While Facebook managed the tragic performance of losing more than $100 billion in 24 hours after posting its Q2 earnings, Amazon boasted impressive numbers in terms of employees…and Alexa mentions.
Since 2017, Amazon has increased its workforce by a whopping 51%, hitting a staggering number of 575,700 employees this quarter. While it is a huge figure, it’s not shocking, since Amazon has bet big on the gig economy since its early days and most of its workforce is either seasonal or on a contractor basis.
✍Also read: Amazon Prime Day Met with Worker Strikes✍
What was really special about this call, which revealed a 132% increase in advertising revenue ($2.2 billion), was the number of times the word “Alexa” was uttered and why.
Collin Davis, general manager of Alexa for Business, revealed that he starts around 70% of meetings using the voice assistant.
Amazon, for its part, already uses Alexa for more than 700 of its conference rooms. And that’s just internally. The company also revealed that the number of Alexa-enabled smart home devices or vehicles has jumped to 13,000. Indeed, Amazon is pushing hard for Alexa adoption and the promotion of Echo devices.
As QZ.com pointed out, in the earnings release from Amazon, the word “Alexa” appears 31 times, more than “Prime” (30 times), and as many times as “AWS”, Amazon’s cloud engine.
Perhaps if they say it often enough, people will forget the results of this test that compares just how smart these smart assistants are?
In any case, if you’re looking for cold hard numbers, here’s the summary of the reveal:
“Net sales increased 39% to $52.9 billion in the second quarter, compared with $38.0 billion in second quarter 2017. Excluding the $760 million favorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales increased 37% compared with second quarter 2017.”
Jeff Bezos certainly won’t lose his spot in the top billionaires anytime soon.
Also read: ✍Walmart and Microsoft Join Forces In An Attempt To Take Down Amazon✍
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