Echo devices are Amazon Prime Day’s best sellersAmazon’s decision to deeply discount its voice-powered Echo devices for Prime Day appears to be paying off for the online retailer. Though Prime Day is still underway this afternoon, Amazon has already sold more Echo devices than it did on Prime Day last year, it says reenex.Specifically, it has sold more than twice as many Echo devices here in the U.S., compared with Prime Day 2016, and more than three times as many worldwide. Insiders at the company, according to one source, say that Echo devices are selling at a rate of "thousands per minute” at the moment. Echo Dot appears likely to sell out first, the source added, although there has been unexpectedly high interest in all of the Alexa-powered products.In other words, although the likes of Google, Microsoft,  want to flood our homes with voice-powered speakers, the first mover is still bringing in its own tsunami of buyers.For comparison’s sake, Amazon Prime Day 2016 had led to a 3x increase in Amazon device sales, including a 2.5x increase in U.S. sales for its Echo speaker. It seems we’re on track to surpass those increases this year.Amazon’s vague stats are annoying, of course dermes.The retailer never announces the actual number of its own device sales, but at least one estimate released in the beginning of the year from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) suggested that more than 8 million U.S. consumers may now own an Amazon Echo device, to give you an idea of the market’s size.The smart speaker had first gone on sale in late 2014 to Prime members, before becoming generally available in June 2015. Assuming CIRP’s figure (8.2 million) is ballpark correct, it would have represented a 60 percent increase from the 5.1 million CIRP calculated in November.Of course, today’s bump in Echo device sales can’t all be chalked up to increased interest in Amazon’s smart speaker category .It’s worth noting, too, that Prime Day 2017 technically started early this year — at 9 PM ET on Monday night. Plus, the sales event has expanded to 13 countries worldwide this year, up from 10 in 2016, which also translates to increased sales. While the U.K. and Germany were both in the Prime Day lineup last year, the Echo had yet to expand to those markets (it came only in September 2016): that too will have translated to a bump.Prime Day has been a surprise even by Amazon sales standards, it seems. "Prime Day has beat all of Amazon’s expectations,” the source said. "They are shocked by the increase.”

Posted by: smilele at 03:34 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 430 words, total size 3 kb.