (by selling a lot of things for relatively little money).

They did sign up a gazillion (they don’t give us precise numbers, and that’s my word, not theirs)

Amazon Prime (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

members…which is another big investment in the future.

You just have to accept that Amazon isn’t like a snake swallowing a rabbit, taking time to digest it, and then getting bigger as a result. It’s like a filter feeding  whale shark…it may even stay stationary as it sucks in nutrients, and things flow through it.

Interestingly, they did mention e-books and physical books this time, and they don’t always.

One comment was about the physical bookstores…although it touted their ability to let people interact with Echo devices. 😉 There are eight Amazon bookstores open now, with five more in the works (including one near me).

Another thing they mentioned was the growth of subsers (subscription services), specifically mentioning e-books, which means

Kindle Unlimited (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

I don’t think they count Prime Reading as a separate subser.

The growth rate was 53% year over year for subsers, which is a good sign. Amazon does spend to improve subsers, but with any subscription (a gym membership, for example), you are paying for potential. Part of how it works is that most people don’t use more of the service than it costs…although some do, and some use a lot less.

With Amazon, there’s also the whole thing of inspired sales. You can lose money on one thing, if it gets that person to spend more money on something else. As I’ve said before (and as a former brick-and-mortar store manager) that customers tend to look at each transaction, and the businesses look at the entire set of transactions.

Something that reasonably concerned some people was that the growth of AWS (Amazon Web Services), which can really be considered Amazon’s core business now, was slower. It was still there, though.

I expect that we’ll see that Amazon has invested in VAM (Virtual/Augmented/Merged/Mixed Reality) this year, and that the second half of the year will still be building (which they are always doing). The Whole Foods acquisition, if it goes through, will also mean a lot of investment.

I’ll look forward to hearing comments from some of my readers…they often have insightful takes on Amazon financials.

To help you out, here are some resources:

• Amazon press release
• Seeking Alpha transcript of the earnings call
• Amazon conference call and slides

Bonus story:

Verso Books

is having a 90% off sale on all of their e-books, today only, Friday July 28th. Worth checking it out…

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help! 🙂 

Amazon’s Q1 financials: investors like this one

Amazon’s Q1 financials: investors like this one

As an Amazon customer (and not an employee, just to be clear), I usually like Amazon’s financial statements. They have shown innovation and investment in making their customers happy. In fact, I often refer to Amazon’s happy customers as their most important “product”. 😉 Carefully curated access to customers (providing access to services they actually want, for example) is a big part of Amazon’s future…whether that’s through more traditional ads or simply through a “carrier” strategy, with Amazon being what I call the infrastructure of the internet. On that latter one, one way that would work would be Amazon charging a free music service to be available through Echo products. No ads there, but the access can reasonably be monetized (not with the customer paying, but with the producer paying).

Investors, though, haven’t always liked Amazon’s financial reports. They didn’t make a profit for a long time (that’s been changing recently). Rapidly improving sales are good for customers (they demonstrate engagement), investment in licensing/producing) content (movies/TV shows and more) is good for customers, but those aren’t directly short-term good for investors.

Amazon’s

Webcast (and associated materials)

yesterday has gotten quite a bit of positive buzz, and the stock is up 3% based on this

CNN/Money graph

In the

press release

gives you the highlights. Having an increase in sales (23%) compared to the same period last year and net income up (41%) while maintaining the #1 ranking in corporate reputation is a rare combination and makes everybody happy.

The press release calls out (from of Amazon CEO…Chief Executive Officer…Jeff Bezos) the strength of Amazon in India. That’s key: customers in the USA might wonder how much more growth Amazon can have here (actually, they can still have a lot), but I have readers around the world…and Amazon increasingly has customers around the world. They are finally going to be able to make a real move in much of the Middle East, and they’ve got a lot of growth potential in Latin America (just to name two areas).

My favorite part of these calls is the question and answer part. As you can read in the

Seeking Alpha transcript

this one didn’t disappoint.

I want to first commend Brian T. Olsavsky, Amazon’s CFO (Chief Financial Officer). Amazon has a reputation for being reticent to share details, but I thought Olsavsky came across as having a much more casual, less scripted conversation (although, of course, there were still things questions weren’t answered in detail).

You might also expect a CFO to be all about the money, but this quotation from the transcript (in accordance with Seeking Alpha’s quotation policy) is not that:

“There’s now over 12,000 Alexa skills. So we think that’s all foundational. The monetization, as you might call it, is a theme of your questions.

That’s not our primary issue right now. It’s about building great products and delighting customers. We think as engagement – as we pick up engagement with the devices, it helps the engagement with Amazon as a whole. So whether someone is ordering off their Alexa device or whether they’re going to their phone, or going to their computer, it all has the same effect for us.”

When they did talk money, I thought that was good for customers, too. They broke things out differently, including a category for subscriptions services (subsers) like

Kindle Unlimited (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

which I think is going to be a strategy people will choose (although there will still be a place for “piece buyers” who buy one book at a time to own).

They mentioned artificial intelligence, but they did not talk about development in virtual/augmented reality…which I could argue is an indicator that my prediction that they become significantly publicly involved in VAMM (Virtual/Augmented/Mixed/Merged) space is likely to come true. I think they want that to be a surprise, to be a big news story…otherwise, why not mention it even a little? If the two choices are that they are not working on it at all, despite all of the growth this year and the industry being in the launch phase, or that they are working on it and don’t want to talk about it yet, I go with the latter. 😉

What do you think? Feel free to tell me and my readers by commenting on this post.

