Fire TV Sticks, Echo Dots Lead Amazon Sales; Revenue Jumps 38% to $61 Billion

Amazon customers bought “tens of millions” Fire TV Sticks and Echo Dots, the best-selling products last year for the e-commerce giant, it said Thursday in its Q4 earnings release. Sales jumped 38 percent to $60.5 billion in Q4, with net income of $1.9 billion vs. $749 million. The company exceeded “very optimistic” projections and “expect us to double down,” said CEO Jeff Bezos. He cited “an important point” where other companies and developers are “accelerating adoption of Alexa,” with more than 30,000 skills from outside developers allowing users to control more than 4,000 smart home devices from 1,200 brands. Amazon is seeing a strong response to its new far-field voice kit for manufacturers, he said. Alexa integration announcements at CES included PCs from HP, Acer, Asus and Lenovo; an automotive integration with Toyota; and new devices from Polk Audio, Anker and Jabra, said the company. Outside of the U.S., Amazon launched new Alexa experiences for customers in Japan, India, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, it said, and expanded Alexa, Echo and Amazon Music Unlimited to 30 additional countries over the year. Shares Friday closed up 3 percent to $1,429.95.