The eCommerce giant announced Tuesday (July 30) that it made more than 5 billion same-day or next-day deliveries so far this year, up more than 30% year over year and a company record.

Most of the 5 billion items were delivered “on behalf of independent sellers using Fulfillment by Amazon,” the company said in a news release. “More than 60% of the units sold in Amazon’s store come from independent sellers.”

Amazon says it reached this goal by expanding its same-day delivery service to more than 120 metro areas in the U.S., shortening the distance deliveries had to travel by regionalizing its fulfillment network.

The company announced last year that it was doubling its same-day delivery centers, along with plans to recruit smaller, local businesses to assist in its last-mile delivery efforts.

In addition, the company says it has also improved inventory placement and ensured that in-demand products are stocked locally and in the proper buildings for each region.

The 5 billion figure is up from the 2 billion-plus number the company reported for the first quarter of 2024 in April.

PYMNTS last week wrote about Amazon Prime as an example of “product market fit,” the concept of recognizing the importance of aligning products with market demands.

“Many loyalty initiatives flounder because they focus inwardly on the program mechanics rather than outwardly on understanding genuine customer needs,” that report said.

Prime, launched in 2005, was originally designed to ease customer frustration with shipping times, focusing at first on delivering the loyalty program perks that its top customers desired, gradually expanding its offerings as time went on.

“Amazon listened to its customers, understood their pain points, and continually invested to acquire and retain more members and transform them into brand advocates,” PYMNTS wrote.

“The emphasis here is on investing in the customer rather than the product. In today’s landscape, instant gratification holds heightened significance, particularly evident in subscription loyalty programs like Amazon Prime, where members receive instant benefits. Amazon Prime members spend nearly twice as much annually compared to non-Prime members.”

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The paid tier will offer a version of the voice assistant that has been dubbed “Remarkable Alexa,” is built on a new tech stack and offers greater capabilities, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Tuesday (July 23), citing unnamed sources.

Remarkable Alexa will incorporate more generative artificial intelligence (AI) than the current version of the voice assistant and will provide users with more seamless control of smart home devices by using their voice, according to the report.

“Alexa is about to get a lot smarter,” Jeff Bezos said in December 2023 during a podcast interview, hinting that a new version may be on the way, per the report.

The company has not yet determined a price for the new paid tier, the report said.

The development of Remarkable Alexa began when Amazon CEO Andy Jassy urged teams to find a way to monetize Alexa and Amazon’s Echo speakers, according to the report.

Currently, although hundreds of millions of people own Alexa-enabled devices, the Echo speakers are not delivering a payoff for the company because people are using them for free apps, the report said.

Jassy’s effort to monetize the devices and the voice assistant mark a change from Amazon founder’s Jeff Bezos’s strategy to develop devices based on “downstream impact,” or DSI, per the report.

That strategy allowed selling devices at cost or at a loss if they generated sales down the line — as when the sale of a Kindle eReader leads to the sale of eBooks to read on that device, according to the report.

The DSI strategy has not paid off in the case of Echo because customers have used it primarily for free services such as checking the weather rather than to place a meaningful amount of eCommerce orders, the report said.

An Amazon spokeswoman told the WSJ that the company’s devices business has established profitable businesses and is prepared to continue doing so, per the report.

“Hundreds of millions of Amazon devices are used by customers around the world, and to us, there is not greater measure of success,” the spokeswoman said in the report.

Amazon has been clear about its intentions to charge a subscription for a tiered Alexa service since September 2023, and improvements to voice technology driven by AI may force the issue, PYMNTS reported in April.

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In the wake of the outage, eCommerce retailers have themselves in an unfortunate position. The disruption impacted shipping giants UPS and FedEx, leading them to warn consumers about potential delays, which could impact merchants’ ability to meet their customers’ demand for fast and reliable delivery.

For Amazon’s part, Prime Day deliveries may also be delayed. For instance, a self-described participant in the company’s Seller Fulfilled Prime program, which enables businesses to sell via Prime from their own warehouses, recently took to the official seller discussion board noting that Next Day Delivery orders are facing delays.

“This is something that we cannot foresee and control. Unfortunately, there is no news from Amazon on what things to do with this situation,” the seller stated. “…I hope someone gives us some information about this. This will mess up our metrics and it’s causing us a lot of stress.”