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My current Amazon Giveaways:

LAST TWO DAYS TO ENTER

I recently concluded a giveaway for

One Murder More (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

by my sibling, Kris Calvin

and there were ten winners. I’m doing a new one for the same book:

1 winner

Requirements for participation:

• Resident of the 50 United States or the District of Columbia
• 18+ years of age (or legal age)
• Follow Kris Calvin on Amazon (you’ll be notified when future books are added to Amazon…I think that’s the only contact you get, although I’m not positive)

Giveaway: https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/c2fb235f3cf97ced 

Start:Apr 24, 2017 6:06 AM PDT

End:Apr 29, 2017 11:59 PM PD

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Cryptozoology A To Z: The Encyclopedia of Loch Monsters, Sasquatch, Chupacabras, and Other Authentic Mysteries of Nature by Loren Coleman (at AmazonSmile*)

Note: this is the paperback. For some reason, I couldn’t make the Kindle book for this one public (like I could with Kris’ book). I really wanted this one to be public, because the whole goal is to promote Loren Coleman’s medical expense fund GoFundMe campaign. I’ve never met Loren personally, and we have no shared business interests, although we have had some correspondence. I’ve read Loren’s books for decades, and admire how the cryptozoologist/Fortean helps others, including being the Director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Maine (although in so many smaller ways, too). It’s sad to me that someone who has done so much is having trouble dealing with medical expense (due to multiple operations). That doesn’t stop Loren from going to the Bigfoot festival in Willow Creek, California tomorrow, but for people who have enjoyed and benefited from Loren’s work, the medical expenses fund is an opportunity to do a thank you. Literally over 300 people have entered in about a day, and they’ve all tweeted (as a requirement to entry) a link to the fund’s page. I do not ask people to endorse the fund or to ask other people to contribute (or for them to contribute themselves)…I’m just hoping to raise the profile so people who might want to contribute and don’t know about it get the word.

• Winner:Randomly selected after Giveaway has ended, up to 1 winners.

• Requirements for participation:
  • Resident of the 50 United States or the District of Columbia
  • 18+ years of age (or legal age)
  • Tweet a message

Giveaway: https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/303e4f5c496116a2

Start:Apr 27, 2017 9:45 AM PDT

End:May 4, 2017 11:59 PM PDT

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard our new The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

Jeff Bezos: defining Day 2

Jeff Bezos: defining Day 2

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO (Chief Executive Officer) has released the 2016 (this year) letter to shareholders.

This is a tradition at Amazon, and honestly, I think this is one of the most valuable ones yet.

You can read it here:

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9NjY2MjA1fENoaWxkSUQ9Mzc0MDUyfFR5cGU9MQ==&t=1

and you can read previous ones here:

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=97664&p=irol-reportsannual

along with annual reports and proxy statements.

What makes it valuable?

It’s really about philosophy, and that’s what gives me confidence (reasonable confidence, I would say) in Amazon’s long-term success.

I have a lot invested in Amazon being here and going strong fifty years from now.

It’s possible I’ll still be around and using their services in 2067 (you never know). Even if I’m not, though, the odds are pretty good that people both in my family and in the general public will be affected by things I’ve done by and through Amazon (including writing).

Bufo Calvin Amazon Author Central page (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

Amazon is sometimes seen as a cult of personality around Jeff Bezos…will that driving and guiding force still be actively present in 2067? Again, that’s possible: Bezos would be turning 103.

What can certainly still be active is the philosophy of Amazon.

That, however, is not inevitable…and that’s the entire point of this year’s shareholders’ letter.

Jeff Bezos likes to say that Amazon is in “Day 1”: still in the beginning.

That’s always an uncertain, dynamic time. I work in a company where there are many smaller “units”, which we can think of as geographically defined. Let’s think of them as states in the United States.

When we are going to make a change that affects the entire company, we like to pilot it in one or two of these “states” first.

I like to tell the people there that there are big advantages and disadvantages.

The disadvantage is that whatever it is won’t work as well in the first state as it will in the fiftieth.

We will have identified problems and solved most of them.

We will have had a lot of input from the frontline people who depend on it.

The advantage?

Impact.

The earlier you are in an in situ development process, the more power you have.

When you get to the twentieth state to “go live”, you simply can’t change things that affect the first nineteen without a lot of effort.

Day 1 is chaos…and power.

The letter says:

“Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.”

The stasis part is key. You want to always be changing, because the world is always changing. Just because you are at the top of the heap right now doesn’t mean that there isn’t going to be a bigger heap growing next door.

As I recall (and this is just from memory), Yul Brynner responded to the question of what should be on the actor’s tombstone this way: “I would like it to say, ‘I Have Arrived’..because when you believe you’ve arrived, you’re dead.”

I’ve always liked that. It goes along with the Doc Savage (one of my literary heroes, and soon to be played by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in a major movie) oath: “Let me strive every moment of my life to make myself better and better, to the best of my ability, that all may profit by it.”

Never stop getting better, never believe you are done.

I had a director, Ross Graham, who said years ago, “When you stop being a student, you stop being an artist.”

That’s a lot of what this year’s letter discusses. Keep evolving, and know you are never finished.

This last short excerpt I’ll give you (and encourage you strongly to read the letter, even if you have no involvement with Amazon), ties that ever evolving concept with being a “customer focused” company:

“There are many advantages to a customer-centric approach, but here’s the big one: customers are always beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied, even when they report being happy and business is great. Even when they don’t yet know it, customers want something better, and your desire to delight customers will drive you to invent on their behalf.”

That’s a philosophy, and one that won’t be irrelevant fifty years from now.

I observed myself quite some time ago that the way that customer-served companies lose their leadership position isn’t by underestimating their competitors, as is commonly assumed, but my overestimating their customers’ loyalty.

It happens when a company figures that customers won’t leave them for an upstart because, you know, “we are the company for this”.

