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Amazon Prime Will Soon Be More Popular Than Cable TV (recode.net)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Recode: Someday soon, more U.S. households will be subscribers of Amazon Prime than cable or satellite TV, according to recent estimates of Amazon's popular shipping and entertainment service. According to estimates from Morningstar, nearly 79 million U.S. households now have an Amazon Prime membership*, up from around 66 million at the end of last year. That compares to a projected 90 million U.S. households that will pay for cable or satellite TV this year, according to S&P Global. According to these estimates, more U.S. households may have an Amazon Prime subscription than a pay TV subscription as soon as next year. The implication here is not that Amazon's Prime Video service is more popular than TV; the main reason most people subscribe to Amazon Prime is still the fast delivery of products.
I canceled my subscription when they started adding all of the other features. If they want my business again, they can offer separate services at lower individual prices.
So, you cancelled your Amazon Prime subscription at $99 per year because it was getting better with more added services?
Isn't that like saying that you don't want the car with the leather seats, blind-spot warning, and backup camera for the same price as the basic model simply because there are too many features? I guess I'm missing something...
Subscribers does not mean popular. It comes with flat rate shipping. This is not comparable to just cable, Netflix, Hulu, etc. The selection is awful sparing a few shows and movies, I never look to Amazon for my streaming entertainment.
Choosing the lesser of two evils is a choice for evil.
"They don't like paying over $100/month for a pretty basic package loaded with useless channels? Fuck 'em. Watch them cry when they invite friends over to their house."
"They didn't pay their bill on time? Fuck 'em. Cut off their service immediately, even if the big game was on."
"They're having service problems? We'll send someone over at OUR convenience. They better be home all day because our guys have lots of stops to make and they can't make appointments."
"They want to cancel their service? Don't let them. Turn them over to sales reps armed with scripts that will given them some short-term discount so they'll stay, and don't take no for an answer."
This conflates accessibility with actual use under the term "popularity". I have yet to hear anyone say, "hey, did you watch that show on Amazon Prime?" but I've heard plenty of people talking about stuff on cable tv. Similarly, I have yet to hear anyone talk about how they eat their own shit for dinner despite 100% of people having access to their own shit. -_-
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Also worth noting that their UI is atrocious.
I dare you to try to find something to watch.
It's a struggle to sift out Prime content from rental content from digital purchase content.
The entire time you're trying to find something, you have to be vigilant to ensure that the things you are looking at are in fact included with Prime. Just browsing to find something interesting isn't an option, like with cable TV.
It's not impossible, but it does depend on the details involved. Amazon's shipping money doesn't just come from Prime, it also charges the businesses that are offering their products as Prime Eligible.
Indeed, on some items you can pretty blatantly see the hidden pricing... just look at any Prime Eligible item that is also available as an add-on item.
I don't know if this is enough to make up for every possible pattern of shipment, but I think there are definitely some patterns of weekly shipments that Amazon can still profit off of. It really depends what you're ordering.