Amazon posted a workaround on Friday (July 19). According to the post, the outage affected both Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances and Amazon WorkSpaces personal virtual desktops that run on Windows and use the CrowdStrike software. It recommended users fix the issue by allowing the CrowdStrike Falcon Sensor agent to update correctly.

The post also noted that if a user’s device uses what’s called instance store volumes — a type of storage directly attached to the host computer — any data on those volumes will be lost if the device is stopped, put into hibernation or terminated. In such cases, the data is securely erased. For further details, it referred users to the information on Amazon EC2 instance store.

Slower than expected shipping can have a significant impact on shoppers’ satisfaction. The report “Tracking the Digital Payments Takeover: Catching the Coming eCommerce Wave,” a PYMNTS Intelligence and Amazon Web Services (AWS) collaboration, found that 27%  of consumers cited delivery delays as issues they experienced with online purchases.

This spells bad news for Amazon: the outage, which began late Thursday (July 18) came just one day after the close of Amazon’s Prime Day event July 16 and 17. As such, impact on shipping could affect customers’ satisfaction with the eCommerce giant at a time when considerably more shoppers will feel the impact than they would at other times of the year.

During the saving event, Amazon saw surging sales. In a typical day, the company averages about $1.6 billion in sales, per data from its Q1 2024 earnings report  — the most recent period on record — showing that the eCommerce giant brought in $143.3 billion in sales in the three-month span. In contrast, over the Prime Day two-day event, the retailer is estimated to have brought in $14.2 billion in sales — nearly five times the company’s average haul for a two-day period.

These shipping delays are far from the only way that the CrowdStrike outage could be affecting retail merchants. Reports have circulated of the event impacting retailers’ ability to do everything from accepting payments to analyzing sales data to even staying open.

The CrowdStrike outage comes at a particularly inopportune moment for Amazon, right on the heels of its highly anticipated Prime Day. As merchants and consumers alike navigate this turbulence, the incident underscores the fragility of modern digital infrastructures and the far-reaching consequences that technical failures can have on even the most resilient retail giants.

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That’s an 11% increase over last year for the 48-hour eCommerce sale, Bloomberg reported Thursday (July 18), citing data from Adobe, which found consumers taking advantage of high markdowns on electronics, clothing and small appliances.

“It’s clear now that the Prime Day event has been a catalyst across these major categories, with discounts deep enough for consumers to hit the buy button and upgrade items in their homes,” Adobe analyst Vivek Pandya said.

According to Bloomberg, Adobe measures total online spend during Prime Day, as rival retailers push their own deals, leading consumers to visit multiple sites for comparison shopping. The $14.2 billion sales figure was in line with Adobe’s earlier predictions.

As PYMNTS reported earlier this week, Prime Day — along with Walmart and Target’s similar summer deals offerings (Walmart+ Week and Target Circle Week) — comes as consumers increasingly wait until sales events to make major purchases.

“In the past year, we’ve seen engagement in our promotions with higher-than-expected volume around popular seasonal moments,” Katie Stratton, chief growth officer at Target-owned on-demand delivery aggregator Shipt, told PYMNTS.

PYMNTS Intelligence research shows that half of consumers have switched to cheaper retail merchants in response to inflation, while 45% of low-income consumers, 41% of middle-income consumers, and 28% of high-income consumers said that they had opted for lower-quality products to reduce expenses for the same reason.

“Customers are shopping circulars to find the best deals, and … we’ve seen an uptick in the use of coupons,” Katie Kobus, vice president of marketing at Save A Lot, told PYMNTS in an interview posted on Tuesday (July 16).

Amazon issued a news release Thursday saying that Prime Day had set a record, with more items sold than any previous Prime Day. The company did not offer specific sales figures.

“Rufus, Amazon’s new AI-powered conversational shopping assistant, helped millions of customers shop Amazon’s wide selection quickly and easily,” the release noted.

Amazon had first beta-tested Rufus in February before making it available to all customers last week.

The generative artificial intelligence-powered assistant answers questions on various shopping needs and products, trained on Amazon’s product catalog, customer reviews, community Q&As and information from across the web.

“While it’s still early days for both generative AI and Rufus, we’re excited to hear customers are using Rufus to help them make more informed shopping decisions,” Rajiv Mehta, Amazon’s vice president of search and conversational shopping, said in a news release last week. “As we continue to grow and improve upon Rufus, we’re looking forward to seeing how customers continue to use it to find exactly what they need or want in our store.”

