Amazon

We recently tested four smart speakers by asking Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, and Cortana 800 questions each. Google Assistant was able to answer 88% of them correctly vs. Siri at 75%, Alexa at 73%, and Cortana at 63%. Last year,…

We were wrong in predicting Amazon would acquire Target in 2018. It was the boldest of our 8 predictions for the year, and it was incorrect. However, we continue to believe the combination makes sense because Amazon needs to acquire a Target-like footprint…

On June 16, 2017, at 9:01 am ET, Amazon announced its agreement to acquire Whole Foods Market for $13.7B. Four minutes later, Walmart announced its agreement to acquire online brand Bonobos for $310M. While the announcements were coincidental, the strategies…

Amazon announced today that it is testing Alexa Answers, a program that crowdsources responses to questions that Alexa currently doesn’t have answers to. One of the principal issues with voice assistants is that they can do a lot, but not…

The TwitchCon 2018 keynote (Friday 10/26) shared impressive engagement metrics for the platform. There were 18.2B chat messages and whispers sent, 85M cheers and subscriptions, 3.2B interactions with extensions, and 150M clips created. Leading up to TwitchCon, we did a…

We think Twitch will pay streamers almost $75M in 2018 and see that number expanding to $180M by 2020. We tested streaming on Twitch to get a better sense of what it takes to be a streamer and reach Twitch’s…

We recently surveyed 520 consumers about smart speakers and found that over 45% of respondents own at least one smart speaker. 9% of smart speaker owners surveyed owned more than one. In a similar survey earlier this year, only 27%…

Amazon has reached a $1 trillion market cap for two reasons. First, the company has a relentless focus on “delighting the customer.” Second, Jeff Bezos has investor support to run Amazon for the long-term at the cost of near-term profitability, allowing…

We’re investing in Skupos as a play on our vision of the future of retail. Skupos’ real-time inventory data fundamentally changes the game for convenience stores (c-stores), distributors, and brands. Automated retail and same day delivery are the future of commerce, and…

We asked Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, and Cortana 800 questions each. This time, Google Assistant was able to answer 86% of them correctly vs. Siri at 79%, Alexa at 61%, and Cortana at 52%. As part of our ongoing effort…

Amazon Prime Day — one of Amazon’s greatest inventions — starts on Monday, June 16th at 12 PM PT. Prime Day 2018 will last 36 hours (+6 hours y/y) and will be available in 17 countries (4 more than last…

As we hit the halfway point of 2018, we wanted to check in on one of our boldest predictions for the year: Amazon will acquire Target in 2018. So far, we’ve been wrong. Getting the timing correct is difficult, and every…