NPR – April 18, 2018
For years, this has been one of Amazon’s biggest secrets: how many people pay for the Prime membership.
A big round number appears to have prompted CEO Jeff Bezos to finally lift the veil: “13 years post-launch, we have exceeded 100 million paid Prime members globally,” he wrote in this year’s letter to shareholders.
He added that in 2017, more new members joined Prime than in any other year. The membership generally costs $99 a year in the U.S. and lures people in with free two-day shipping and access to video and music streaming. Last year and earlier this year, Amazon added discounted Prime rates for recipients of Medicaid and government assistance programs.
Prime subscribers are known to be more lucrative to Amazon, estimated to spend twice as much money every year than non-members, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. Analysts have been projecting the number of Amazon’s paid subscribers as around 65 million to 85 million, while the company had historically just referred to “tens of millions.”
In a letter to shareholders released in 2016, Bezos wrote: “We want Prime to be such a good value, you’d be irresponsible not to be a member.”