Jeff Bezos is understandably all sorts of self-congratulatory in the annual shareholder letter Amazon released today. The note is full of all manner of large numbers, including, perhaps most notably, 100 million. Amazon has exceeded that number of Prime subscribers globally, 13 years after the service launched as a free shipping offering.
It’s no surprise, really. In spite of some recent price hikes, the company keeps layering incentives on top of the plan. The list now includes access to video, music, Kindle books and a six-month subscription to the Bezos-owned Washington Post. From the looks of it, the company will also be adding Whole Foods deals to the pile in the very near future. Oh, the joys of conglomeration.
According to Bezos, Amazon shipped north of five billion items with Prime globally in 2017. India, one of the most recent countries to get Prime, is also the largest growing market for Amazon at the moment, adding “more members in India in its first year than any previous geography in Amazon’s history,” according to the letter. The company has been pumping investments into the country of late, launching its music service there in February, along with a “lite” version of its Android web browser, just this week.
