Amazon Prime has reached a new milestone. Amazon Prime is an online video-on-demand service. It has reached a user base of 200 million worldwide. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said that the platform saw a massive jump in users during the pandemic, almost a rise of 50 million. Several OTT platforms saw new users subscribing to their subscriptions during the pandemic. Bezos made the revelation in his final annual letter to the company shareholders. Bezos’s letter comes days ahead of him stepping down from the post. He will now serve as executive chairman after leaving the CEO’s chair. He will be replaced by Andy Jassy. Jassy’s current role is at Amazon Web Series where he serves as the CEO.
As an executive chairman, Bezos will work on the company’s side projects. According to Bezos’ letter, the company hired 500,000 employees last year. Amazon currently provides direct employment to 1.3 million people globally. He added that Amazon Prime has now more than 200 million subscribers. He said that Web Services has millions of customers. The year 2020 ended with over USD 50 billion annualized run rate. As many as 1.9 million businesses sell their products in the Amazon store. These small and medium businesses comprise approximately 60 percent of Amazon’s total retail sales. More than 100 million customers have connected smart devices to its virtual assistant service Alexa.
Bezos in the latter underlined that he has created a wealth of USD 1.6 trillion for those who own Amazon’s share. He is the biggest shareholder of Amazon. He founded Amazon 27 years ago as an online bookstore. He later expanded its reach by making building it into a shopping and entertainment behemoth. Bezos is holding the CEO’s chair since he founded the company. Bezos said as he vacates the CEO’s office, he will continue to have a broad influence over the company’s businesses and functioning. Bezos also owns Blue Origin which is a space exploration firm. The company is bidding for NASA’s vehicle that will take humans to Moon. Besides, Bezos has a handsome stake in Washington Post.