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During the first seven hours of the event on Tuesday (July 16), sales were up almost 12%, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing data from Momentum Commerce, which manages Amazon sales on behalf of brands and generates about $7 billion in annual sales on the platform.

Market research firm Numerator said that its sample of households found that the average household spent about $100 during the event, as of noon New York time, according to the report.

Predicting sales for all retailers on the platform across the entire two-day event, Adobe expects to see an 11% increase to $14 billion, while EMarketer forecasts a 5.5% rise to $8.2 billion, the report said.

“Consumers continue to spend, but they do so strategically, which can benefit a sale like Prime Day,” Sky Canaves, an analyst at EMarketer, said in the report.

Amazon achieved its highest-ever sales volumes during last year’s Prime Day event, with 375 million items sold worldwide and Prime members saving more than $2.5 billion on millions of deals across the Amazon stores in July 2023, the company said at the time.

That Prime Day also marked a milestone as the biggest event ever for independent sellers within Amazon’s marketplace. The majority of these sellers were small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), and their sales growth on Amazon’s platform during the event surpassed that of Amazon’s own retail business.

When announcing this year’s event, which is the 10th ever, Doug Herrington, CEO of Worldwide Amazon Stores, said in an April 26 post on LinkedIn: “We are working hard and inventing new ways to pack even more great savings into the event this year.”

With the rising popularity of Amazon’s Prime Day, other retailers have sought to hold their own among bargain-seeking shoppers by joining the deals days battle.

Among the competitors are Target Circle Week, which ran July 7-13 and was open to all members of its free loyalty program, and Walmart Deals, which ran July 8-11 and was open to everyone, not just members. Walmart also held an earlier members-only event.

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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has asked Amazon for details about the arrangement to hire researchers and high-level executives from the artificial intelligence (AI) firm Adept, Reuters reported Tuesday  (July 16), citing sources familiar with the matter.

The request comes amid growing interest among regulators in AI partnerships involving tech giants such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

As reported last month, Amazon has hired Adept co-founder/CEO David Luan and other execs to join its artificial general intelligence (AGI) team. 

AGI is a form of artificial intelligence (AI) that can think like human beings. According to an internal memo cited by Bloomberg News, Amazon hopes to use Adept’s technology developing agents, or AI tools that can handle tasks autonomously, to help it create products for automating software workflows.

“David and his team’s expertise in training state-of-the-art multimodal foundational models and building real-world digital agents aligns with our vision to delight consumer and enterprise customers with practical AI solutions.” Rohit Prasad, head of the Amazon AI autonomy team, wrote in the memo.

Spokespersons for both the FTC and Amazon declined to comment when reached by PYMNTS.

The FTC is also looking into Microsoft’s hiring of the leadership team of Inflection AI. The Reuters report notes — per a source — that investigation is examining whether the deal was an attempt to avoid merger disclosure requirements.

In a separate case, the Department of Justice reportedly is looking into whether AI chipmaker Nvidia has violated antitrust laws, while the FTC is also examining Microsoft’s relationship with OpenAI.

 “If these companies get slapped with an antitrust ruling, it could be a real game-changer for both the tech and AI industries,” Aron Solomon, a lawyer and chief strategy officer at the legal services firm Amplify, told PYMNTS last month. 

“We could see these giants getting split up or having their wings clipped, which would open the door for smaller players and newcomers to step up and shake things up.”

Solomon also noted that a ruling like that could force companies to reexamine their business practices and partnerships. And that could have a domino effect on everything from supply chains to pricing and the availability of tech services and products.

“Companies might have to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to play nice with others,” he said.

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On July 4^th, the day before their three-decade birthday milestone, it was announced that Amazon would take a minority stake in the new luxury department store confab Saks Global. The $2.65 billion acquisition of Neiman Marcus by Saks will create that single luxury department store platform combining the 39 existing Saks stores, the 36 existing Neiman Marcus stores and the two Bergdorf Goodman flagship stores in New York.

At least, that’s the size of the footprint right now.

We don’t know how much of a birthday splurge that stake was for Amazon — details about total dollars invested were not disclosed.

The acquisition isn’t exactly a news flash. Saks and Neiman’s have been doing the acquisitions dance for more than a decade. Their private equity investors wanted an exit after taking Neiman Marcus private in 2005 for $5.1 billion. Neiman’s filed for bankruptcy in 2020, blaming COVID for at least some of its poor financial performance and using the filing as an opportunity to retire debt and streamline operations.