In terms of what the letter might portend, Jeff Bezos talks about embracing external trends, and specifically mentions artificial intelligence and machine learning. No question, that’s important, and could change just about everything else.

It’s good because it’s conceptual. It’s not a specific product. You could get to artificial intelligence a lot of ways, and it may not be the way we are trying now.

I do think that augmented (more than virtual, but virtual, too) is a big part of Amazon’s future this year. However, that is a more specific, narrow thing than AI, so I think it’s good Bezos didn’t mention it in the letter.

Something that’s also nice: this year’s letter, as is traditional, also reproduces the 1997 letter, where JB talks about Day 1 (although it’s in reference to the internet and specifically to Amazon, not just Amazon).

This is why I have confidence in Amazon. It won’t be easy to stay in Day 1 for fifty more years…but they will try to do that.

Do you have thoughts about the letter, or in general, about Amazon’s future? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard our new The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

---

My current Amazon Giveaways:

===

One Murder More (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

by my sibling, Kris Calvin

Ten winners

Giveaway: https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/e39ec1bca3592757

Start:Apr 8, 2017 12:05 PM PDT
End:Apr 23, 2017 11:59 PM PDT

===

Oh Myyy! – There Goes The Internet (Life, the Internet and Everything Book 1) (at AmazonSmile*)

by George Takei (in honor of the actor’s 80th birthday on April 20, 2017)

1 winner

Giveaway: https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/0a55a7230ccfd4aa

Start:Apr 11, 2017 3:56 PM PDT
End:Apr 21, 2017 11:59 PM PDT

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

 

Amazon’s Q4 financials: stock drops 3% on disappointment (but sales up 22%)

Amazon’s Q4 financials: stock drops 3% on disappointment (but sales up 22%)

Amazon just announced their fourth quarter financials. As usual, they did a public webcast:

• Listen to it from Amazon
• Read the transcript at Seeking Alpha

They also did a

Press Release

which covers a lot of the numbers.

The reaction in the media, and by investors, was negative…the stock dropped about 3% in a day, as you can see in this

CNN Money graph

That’s not an atypical reaction to an Amazon financials announcement…negative stories, (temporary) stock drop.

I’m sometimes baffled by that. In this case, net sales went up 22%…something you might expect in a new and rising entry into a market, not the dominant force.

However, in this case, I can see the concern.

Let me say right off: that’s not a long term concern of mine. Amazon’s in no trouble, and I expect we’ll see continued sales growth this year.

It’s more that Amazon didn’t meet expectations…which weren’t, I would say, unreasonable.

I also thought this was a great point in this

recode post by Jason Del Rey

Del Rey confirmed with Amazon that there had been tens of millions of new

Amazon Prime (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

members, which is a good thing.

However, Del Rey also sagely notes…Amazon didn’t talk about the rate of Prime member growth.

That is a big deal.

These sorts of calls and releases are carefully crafted, and it’s reasonable to say that leaving out a citation of the growth (which they have made in the past) is deliberate…and therefore, it wasn’t something to tout.

While Amazon is only partially a retail company now (things like AWS, Amazon Web Service, are really significant segments), Prime is key.

As a Prime member myself, this actually encourages me…it means Amazon may work harder to make Prime attractive (and they already do a lot: for one thing, they added Prime Reading (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*) which is a rotating group of something like a thousand books Prime members can read at no additional cost).

I do, though, find Amazon’s expenditures, while they hurt the bottom line this time, reasonable. A starring character in the information was Alexa (Amazon’s digital assistant), and Amazon is definitely spending on that.

That’s very forward looking, and may make a giant difference going forward.

I’ve said before that Amazon wants to be the “infrastructure of the internet”, and this is part of that. If Alexa is the way you get to, well, everything, Amazon can charge the providers of those goods and services (not the customer) for access to you. That’s why I say that Amazon’s most important product is happy customers…that’s what they can “sell” to other businesses. That’s not by selling your information, it’s by selling that access, which you may specifically want. If you download an app for a company, you’ve chosen to give that access.

Complaining about Amazon spending on Alexa would be like investors saying, “Mr. Ford, we don’t like the amount of money you are spending on this assembly line thing.” 😉 The development of that clearly had an expense, but it would have been shortsighted, to say the least.

I expect Amazon to reveal a big Virtual/Augmented Reality initiative this year, and that’s going to cost. Amazon is spending on video content, both licensing it and developing their own. Those are being critically recognized: Amazon is the first streaming service with a Best Picture nominee (Manchester by the Sea), and the TV side does well also (I’ll be surprised if Christina Ricci isn’t nominated for Z: The Beginning of Everything, playing Zelda Fitzgerald…where author F. Scott Fitzgerald is also a major character). They are hiring something like 100,000 people, and opening brick-and-mortar stores.

I don’t think we’ll ever get to a point where Amazon is just coasting on previous successes…and we don’t want that. 🙂 Being an Amazon investor is never going to be a feel good experience; being an Amazon customer is. 😉

Have a reaction to the news, or predictions for Amazon in the future? Want to give Jeff Bezos advice? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard our new The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project!

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy  Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

Amazon owned online holiday shopping, and a great non-fiction KDD

Amazon owned online holiday shopping, and a great non-fiction KDD

We are still getting data on the 2016 holiday sales, but it looks like Amazon dominated…on a Bambi Meets Godzilla level. 😉

According to this

Seeking Alpha story by Gary Bourgeault

Amazon had 45.5% of online purchases for the week ending December 17, 2017. That’s almost half!

Now, if they had a close competitor, it would just make it a battle…but again, according to the article Amazon had a market share about ten times higher than Best Buy, their closest competitor!

