Amazon Says It Added 3M Prime Members In The Week Before Christmas

Amazon is a company famous for press releases that are devoid of actual information. (As we saw after Thanksgiving this month.) But, in a moment of selective truth-telling, the company just revealed that it signed up over three million members for its Prime program during the week before Christmas.

There are caveats, of course, as ever.

Amazon confirmed to Geekwire that this figure refers to new trial and paying members. So the actual number retained as ongoing, paying members may prove to be lower. (This is the case with over services that offer free trials, such as Apple Music.)

The company just gave a figure for the third week of December — which, in case you forgot, is right before Christmas falls — so we’re unable to gauge how much more popular the service was than a more normal week. Offering free shipping is clearly most appealing during last-minute Christmas shopping time.

(Fwiw, last year, Amazon said it added 10 million new Prime members over the entire “holiday period.)

And finally, in typical Amazon fashion, there is no word on the total number of subscribers that the service has, although it was apparently a “record-breaking holiday season.”

“Amazon Prime membership continues to grow, and there are tens of millions of members worldwide,” the company added.

But the three million figure does give a small glimpse into the service’s popularity.

The $99 per year Prime service gives Amazon customers free-shipping for Amazon.com products, other shopping perks and access to its Prime video service.

Netflix, which rivals Amazon on the latter, has 69 million customers across 60 countries worldwide. Amazon Prime Video is only available in the U.S., UK, Austria, Germany and (recently added) Japan, however, though Prime membership services are supported in more countries.

That’s the most meaningful part of Amazon’s holiday announcement. Other carefully selected metrics — some of which include no actual, raw figures and therefore give little to no insight — include:

• Nearly 70 percent of Amazon.com customers shopped using a mobile device this holiday — last year that was approaching 60 percent, but we don’t know how many went beyond browsing and actually bought items via mobile
• Prime members made The Man in the High Castle the most watched TV season on Prime Video this holiday by 4.5x and doubled their total viewing hours of Prime Video titles, compared to 2014
• Biggest holiday ever for Amazon Devices – up 2x over last year’s record-setting holiday


• Over 200 million more items shipped for free with Prime this holiday season
• Prime Now has busiest day ever on Christmas Eve
• • Amazon shipped to 185 countries this holiday
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Alibaba To Invest $1.25B In Restaurant Delivery Service Ele.me, Says Report

Alibaba will reportedly invest $1.25 billion in Ele.me, a food delivery service based in Shanghai, says financial news site Caixin (link via Google Translate). The deal would Alibaba the startup’s biggest shareholder, with a 27.7 percent stake.

According to Crunchbase, Ele.me has raised about $1.09 billion dollars. Its list of investors is noteworthy because it includes Alibaba rivals Tencent and JD.com. Ele.me’s largest round, a $630 million Series F, was announced in August.

If the deal goes through, it strengthens Alibaba’s O2O strategy. O2O, which can stand for online-to-offline or offline-to-online, is shorthand for the business of convincing e-commerce customers to spend money at offline businesses or, on the other hand, getting customers who usually shop in brick-and-mortar stores to make online purchases.

Alibaba’s other O2O investments include its affiliate Alipay, China’s largest mobile payments platform, electronics retail chain Suning, and taxi app Didi Kuaidi.

Here are the Asus smartphones that will get the Android 6.0 Marshmallow update

Ever since Google released Android 6.0 Marshmallow, many manufacturers such as HTC, Motorola, Sony came up with their list of devices that will get the update. Following the trend, Asus has also announced the names of its smartphones that will get the latest Android 6.0 update.

Here are the Asus devices that will get the Android 6.0 Marshmallow update:

• PadFoneS (PF500KL)
• ZenFone 2 (ZE550ML/ZE551ML)
• ZenFone 2 Deluxe / Special Edition (ZE551ML)
• ZenFone 2 Laser (ZE500KG/ZE500KL/ZE550KL/ZE600KL/ZE601KL)
• ZenFone Selfie (ZD551KL)

Asus has not revealed whether it will add more devices to the list in the coming days. The model numbers of Asus phones mentioned above should be taken into account, as Asus has many variants of a single device, and it varies them by model numbers. The company needs to simplify its device naming. Moreover, the company has also not mentioned any launch timeline for the update roll out to the devices mentioned above. We hope Asus will come up with more information about the update timeline soon.

Alibaba Rival JD.com Opens Its First U.S. Office In Silicon Valley

JD.com’s market share isn’t as large as Alibaba Group and it doesn’t enjoy the same high profile in the U.S. yet, but it’s eager to change that. The e-commerce company, one of China’s largest with 118 million active users, opened its first office in the U.S. yesterday.

Based in Santa Clara, the location not only has a research and development lab, but will also liaison with American companies as JD.com grows its cross-border retail business. The Santa Clara office is still hiring, but JD.com expects it to have about 100 employees.

The sale of imported goods, which have a reputation for better quality and safety standards, to affluent Chinese consumers remains an important vertical for e-commerce companies even as the country’s economy slows.

JD.com launched a platform for U.S. brands in July. The company hasn’t disclosed exact figures yet, but spokesman Josh Gartner says the number of brands on it is expanding rapidly and that North American products are the most popular imported items among its customers.

Gartner told TechCrunch that having an office in Silicon Valley will allow JD.com to attract more engineers and give its employees flexibility about where they are based. It will also brings JD.com closer to potential partners in Silicon Valley as it builds its big data technology, which will help its predictive algorithms not only deliver more accurate recommendations to shoppers, but also figure out what users in different neighborhoods are likely to order. 

Since JD.com operates its own logistics network, this will help it improve its delivery network and warehouses.