It’s the day after Amazon’s Prime Day, and reports are already coming out that the eCommerce giant is on its way to breaking its previous sales records.
With third-party sellers moving 50 percent more product by noon as the same time in 2016 and consumers ordering three times as many Echo-family speakers, analysts are speculating that Amazon has surpassed last year’s $500-million sales mark.
There have been no official sales numbers released by the eCommerce giant, but anyone who participated in Prime Day was required to purchase memberships, which may have added to the potentially big pay day win for Amazon.
Some industry experts are pointing to Amazon’s Echo as one of the main driving factors of its Prime Day success because the voice-activated devices are growing in popularity.
Research firm eMarketer has projected the use of voice-controlled devices to significantly increase this year, doubling to 35.6 million in use. eMarketer analyst Victoria Petrock highlights this in her comment to Reuters. “The voice-controlled assistant market is hot right now, and by offering a reasonably priced device that does a lot of things – and the promise of many more skills to come – Amazon is positioning itself as a leader in this market.”
Competitors like Best Buy are not projected to do as well as Amazon on its Prime Day due to the big-box store’s prices still about 27 percent higher for overlapping tech products.