That’s astonishing! It’s like winning a basket ball game 110…to 10. 😉

I strongly recommend the article, which uses graphs and multiple sources to do an interesting analysis.

Probably more importantly than the percentage of the market, was the reported increase in Amazon Prime (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*) memberships. Amazon has started making a profit, but many of the sales at Amazon during the holidays were due to, well, sales, where Amazon likely didn’t make much if any profit.

Prime members, though, reportedly spend more year round and buy those physical items (diapers and windshield wipers) where the profit is higher.

Why did Amazon dominate?

Yes, sales were part of it…you can think of buying a discounted Echo Dot as a marketing expense, and one that many competitors can’t afford.

Prime is another. I always prefer to buy from Amazon, given a choice…things come quickly, the prices are good, and they already have my financial information. A big thing for me is being able to send items to a local grocery story, using Amazon Locker. That’s not specifically a Prime benefit, but Prime makes you consider Amazon first.

Yet a third was Alexa. Amazon’s digital assistant is now available on many devices, not just the Amazon Echo family. Shopping through Alexa is easy and they had special deals through that service. That’s part of what I mean when I talk about Amazon wanting to be the “infrastructure of the internet”. They want to be both the way that people interact with the internet, and how things get to them (through fulfillment and Amazon Web Services, to name two).

As shoppers still increasingly move to shopping online, Amazon’s growing dominance in holiday sales looks likely to be an ongoing trend (and  speak as a former brick-and-mortar store manager). The one thing they’ll need to watch is people moving to Virtual Reality (which I have been doing since I got a Samsung Gear VR headset (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*) at the holidays). I have no doubt that I will be shopping through VR, as I spend more and more time there. I already can, because I can browse the internet. Not getting in on VR now is like not getting into mobile when SmartPhones started becoming popular. I’ve predicted Amazon will get into VR in a big way in my annual prediction post: The Year Ahead: 2017.

Another thing this year? So far, there have been amazing discounts on popular e-books!

Today’s

Kindle Daily Deal (at AmazonSmile…benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)

is any of 26 highly-rated non-fiction titles, each under $4 and many for $1.99 each.

If you think you don’t like non-fiction, some of these titles might challenge that notion. 🙂

Remember that you can buy these as gifts and delay the delivery until the appropriate gift-giving occasion, or have the purchase sent to yourself, print them out, and give them whenever (even wrapped, if you want).

Check the price before you click or tap (or eye gaze, if you are in VR) that Buy Button…the prices may not apply in your country.

Title include:

• A Night to Remember by Walter Lord | 4.5 stars out of 5 | 536 customer reviews…classic account of the Titanic, been adapted
• A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn | 4.4 stars | 2,349 reviews
• Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors by Stephen Ambrose
• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown
• The Fall of Japan by William Craig
• The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan
• We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young: Ia Drang—The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam by Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway
• Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis by Timothy Egan (also available as part of Kindle Unlimited (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*))
• The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved AmericaOct 19, 2009 | Kindle eBook
  by Timothy Egan (KU…these are the only two in the sale which are part of KU at time of writing)
• Mistress of the Vatican: The True Story of Olimpia Maidalchini: The Secret Female Pope by Eleanor Herman

Enjoy!

I’ve only listed some of the titles…if you’d like to suggest others for me and my readers, or if you have thoughts about Amazon dominating holiday sales (who could disrupt them and how, for example) or my embracing of VR as a consumer reality (so to speak) feel free to comment on this post.

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard our new The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project! Join the TMCGTT Timeblazers!

* When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help! By the way, it’s been interesting lately to see Amazon remind me to “start at AmazonSmile” if I check a link on the original Amazon site. I do buy from AmazonSmile, but I have a lot of stored links I use to check for things.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the The Measured Circle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

“How you spent during your winter vacation”: Amazon’s holiday results

“How you spent during your winter vacation”: Amazon’s holiday results

You can have fun when you are doing well…and you’ll do better when you are having fun. 🙂

I genuinely believe that…fun is a positive correlate for success, although some people seem to think that success depends on being as serious as you possibly can.

Amazon reflects that when they do their annual report of their holiday sales, with goofy (but impressive) statistics.

This year, in addition to sending me the regular press release, they sent me some extra “Reading Data Points”…and nicely agreed to let me share them with you.

I’ll reproduce them verbatim below, but I’ll call out a few points myself first.

• Fascinating to me that the bestselling book on Amazon in 2016 wasn’t a novel, or even short stories, but a script: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – Parts One and Two (Special Rehearsal Edition): The Official Script Book of the Original West End Production (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*). As a former professional actor, I’ve always enjoyed reading scripts (both intended for stage and screen), but as a former brick-and-mortar bookstore manager, I can tell you that they usually aren’t big sellers. This again shows the Power of (Harry) Potter. I think it’s legitimate to say that the Harry Potter series got a lot of people, especially children, reading who might not have done it with such fervor without it (echoing the Oz books at the start of the 20th Century). Perhaps this book will encourage some people to read more scripts (although I’d say there is an economic advantage in having both a script and a novelization in the market). I do see that one of the bestsellers in books at Amazon.com for the holidays was also a script (and also by J.K. Rowling…and also in the Potterverse): Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The Original Screenplay (at AmazonSmile*)
• The most highlighted passage is from a non-fiction book. That’s interesting to me…are you more likely to capture a quotation from non-fiction book or a fiction book (taking into account the amount you read of both)? Even though I’ve published a book of quotations (The Mind Boggles: A Unique Book of Quotations (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)), I’m not sure what the answer is for me. I would think I might loan more credence to non-fiction…but I think they generally aren’t likely to be written in as entertaining a way as fiction, meaning that a fiction book might have more available quotations
• Also intriguing: they cite a statistic on which books were given five stars rating from people who had never given a five star rating before. They don’t say, though, whether those people had ever rated any book before. That would make a big difference to me. If the rater had always given three stars or fewer and this time gave five, that says something. If this is their first review, we don’t know if they won’t rate everything five stars…

=== (Amazon’s information below)

Reading Data Points

• The bestselling book on Amazon in 2016 was Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts 1 & 2, Special Rehearsal Edition Script by J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne and John Tiffany.
• The secret’s out: The top foodie book Kindle customers are reading this holiday season is Anthony Bourdain’s genre-defining classic, Kitchen Confidential, currently available in Kindle Unlimited.
• The #1 passage Kindle readers are highlighting from bestselling 2016 memoir When Breath Becomes Air is:

◦       “Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete.”

