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Amazon rides crest of a profits and sales wave

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By John Glenday, Reporter

April 29, 2016 | 2 min read

Online retailer Amazon has posted a healthy $513m profit for the first quarter on the back of a 28 per cent jump in sales which hit $29.1bn for the three months to March.

Bumper sales of both Kindle e-readers and Fire tablets, as well as strong subscriber numbers for its Prime service, helped Amazon on its way for the period as sales of both exceeded the expectations of cautious analysts.

Chief executive Jeff Bezos said: “Amazon devices are the top selling products on Amazon, and customers purchased more than twice as many Fire tablets than first quarter last year."

The tech firm was further bolstered by another creditable performance from its cloud services unit, which rents out storage space and services to businesses via the cloud. Here revenues rose by a heady 64 per cent year-on-year to reach $2.5bn.

Amazon has invested heavily in adding new television shows and films as well as introducing a new pay monthly option to tempt more consumers to take the plunge as it seeks to better compete with the likes of Netflix and Hulu.

Amazon’s success has settled the nerves of some tech investors who have been rattled by the recent performance of Apple and Microsoft which both posted disappointing earnings.

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