Rumors floated again a year ago that an acquisition was in the offing, but the deal collapsed at the end of the year over price. Whether the Amazon stake and its potential to add shareholder value longer-term got Neiman’s over their previous sale price hump is unknown.

So, too, is whether even Amazon can save these once larger-than-life iconic luxury department stores from their largely self-inflicted demise.

The head of Saks eCommerce says Amazon will accelerate the path forward for the merged entity. Geoffrey van Raemdonck, the CEO of Neiman Marcus, says that Saks Global (the new entity which includes Amazon’s minority stake) will create greater efficiencies through a more streamlined inventory management and more favorable (read tougher) negotiations with suppliers. That people still love going to the store to touch and feel the merchandise and interact with salespeople.

That luxury buyers are still buying.

Maybe. Lately, even wealthy buyers have become more discerning.

But when they do shop, they don’t seem to be beating a path to department stores. Looking at this chart from the St. Louis Fed suggests a different, more sobering, department store reality.

Department store sales are 50% below their peak in 2000, and 30% below where they were in the 1980s.  The 80s, as in 40 years ago. It’s hard to understand what people mean when they say, “department stores are back.” Back from what, exactly? Coming back from zero sales during COVID to levels which don’t even match sales made four decades ago is hardly a comeback story worth writing.

“But things are looking up,” proponents of the department store model still say. Not really. According to Collier’s April Real Estate barometer, foot traffic to department stores in April rose 5.1%, but sales fell 5.3%. People are walking into department stores but walking out empty-handed — as it seems they have been for nearly a quarter of a century. In fact, annual sales for department stores are down by 22% over the 10-year period from 2013 to 2023.

Now, whether Amazon’s minority stake in Saks Global becomes an opportunity for two desperate luxury retail department chains to think and act more like Amazon by streamlining logistics, inventory and supply chain operations — or whether it is the equivalent of a last-ditch retail Hail Mary pass — won’t be known for a while.

Neither will Amazon’s real interest in Saks Global.

Maybe they want a ringside seat into the ins and out of a retail category where Amazon doesn’t have much of a presence right now — but could over the next five years.  To learn the ropes, the relationships, the frictions. The role of the physical store in luxury retail’s future. According to Bain, the share of luxury goods sold online is expected to reach nearly a third of all luxury retail sales — taking most of that share from the department stores — up from low-double-digits five years ago.  The future is trending digital.

Or perhaps Amazon wants a better understanding, more generally, about why, after thirty years of raising the expectations for the consumer retail buying experience, Census still reports that 84% of retail sales still happen in the physical store.

Where innovation has stagnated for at least as many years.

Where data about the share of online versus physical retail sales is about as clear as mud and easily misinterpreted.

But where there’s an opportunity to (finally) reinvent the retail model by making the physical store an extension of the digital experience. Where the physical store remains relevant, but maybe not so much for shopping.

Physical Retail’s Innovation Desert

If I asked you to name the biggest innovations in the physical retail shopping experience over the last thirty years, what would make that list?

For most people, the innovations that are top of mind are those that give consumers a way to avoid going into the store.

Buy online, pick up in store is the granddaddy of omnichannel, getting its start around 2007. It got its true digital mojo in 2020 as the world was in the throes of COVID and more retailers were forced to get on board. Today, globally, PYMNTS Intelligence finds a marked increase in that use case, with 9.2% of the U.S. consumer population using buy online, pick up at the store when shopping for groceries.

Retail is slightly higher, at 11%, but also often comes bundled with the not-so-veiled (and friction-filled attempt) to bring consumers into the store to fetch their bundles. In Boston, the Saks buy online, pick up in store experience consists of schlepping to a counter in the way-back corner of the second floor. Quite often, the buy online, pickup experience comes with a wait of a few days, which seems to miss the point of buying something online and picking it up in the store the same day.

Instacart gives consumers digital tools to shop the entirety of physical grocery store using their app. It could be a store where they always shop, or maybe the one that catches their interest but is too far away to be practical. Shoppers still shop at the grocery store, but they work for Instacart, and push shopping carts filled with stuff to be delivered to Instacart users.

Retail subscriptions, including Amazon’s Subscribe and Save, are shopping innovations that move the weekly or monthly essential purchases online — maybe forever. Consumers can now subscribe to everything from laundry detergent to canned garbanzo beans to face cream to white T-shirts and get those items delivered on a schedule for free.

You get the point.