• Blame it on Brangelina: The #1 magazine downloaded in Prime Reading in 2016 by Kindle customers was People.
• If you add up all readers of every book in Prime Reading since it was launched, the Kindle book with the most total daily readers in the program was The Atlantis Gene, the first title in the popular technothriller trilogy that’s earned more than 6,000 5-star reviews.
• Love is in the air year-round for Prime customers: The top non-fiction book downloaded in Prime Reading in 2016 was The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts by Gary Chapman.
• In 2016, more than 3 million readers took the Goodreads Challenge and have read a collective 38.1 million books this year.
• High Fives: The Nightingale, The Butterfly Garden, and A Man Called Ove received the most 5-star reviews in 2016 from Amazon customers who had never before given a book 5 stars.
• The highest rated audiobook of 2016 on Audible is Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah, host of The Daily Show, and narrated by the author.
• The bestselling audiobook of the year on Audible was The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, narrated by Claire Corbett, Louise Brealey, and India Fisher.
• Authors answered more than 26,000 reader questions on Goodreads in 2016.

 

 

+++++++++

 

 

Alexa Devices Top Amazon Best-Seller List this Holiday – Millions of Alexa Devices Sold Worldwide

Sales of Amazon Echo family of devices up more than 9x over last year’s holiday season Echo Dot is the best-selling, most gifted item on Amazon.com with millions sold worldwide since launch Alexa devices made up top-selling products across all categories on Amazon.com including Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick, Fire tablet and Amazon Echo SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Dec. 27, 2016– (NASDAQ: AMZN) — This 2016 holiday was the best-ever season for Amazon with devices including Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick, Fire tablet and Amazon Echo topping the best-sellers list. Customers purchased and gifted a record-setting number of devices from the Amazon Echo family with sales up over 9x compared to last year’s holiday season and millions of Alexa devices sold worldwide this year. “Echo and Echo Dot were the best-selling products across Amazon this year, and we’re thrilled that millions of new customers will be introduced to Alexa as a result. Despite our best efforts and ramped-up production, we still had trouble keeping them in stock. From turning on Christmas lights and playing holiday music to shopping for gifts and asking for help with cookie recipes, Alexa continues to get smarter every day,” said Jeff Wilke, CEO Worldwide Consumer, Amazon. “We couldn’t have made this holiday season possible for customers without the dedication and hard work of our customer service, transportation, and fulfillment associates along with our carrier partners – it’s amazing to see the teams come together to serve customers during the holidays. On behalf of Amazonians all around the world, we wish everyone happy holidays and the very best for the coming year.” Holidays with Alexa: ·       Alexa helped mix hundreds of thousands of cocktails this holiday season with Tom Collins and Manhattans being the most requested drinks from skills like The Bartender, Mixologist and DrinkBoy. ·       Chocolate chip and sugar cookies were the favorite recipes from Alexa skills like Food Network and Allrecipes. ·       Home Alone and Elf were the most requested holiday movies with Alexa. ·       Alexa helped play millions of holiday songs this year, and the top songs were Jingle Bells (1999 – Remaster) by Frank Sinatra, All I Want for Christmas Is You by Mariah Carey and Feliz Navidad by José Feliciano. ·       What was Alexa asked to cook? The most popular cooking tips requested on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were turkey, prime rib and chocolate chip cookies. ·       Who played the most holiday music with Alexa? Customers in Seattle, New York and Chicago asked “Alexa, play holiday music” more than any other city in the U.S. ·       Who turned on Christmas Lights the most with Alexa? Customers in Seattle, San Diego and New York asked, “Alexa, turn on Christmas lights” more than any other city in the U.S. ·       What games were the most requested with Alexa this holiday? Alexa entertained families with popular games like Jeopardy!, Twenty Questions and The Magic Door. Amazon Prime: ·       More than one billion items shipped worldwide with Prime and Fulfillment by Amazon this holiday season. ·       More people around the world tried Prime this holiday season than any previous year. ·       The fastest Prime Now delivery on Christmas Eve took 13 minutes and was delivered at 9:05 p.m. to a Prime member in Redondo Beach, California. The order included a Tile Slim Item Finder and a Tile Mate Key Finder. ·       December 23, 2016 was the biggest day ever for Prime Now deliveries worldwide and members ordered 3x more items compared to last year with one and two hour delivery worldwide. Echo Dot, Amazon Echo, Fire TV Stick and Oreo Cookies were some of the most popular items ordered that day in the U.S. ·       The last Prime Now order delivered in time for the holiday was delivered at 11:59 p.m. on December 24, 2016 to a Prime member in Irvine, California. The order included a Heated Mattress Pad, NyQuil and Afrin Nasal Spray. ·       Prime members in Dallas, Texas ordered more items with Prime Now than any other city in the U.S. this holiday season. ·       The last Prime FREE Same-Day Delivery order from Amazon.com that was delivered in time for Christmas was ordered at 10:23 a.m. on December 24, 2016. The order included Venum Contender Boxing Gloves, and was delivered to a Prime member in Richmond, Virginia at 2:42 p.m. – the same day. Mobile