Amazon posts 29 percent increase in sales to $56.6 billion in Q3 this year

Riding on its Cloud business, retail giant Amazon.com saw its net sales increasing 29 percent to $56.6 billion in the third quarter this year, compared with $43.7 billion in third quarter of 2017. [caption id=“attachment_4318131” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”] Representational image.[/caption] Operating income increased to $3.7 billion in the third quarter, compared with operating income of $347 million in the third quarter of 2017. Net income increased to $2.9 billion in the third quarter, or $5.75 per diluted share, compared with net income of $256 million, or $0.52 per diluted share, in the third quarter of 2017. “Amazon Business has now reached a $10 billion annual sales run rate and is serving millions of private and public-sector organisations in eight countries,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder, and CEO. “We’re not slowing down — Amazon Business is adding customers rapidly, including large educational institutions, local governments, and more than half of the Fortune 100,” Bezos said in a statement. Amazon gave fourth-quarter revenue guidance in the range of $66.5 billion and $72.5 billion. Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced several new customer commitments and major migrations during the quarter. In the third quarter, Amazon introduced a new family of Echo smart home speaker devices. Amazon also introduced the all-new Fire HD 8 tablet, featuring an 8-inch HD display, a quad-core processor, 16 GB of internal storage with support for up to 400 GB more via microSD, up to 10 hours of mixed use battery life, and hands-free access to Alexa. The number of Alexa-compatible smart home devices has quintupled year to date to more than 20,000 devices from over 3,500 brands. Through new tools, including updated Alexa Smart Home Skill APIs and the Alexa Connect Kit, developers and device makers can enable voice control of any device and feature with Alexa. Amazon India also announced the launch of Amazon.in in Hindi. Amazon Business is generating $10 billion in annual sales, serving hundreds of thousands of business sellers and millions of customers across eight countries.