Innovations inside the store that make shopping more convenient don’t come easily to mind. No one marvels at the wonders of self-checkout. Even the no-checkout checkout seems to have gone nowhere. The Amazon Go experiment in 2018 was hailed as the coolest thing ever — until Amazon announced the closure of 8 of its 28 owned Amazon Go stores six years later. The new plan is to license the tech to 125 other retailers who’ve yet to fess up that they’re using it.

There was a time when going to the store to shop was fun, interesting, serendipitous — but it has become an exercise in uncertainty. And consumers who hate uncertainty have turned to the online experiences that offer a more predictable outcome.

It’s also why years of analyzing shopper satisfaction find that the in-store shopping experience is the least satisfying of all — with department stores topping that list, as the Fed data shows.

So why does the government report that 8 in every 10 retail purchases happen in physical stores?

I call it the Census Retail Data Iceberg Problem.

The Census Data Retail Sales Iceberg

The published Census Data on retail sales is a bit like an iceberg. What you see on the surface may not look that bad. The real danger sits below the surface, where the extent of the damage isn’t felt until it’s too late.

Right now, the Census reports that 84% of retail sales still happen in the physical store.

Retailers often laugh nervously when hearing these data. They hope it’s true, but staring at the reality that is their day-to-day tells them that it isn’t, for most of the big ones. They see and sense the danger below the surface, the impact of which is only getting stronger.

The PYMNTS Intelligence team has tracked the share of online versus physical retail sales for most of the last decade. That team doubled down on benchmarking that shift in 2020 and has monitored the acceleration and permanence of retail’s move online ever since. We do this by fielding national monthly and quarterly surveys of statistically significant consumer populations, producing results at a 95% confidence level.

In the U.S., we find that even as consumers have returned to the physical store, online sales are 0.4% higher than they would have been, absent the pandemic. This amounts to an incremental $28 billion in sales that are now online and no longer made in stores.

To understand the impact of that shift, and the true picture of online and physical store sales, one must examine the performance of individual retail segments.

In other words, the iceberg below the surface often doesn’t get as much airtime.

The Danger in the Data Beneath the Surface

When Census publishes reports stating that 84% of retail sales happen in the physical store, those data include reporting across 12 retail segments, including clothing and personal care stores, and a lot of other categories too, like gas and groceries.

Removing them from the retail sales tally, the online versus physical retail sales divide looks a little different. The share of retail sales made online becomes 19% of retail sales.

Examine just apparel and accessories, and the data looks different still.

PYMNTS Intelligence data estimates find that 34% of clothing sales were made online last year, double the 16% made online just a decade ago. That’s slightly more than a third of clothing and apparel sales, for all of you keeping score at home, and only increasing. It starts to put the department store sales cliffhanger in a different perspective.

Even for groceries, where 99% of all grocery sales happened in the physical store pre-COVID, we observe that 39% of consumers buy some of their groceries online today. There is no reason to believe that shift won’t continue.

How the Generations Shop

The generational shopping divide is even more telling.

Not surprisingly, the older the consumer, the greater the importance of physical retail, especially when purchasing clothing and accessories. There’s only one problem: they do that half as often as their kids and grandkids.

The younger the demographic, the more digital shopping becomes the preferred channel, their norm and their expectation of a user experience, even in a store.

The emergence of the Click-and-Mortar shopper, an insight gleaned from a six-country PYMNTS Intelligence study of shoppers and merchants commissioned by Visa Acceptance, finds that consumers want the same digital experience when shopping in the physical store as when shopping online — and especially when buying clothes. More than a third of all consumers participating in the study fit that profile. In the U.S., that share of consumers is 30%.

For these shoppers, physical is simply an extension of the digital experience that’s become second nature. Another place, not the only place, to go when they need or want something to buy. And when inside the store, they expect the same digital features — product reviews, price comparisons, promo codes, payment options.

The one thing that younger and older shoppers share is that fewer of their feet cross store thresholds. The bad news for retailers is that fewer younger feet today means many, many fewer younger feet, with the loss of their spending power, tomorrow.

Let’s hope that the Amazon and Saks Global tie-up starts a conversation around the retail watercooler about a shopping experience that doesn’t start with the store and simply tinkering with the retail status quo.

Scratching Thirty-Year Retail Innovation Itch

Maybe it’s taken 30 years for retail more generally, and department stores specifically, to come to grips with the reality that they’ve lost their grip on shoppers. It took the sector a good 15 years — half that time — to admit that shopping online was more than a one-off.  The Census Retail Data Iceberg is partly to blame.