Shopping: ·       More than 72 percent of Amazon customers worldwide shopped using a mobile device this holiday. ·       Shopping on the free Amazon mobile app grew by 56 percent this holiday, worldwide. ·       On Cyber Monday, Amazon customers worldwide purchased about 46 electronics per second on a mobile device. ·       On Cyber Monday, Amazon customers worldwide purchased about 36 toys per second on a mobile device. Amazon Operations: ·       December 19 was the peak worldwide shipping day this holiday season. ·       In the U.S., more than 200,000 full-time and seasonal associates made the record-breaking shipping season possible. ·       In the last two years, Amazon launched operations at over a dozen new facilities, many of which house robotic technology. ·       Amazon fulfillment centers in San Marcos, Texas and Kent, Washington, as well as two Polish fulfillment centers, in Poznan and Wroclaw, shipped more than one million items in a single day. ·       There are now 45,000 robotics units working alongside Amazon associates in more than 20 fulfillment centers. Amazon Digital Media: ·       The most streamed Amazon Original Series over the holidays was Goliath. ·       The most streamed Amazon Original Movie over the holidays was Love & Friendship. ·       The most watched TV series (non-Amazon Original) streaming on Prime Video this holiday was The Night Manager. ·       The most watched movie (non-Amazon Original) streaming on Prime Video this holiday was Eye in the Sky. ·       Customers listening to holiday music on Amazon Music more than tripled this year, compared to 2015. ·       The most streamed holiday song on Amazon Music was It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year by Andy Williams. ·       Michael Bublé – Christmas was the most played holiday album on Amazon Music this season. ·       Amazon Music is the exclusive streaming home for all 16 studio albums by the best-selling solo artist in U.S. history, Garth Brooks – since his debut to streaming exclusively on Amazon, Brooks has become one of the top-streamed artists on Amazon Music. ·       The hours that kids spent interacting with educational content in Amazon FreeTime this holiday season was enough time to sail around the earth more than 6,000 times. ·       Popular FreeTime Unlimited holiday titles enjoyed by kids in the U.S. 2016 were Holiday Jokes (Hah-larious Joke Books), Elsa’s Ice Puzzles – FreeTime Unlimited Edition, and Caillou’s Winter Wonders. ·       The top foodie book Kindle customers are reading this holiday season is Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, currently available in Kindle Unlimited. ·       The #1 magazine downloaded in Prime Reading in 2016 by Kindle customers was People. ·       The top non-fiction book downloaded in Prime Reading in 2016 was The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts by Gary Chapman. ·       In 2016, more than 3 million readers took the Goodreads Challenge and read a collective 38.1 million books this year. ·       Authors answered more than 26,000 reader questions on Goodreads in 2016. ·       The highest rated audiobook of 2016 on Audible is Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah, host of The Daily Show, and narrated by the author. ·       The bestselling audiobook of the year on Audible was The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, narrated by Claire Corbett, Louise Brealey, and India Fisher. Holiday Fun Facts: ·       Amazon.com customers purchased enough Hamilton: the Revolution collectible books and Hamilton albums to give every patron at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in New York City a copy for 96 consecutive shows. ·       Amazon.com customers purchased enough 4K TVs to reach the peak of Mount Everest more than 9 times. ·       Amazon.com customers purchased enough KitchenAid Mixers this holiday to make nearly 7.5 million cookies at once. ·       On Cyber Monday 2016, Handmade at Amazon saw a 200 percent increase in sales versus Cyber Monday 2015. ·       If each Amazon.com customer who purchased Pokémon Sun and Moon this holiday spent at least an hour a day playing the game since its release, our customers would have spent the equivalent of more than 24 thousand lunar cycles capturing Pokémon. ·       Amazon.com customers purchased enough copies of the Harry Potter: Complete 8-Film Collection to play consecutively for more than 300 years. ·       Amazon.com customers purchased enough Hasbro Connect 4 Games this holiday season to give each resident of Dallas, Texas a single disc from the game. ·       Amazon.com customers purchased enough Sphero Star Wars BB-8 App-Controlled Robots to roll as a relay around the Earth more than two times before the batteries run out. ·       Amazon.com customers purchased enough Razor Jett Heel Wheels this holiday to roll a fully loaded space shuttle to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. ·       Amazon.com customers purchased enough Wilson footballs this holiday to give every fan at a sold-out Seahawks game a chance to throw a pass like Russell Wilson. ·       Amazon.com customers purchased enough golf balls this holiday that, if lined up, would equal the length of Pebble Beach golf course four times over. ·       Amazon.com customers purchased more Marvin the Moose dog toys this holiday than the number of actual moose in New England. ·       Amazon.com customers purchased enough copies of The Secret Life of Pets that if each one were a tennis ball, they would fill Central Parkover two and a half feet deep. ·       Amazon.com delivered enough men’s jeans to fill one Olympic-size swimming pool. ·       Amazon.com customers purchased enough ugly Christmas sweaters for every seat at all three NCAA College Football Playoff games. ·       Amazon.com customers purchased enough running shoes to run 18,603 