Amazon released its second-quarter financial results, and the company continues to amass enormous windfalls from across its diverse range of products and services. Alexa was a key factor in the conglomerate’s business updates from the period, and will likely continue to be a focus in their financial success too.
Net sales for the quarter totaled $52.9 billion, up 39% from $38 billion in the year-ago period. Quarterly net income reached $2.5 billion, or $5.07 per diluted share, compared with $197 million, or 40 cents per diluted share, in the second quarter of 2017.
“We want customers to be able to use Alexa wherever they are,” Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said. “There are now tens of thousands of developers across more than 150 countries building new devices using the Alexa Voice Service, and the number of Alexa-enabled devices has more than tripled in the past year.”
Highlights from the period included several Alexa-related developments. Both the voice platform and the Echo smart speaker product line launched in France. Echo Spot also rolled out in India and Japan. Later this year, Alexa and Echo are expected to launch in Italy, Mexico, and Spain.
Alexa has been updated with new features, such as additional ways to make the platform more accessible for blind and visually impaired users, information around major current events such as the royal wedding and the World Cup, and Remember This for recording important dates and information. There are now more than 45,000 skills from third-party developers in the Alexa Skills store. Alexa is also supported on more than 13,000 smart home devices.