It’s not just Saks and Neiman’s looking for the big retail reset — all department store retailers want the magic elixir. Macy’s new CEO has proclaimed a bold new chapter, including shuttering a slew of stores to improve operating margins. The Nordstrom family is said to be contemplating going private, again. Bloomingdales is putting their efforts into small store formats. Neiman’s just offered me a free night at a swanky hotel if I book a three-night stay.

The same stores, but smaller. Events in stores. VIP Membership and experiences. More of the status quo. Nothing that breaks the current retail model and reassembles it around shopping, not shopping channels.

Saks Global seems to believe, at least in part, that gaining efficiencies in the back of store can lay the foundation for a better customer experience in the store. That complex functions like inventory management, logistics, payments, rewards and distribution can best be accomplished collaboratively rather than building and maintaining those capabilities retailer by retailer and store by store.

That’s certainly true. For Saks Global, outsourcing logistics and distribution capabilities to Amazon could make it easier to move products between stores, to deliver products the same or next day — which could, itself, be a gamechanger.

But Amazon didn’t have to take a minority stake in Saks Global to get that deal.

The Amazon Effect on Luxury Retail

How much of a role Amazon might play in executing a newly-formed Saks Global vision is unknown. Retailers have been unsuccessful at reinventing their future on their own and could use the help.

Amazon comes to Saks Global with a retail pedigree of its own: its sales of apparel and accessories are $23.6 billion in Q1 2024, accounting for 16.1% of apparel sales, and 0.5% of consumer spending, according to the latest PYMNTS Intelligence data. That makes their apparel sales larger than Walmart’s and Macy’s. The last PYMNTS Intelligence data from July 1st finds Amazon’s share of online retail sales at 47.7% of all online sales.

Selling luxury brands on Amazon hasn’t mirrored that success. Brand selection is quite limiting. The consumer experience is also less than luxurious. Dropping a few thousand dollars on an Oscar de la Renta dress right after putting olive oil in my shopping cart seems weird.

What seems to have resonated is Amazon’s offer to ship clothes to consumers who can either keep or return before having to pay. Social media influencers have branded storefronts on Amazon to style and sell curated outfits sold on Amazon. They and their followers can have a conversation about fashion on social channels, and consumers can buy those products on Amazon to get the next day or a few days later.

There’s also the opportunity to voice-activate the retail — and the luxury retail — experience in new ways.  I remember asking an Amazon exec right after Alexa was introduced when I might be able to use her as my shopping concierge. My use case: Asking Alexa to use my Amazon Pay account to purchase a jacket or a skirt in my size from an ad without having to go to the retailer’s site.

Let’s just say… I’m still waiting.

But it’s not as crazy as it sounded ten years ago.

In a world of embedded payments, GenAI, enabling tech and logistics expertise, one can imagine the physical store as a staging ground, organized around the convenience of the shopper and not the store hours. Shoppers in the physical store assemble and send outfits curated by stylists to a shopper’s home, much like Instacart shoppers do when buying groceries for their users.  Video chats with sales associates in the store in real time could offer styling lessons and feedback on what looks good or what to mix and match with what. Items can be added or exchanged and delivered same or next day without the trip to the store. Influencers could even assume the role of trusted sales associate with business models and digital storefronts that reinvent the luxury shopping experience and the economics that support it.

The Saks Global deal and Amazon’s minority stake seems aimed at boosting the fortunes of two luxury retail franchises that have seen better days. The more interesting story will be whether Amazon needs Saks Global to conquer luxury retail. Or whether, after getting a look under the hood, they find the model so broken they decide to go it alone — taking with them the 21% of the Amazon’s 185 million Prime Members who are women with annual incomes over $100,000, just waiting to shop ’til they drop.

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With the new AWS App Studio, users can describe an application they want, the things they want it to do, and the data sources they want to integrate with. The service then uses that information to build an application “in just minutes” that can be used immediately, AWS said in a Wednesday (July 10) press release.

App Studio is currently available in preview in Oregon, according to the release.

“AWS App Studio opens up application development to an entirely new set of builders, helping them create enterprise-grade applications in minutes,” Dilip Kumar, vice president of applications at AWS, said in the release. “Designed to meet the needs of the largest enterprise customers and fastest growing startups, App Studio is a force multiplier for technical employees at any company.”