times around the globe. ·       Amazon.com customers purchased 2.5 million watches – that is a watch purchased every 1.5 seconds this holiday season. ·       Amazon.com customers purchased 10,451 carats of diamonds, which is equal to 6.5 Russian Kokoshnik Tiaras, one of the Queen of England’s most famous tiaras. ·       Amazon.com customers purchased the weight of a grizzly bear in gold and the weight of a rhinoceros in silver. ·       Amazon.com customers purchased enough Etekcity camp lanterns this holiday to replace the beacon lights on top of the Eiffel Tower nearly 11 times. ·       Amazon.com customers purchased enough luggage to fill 20 Boeing 747 airplanes. ·       Amazon.com customers purchased enough electric vehicle home charging kits to make 2,196 emissions-free trips around the globe in a year. ·       Amazon.com customers purchased enough Char-Broil’s The Big Easy Turkey Fryers to cook 225,000 pounds of turkey. Holiday Best Sellers (Amazon.com only): ·       All Categories: Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick, Fire tablet, Amazon Echo ·       Amazon Launchpad: Watch Ya’ Mouth Family Edition – The Authentic, Hilarious, Mouthguard Party Game, Tile Mate – Key Finder. Phone Finder. Anything Finder., Anki Overdrive Starter Kit ·       Audio & Accessories: Panasonic ErgoFit In-Ear Earbud Headphones, AmazonBasics 6-Outlet Surge Protector Power Strip, Sonos PLAY:1 Compact Wireless Smart Speaker for Streaming Music ·       Automotive: Hopkins Mallory 26″ Snow Brush with Foam Grip, Battery Tender Junior 12-Volt Battery Charger, Zwipes Microfiber Cleaning Cloths (36 pack) ·       Baby: Baby Einstein Take Along Tunes Musical Toy, Nuby Octopus Hoopla Bathtime Fun Toys (Purple), Baby Banana Infant Training Toothbrush and Teether (Yellow) ·       Beauty & Grooming: Philips Sonicare Essence Sonic Electric Rechargeable Toothbrush (White), Philips Norelco Multigroom Series 3100 with 5 attachments, Oral-B Pro 1000 Power Rechargeable Electric Toothbrush Powered by Braun ·       Books: Diary of a Wimpy Kid # 11: Double Down, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The Original Screenplay, First 100 Words ·       Camera: Fujifilm Instax Mini 8 Instant Film Camera, AmazonBasics 60-Inch Lightweight Tripod with Bag, GoPro HERO5 ·       Fashion: Levi’s Men’s 501 Original Fit Jean, Fossil Emma Large Zip RFID Wallet, kate spade new york Cedar Street Cami Convertible Cross-Body Bag ·       Grocery: The Original Donut Shop, Regular, Medium Extra Bold, Keurig K-Cups (72 Count), San Francisco Bay OneCup, Fog Chaser (80 Single Serve Coffees), KIND Nuts & Spices, Dark Chocolate Nuts & Sea Salt ·       Handmade: First Christmas in New Home Wood Ornament, Personalized Nameplate Gold Bar Necklace, World Travel Map Pin Board ·       Home: BLACK + DECKER 16V Cordless Lithium Hand Vac, Lasko Ceramic Heater with Adjustable Thermostat, Poo-Pourri Before-You-Go Toilet Spray 2-Ounce Bottle (Original Scent) ·       Home Improvement: WBM Himalayan Salt Lamp, 3M Indoor Window Insulator Kit, Woods Outdoor 24-Hour Photoelectric Timer ·       Home & Personal Care: AmazonBasics AA Performance Alkaline Batteries (48-pack), Bounty Select-a-Size Paper Towels, Huge Roll (12 Count), Cottonelle Ultra ComfortCare Big Roll Toilet Paper (12 Count) ·       Kitchen: RTIC 30 oz. Tumbler, Instant Pot 7-in-1 Multi-Functional Pressure Cooker (6 quart), Keurig K55 Single Serve Coffer Maker ·       Luxury Beauty: stila Stay All Day Waterproof Liquid Eye Liner, L’Occitane Shea Butter Hand Cream, BaBylissPRO Ceramix Xtreme Dryer ·       Movies: The Secret Life of Pets, Finding Dory, Harry Potter: Complete 8-Film Collection ·       Music (CDs & vinyl): A Pentatonix Christmas, Hamilton (Original Broadway Cast Recording), Blue & Lonesome ·       Musical Instruments: Blue Yeti USB Microphone, Kala Learn To Play Ukulele Starter Kit (Amazon Exclusive), Singing Machine Top Loading CDG Karaoke System with Sound and Disco Light Show ·       Outdoors: LifeStraw Personal Water Filter, Etekcity 2-pack Portable Outdoor LED Camping Lantern with 6 AA Batteries (Black, Collapsible), Yeti Coolers Rambler ·       Patio, Lawn & Garden: iDevices iGrill Mini, Bounty Hunter BHJS Junior Metal Detector, Snow Joe Telescoping Snow Broom with Ice Scraper ·       PC: SanDisk Ultra 32GB microSDHC UHS-I Card with Adapter, Seagate Expansion 1TB Portable External Hard Drive USB 3.0, AmazonBasics Mini DisplayPort (Thunderbolt) to HDMI Adapter ·       Pets: KONG Cozie Marvin the Moose Dog Toy Medium Dog Toy (Brown), GREENIES PILL POCKETS Soft Dog Treats, Chicken (Capsule, 15.8 oz), Fancy Feast Wet Cat Food – Gravy Lovers – Poultry & Beef Variety Pack, 3-Ounce Can (Pack of 24) ·       Smart Home: TP-Link Smart Plug, Philips Hue White A19 Starter Kit, Samsung SmartThings Hub ·       Sports: Spalding NBA Street Basketball, Bushnell Falcon 7×35 Binoculars w/ Case, Simply Fit Board ·       Tools: TEKTON 5941 Digital Tire Gauge, MagnoGrip 311-090 Magnetic Wristband, DEWALT DW2166 45-Piece Screwdriving Set with Tough Case ·       Toys & Games: Hasbro Pie Face Game & Pie Face Showdown Game, Scientific Explorer Mind Blowing Science Kit, Snap Circuits Jr. SC-100 Electronics Discovery Kit ·       TV: Samsung 32-Inch 1080p Smart LED TV, Avera 32-Inch 720p LED TV, Samsung 40-Inch 1080p Smart LED TV ·       Video Games: Pokémon Sun – Nintendo 3DS, Pokémon Moon – Nintendo 3DS, Final Fantasy XV – PlayStation 4 ·       Wearable Technology: Garmin vivofit Fitness Band, Garmin vívoactive HR GPS Smart Watch, Samsung Gear VR – Virtual Reality Headset ·       Wireless: AmazonBasics Apple Certified Lightning to USB Cable (6 Feet), WeMo Light Switch, Samsung Wireless Charging Pad About Amazon Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are some of the products and services pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit www.amazon.com/about.

