Jeff Bezos is really, really happy with Alexa
Amazon crushed 2017, financially. But looking ahead, CEO Jeff Bezos wants us all to focus on one name: Alexa.
Alexa may not be the main driver of Amazon's revenue — that's Amazon Web Services (AWS) and online commerce — but the voice assistant is getting the spotlight for growing Amazon's brand in 2017 and being a focus in the year ahead.
“Our 2017 projections for Alexa were very optimistic, and we far exceeded them. We don’t see positive surprises of this magnitude very often — expect us to double down,” Bezos said in a prepared statement accompanying the company's fourth quarter of 2017 earnings report.
“We’ve reached an important point where other companies and developers are accelerating adoption of Alexa. There are now over 30,000 skills from outside developers, customers can control more than 4,000 smart home devices from 1,200 unique brands with Alexa, and we’re seeing strong response to our new far-field voice kit for manufacturers. Much more to come and a huge thank you to our customers and partners," Bezos continued.
Unfortunately, Bezos didn't share many details on how exactly Alexa beat their projections and what they have planned for her next.
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The report said Amazon's Echo Dot, along with Fire TV stick, were its best-selling products and that customers purchased "tens of millions" of Echo devices in 2017.
Overall, Amazon's quarterly earnings beat projections, sending the stock up by more than 5 percent in after-hours trading. The company brought in $60.5 billion in revenue for the quarter. AWS accounted for $5.11 billion of that total.
For all of 2017, Amazon garnered $177.9 billion in sales, up 31 percent from the year prior. Amazon continues to be profitable despite its ambitious acquisitions, such as Whole Foods last year, and major investments in the entertainment and music industries.
Amazon's profits were $1.9 billion over the quarter. Comparing year over year, Amazon's profits did drop by 2 percent.
What's next?
Beyond Alexa, 2018 is also all about Prime, Amazon's membership program. The team noted Prime video, Prime Now, and Amazon Fresh as three core incentivizes during its earnings call with investors on Thursday.
When Amazon purchased Whole Foods in August, the tech giant immediately slashed prices. It doesn't plan on stopping.
"Our focus has been on continuing to lower prices."
"So far our focus has been on continuing to lower prices," said Brian Olsavsky, Amazon's chief financial officer. "We've launched Whole Foods products on our Amazon website and the technical work on making Prime a Whole Foods customer rewards program."
Amazon is known to focus on the customer, and more of those customers are becoming businesses. AWS is growing, the executives noted, and Amazon also recently launched Alexa for Business. Yes, more Alexa. You can also listen to and watch "her" in Amazon's Super Bowl commercial this week.
Topics Alexa Amazon Amazon Echo
Kerry Flynn is a business reporter for Mashable covering the tech industry. She previously reported on social media companies, mobile apps and startups for International Business Times. She has also written for The Huffington Post, Forbes and Money magazine. Kerry studied environmental science and economics at Harvard College, where she led The Harvard Crimson's metro news and design teams and played mellophone in the Band. When not listening to startup pitches, she runs half-marathons, plays with puppies and pretends to like craft beer.
