AFP, San Francisco :
Amazon on Thursday reported its profits had more than doubled in the past quarter as company founder Jeff Bezos heaped praise on the performance of its Alexa digital assistant. Net profit more than doubled to $1.9 billion, compared with $749 million a year earlier, for the US online giant which has expanded from retail to video to cloud computing and other services.
Overall revenues for Amazon rose 38 percent from last year to $60.5 billion.
The growth was even more impressive considering Amazon set aside $789 million to cover taxes on repatriated earnings, taking advantage of a favorable rate under a new law passed by Congress. While Amazon offered only limited details on the reasons for growth, Bezos said a big factor was Alexa-the name given to the artificial intelligence program powering its speakers and adopted by makers of cars, appliances and other connected devices.
“Our 2017 projections for Alexa were very optimistic, and we far exceeded them,” Bezos said in a statement.
“We’ve reached an important point where other companies and developers are accelerating adoption of Alexa,” he said.
“There are now over 30,000 skills from outside developers, customers can control more than 4,000 smart home devices from 1,200 unique brands with Alexa, and we’re seeing strong response to our new far-field voice kit for manufacturers.”
Amazon’s success in expanding into new sectors and markets has made Bezos the world’s richest individual, and the last report suggests growth is accelerating.
Shares in Amazon jumped six percent in after-hours trade to $1,474. One of the big profit centers for Amazon has been its cloud computing division called Amazon Web Services.
Amazon on Thursday reported its profits had more than doubled in the past quarter as company founder Jeff Bezos heaped praise on the performance of its Alexa digital assistant. Net profit more than doubled to $1.9 billion, compared with $749 million a year earlier, for the US online giant which has expanded from retail to video to cloud computing and other services.
Overall revenues for Amazon rose 38 percent from last year to $60.5 billion.
The growth was even more impressive considering Amazon set aside $789 million to cover taxes on repatriated earnings, taking advantage of a favorable rate under a new law passed by Congress. While Amazon offered only limited details on the reasons for growth, Bezos said a big factor was Alexa-the name given to the artificial intelligence program powering its speakers and adopted by makers of cars, appliances and other connected devices.
“Our 2017 projections for Alexa were very optimistic, and we far exceeded them,” Bezos said in a statement.
“We’ve reached an important point where other companies and developers are accelerating adoption of Alexa,” he said.
“There are now over 30,000 skills from outside developers, customers can control more than 4,000 smart home devices from 1,200 unique brands with Alexa, and we’re seeing strong response to our new far-field voice kit for manufacturers.”
Amazon’s success in expanding into new sectors and markets has made Bezos the world’s richest individual, and the last report suggests growth is accelerating.
Shares in Amazon jumped six percent in after-hours trade to $1,474. One of the big profit centers for Amazon has been its cloud computing division called Amazon Web Services.