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Another great holiday season for Amazon, and with much less controversy than last year (when there were concerns expressed about items selling out)!

Do you have any thoughts on this? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

Join thousands of readers and try the free The Measured Circle magazine at Flipboard !

All aboard our new The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project! Join the TMCGTT Timeblazers!

When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help! By the way, it’s been interesting lately to see Amazon remind me to “start at AmazonSmile” if I check a link on the original Amazon site. I do buy from AmazonSmile, but I have a lot of stored links I use to check for things.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the The Measured Circle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

 

Amazon’s Q3 financials: overwhelmingly up…and the stock went down

Amazon’s Q3 financials: overwhelmingly up…and the stock went down

You gotta love investors: for them, every silver lining has a cloud. 😉

I’m just kidding…I would never pretend to be qualified to judge investors. I’m definitely a layperson there. I would much rather have a reliable 3% than take a shot at 10% or nothing. I love playing games, and I can be a risktaker there. When my family goes to the racetrack for holidays (which we do), I actually follow a risky strategy. We all just bet essentially a minimum ($5 a race) and we split winnings. I bet some long shots…and might win one long shot out of eight races (but win maybe $30).  I’m typically close to break even at the end of the day (but we definitely come out ahead socially, with all the time to talk to family we may not see that often). Our now adult kid had a system growing up that would win virtually every race…but small amounts. We usually come out pretty close between the two of us. Family finances, though? I want predictability and reliability, not great for at stock player.

It feels to me, though, like some investors are like some managers (and I’ve trained managers). They suspect that everyone is hiding negative things, and if they get the slightest hint that something is bad, they assume they’ve uncovered previously hidden mass failure/corruption.

Amazon announced their third quarter financials yesterday:

• press release
• conference call slides
• webcast recording
• Seeking Alpha conference call transcript

Generally, things were very good. Sales year over year (comparing this quarter in 2016 to the same quarter in 2015…y/y) were up 29%. Net income more than tripled.

Yes, in the international segment, net income was down, while sales were up…I believe that’s largely due to investment in India.

Amazon invests…a lot. During an investment phase, you spend more money, with the intent to make more money as a result (that’s basically what investment means). Amazon is always in an investment phase somewhere. After more than a decade, that is now paying off in North America. They’ve made very few investments which didn’t pay off eventually (the Fire Phone being a notable exception, as well as an early auction site…but those are more than matched by successful investments).

According to this

CNN Money graph

the stock lost value yesterday…although it is up more than 20% for the year.

The stock loss may be more of a reaction to Amazon not doing as well as people expected…that’s what the blogosphere says.

As what should probably be the Amazon Investors webpage motto would say: “Give it time.” 😉

Now, the press release did something the conference call didn’t do this time (which was interesting)…it bragged about Amazon’s developments.

This short excerpt had one of the most intriguing parts for me:

“Alexa may be Amazon’s most loved invention yet — literally — with over 250,000 marriage proposals from customers and counting,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon. “And she’s just getting better. Because Alexa’s brain is in the cloud, we can easily and continuously add to her capabilities and make her more useful — wait until you see some of the surprises the team is working on now.”

A quarter of a million people have proposed marriage…to an artificial intelligence construct. 🙂 People have loved their cars…but I don’t think “marriage” best describes that relationship. 😉 Marriage implies a component of intellectual and emotional exchange, and demonstrates that people think of Alexa as a “social actor”.

Those surprises? There are two directions: more capabilities and more access to capabilities. I think we’ll see both…Alexa in more places, and more things it can do. They’ve just directly connected the

Logitech Harmony Home Control – 8 Devices (White) (at AmazonSmile*))

I need to test that out yet, to see if it has more capabilities than what I do now going through IFTTT (If This Then That).

Alexa still needs to control my

Amazon Fire TV (at AmazonSmile*)

directly through the Echo…although they gave it a lot more voice control through its own voice control.

One thing that won’t be a surprise is a social chatbot…that’s the goal of the current

Alexa Prize competition

although we won’t see the results of that for more than a year.

In the press release, Amazon did talk about e-books and reading devices…that’s a good thing. 🙂

Of course, the retail segment is just a part of what Amazon does…there may have been more concern about competitors to AWS (Amazon Web Services); that came up in one of the questions.

I’m sure many of you are wiser about the stock market than I am: what do you think? Feel free to tell me and my readers by commenting on this post.

Join thousands of readers and try the free ILMK magazine at Flipboard!

All aboard our new The Measured Circle’s Geek Time Trip at The History Project! Do you have what it takes to be a Timeblazer?

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get.  Shop ’til you help!  By the way, it’s been interesting lately to see Amazon remind me to “start at AmazonSmile” if I check a link on the original Amazon site. I do buy from AmazonSmile, but I have a lot of stored links I use to check for things.