Once applications have been created by App Studio, users can modify them using the service’s point-and-click interface and can get immediate guidance on how to use them by asking its generative AI-powered assistant, according to the release.

In addition, the applications are secure and fully managed by AWS, the release said.

This new service is designed for use by technical professionals who don’t have software development skills, per the release. Potential users include IT project managers, data engineers and enterprise architects.

One company already using App Studio, Deloitte, has found that the service can help its employees build applications in minutes, JB McGinnis, U.S. AWS alliance leader at Deloitte Consulting LLP, said in the release.

“With App Studio, our technical employees are able to take charge and easily go from idea to application in just a few sentences, streamlining these activities for the entire team,” McGinnis said.

Amazon’s focus on AI was a key driver of growth in the first quarter, as it announced several new generative AI products and services, PYMNTS reported in May.

In April, AWS announced the general availability of its generative AI-powered assistants for software development and business decision-making, Amazon Q Developer and Amazon Q Business.

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The tech giant announced in a Monday (July 8) press release an all-new Echo Spot.

“Echo Spot is a sleek new customizable smart alarm clock, featuring a variety of custom-designed clock faces and fun colors,” the release said.

The clock sells for $79.99, but Prime members can get it for $35 off between now and July 17 in celebration of Prime Day, according to the release.

“The all-new Echo Spot builds on what our customers loved most about the original product — like the semi-spherical shape, access to Alexa, and the compact and vibrant display — and reimagines it with even better visuals and improved audio quality,” the release said.

While Amazon didn’t mention it in the release, several news reports noted that the new Echo Spot might be most noteworthy for what it lacks: no built-in camera, which is welcome news for people unhappy about giving a $2 trillion company a view to their bedrooms.

The device also includes unique animations that are activated when people use common phrases to interact with Alexa, like “Alexa, thank you,” the release said.

Amazon’s new smart clock comes as voice assistants are getting more conversational.

PYMNTS Intelligence found that consumers are optimistic about the future of voice technology, with more than 60% of Americans saying that voice assistants will eventually match human intelligence and reliability in the near future.

Meanwhile, Amazon is discontinuing its security robot designed for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) as it focuses its efforts on developing household robots.

Amazon debuted the Amazon Astro robot for household use in 2021 and then expanded it to business customers under the name Astro for Business two years later. Astro for Business was available in the U.S. only, selling for $2,349.99.

According to an Amazon Astro Support page on the retailer’s website, Astro for Business is no longer for sale, and the existing devices will cease functioning Sept. 25.

“In the coming weeks, Amazon will fully refund any Amazon Astro for Business device purchase to the original payment method used,” the page said.

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The watchdog group has given the tech giant until July 26 to turn over information on the measures it has taken to follow the law, Reuters reported Friday (July 5).

“In particular, Amazon is asked to provide detailed information on its compliance with the provisions concerning transparency of the recommender systems,” the commission said.

Adopted last year, the Digital Services Act (DSA) requires “large online platforms” like Amazon to do more to address illegal or harmful content. (Amazon had sued to prevent being designated such a platform.)

“We are reviewing this request and working closely with the European Commission. Amazon shares the goal of the European Commission to create a safe, predictable and trusted shopping environment,” an Amazon spokesperson told Reuters.

“We think this is important for all participants in the retail industry, and we invest significantly in protecting our store from bad actors, illegal content, and in creating a trustworthy shopping experience. We have built on this strong foundation for DSA compliance,” the spokesperson added.

A number of Big Tech companies have been making changes this year to remain in compliance with the DSA.

For example, the Microsoft-owned LinkedIn last month said it was phasing out a controversial tool that allowed for the use of sensitive personal data for targeted advertising. The networking platform was announced after receiving pressure from civil society organizations as well as scrutiny from regulators.

Those groups had complained to the European Commission that the tool might allow advertisers to target LinkedIn users based on sensitive personal data such as racial or ethnic origin, political opinions and other personal details via their membership in LinkedIn groups.

And TikTok in April suspended a rewards program on TikTok Lite following a dispute with regulators in Europe, who argued the program could be addictive for children and threatened it with a temporary ban.

“Our children are not guinea pigs for social media,” EU Internal Markets Commissioner Thierry Breton had said before TikTok came to its decision.

“TikTok always seeks to engage constructively with the EU Commission and other regulators,” the TikTok Policy Europe account said on X. “We are therefore voluntarily suspending the rewards functions in TikTok Lite while we address the concerns that they have raised.”

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