This week in Amazon news, Florida residents will start paying sales tax, Amazon releases its shareholder news letter and more.
Keep reading to stay up to date with what’s going on in the world of Amazon.
Sales Tax in Florida
Starting May 1, residents of my home state, Florida will be charged sales tax on all of their Amazon purchases. This is because Amazon is busy building two huge fulfillment centers in Polk and Hillsborough counties.
Polk County is a rural area located between Tampa and Orlando along heavily trafficked I-4. This puts Amazon within spitting distance of 3 of the top 5 largest cities in Florida: Tampa, St. Petersburg and Orlando. Hillsborough county is the location of Tampa itself.
What strikes me as interesting about these sites is that they aren’t convenient to either Jacksonville or Miami, the two most heavily populated metro areas in the state. My theory is two-fold:
- Amazon is starting out by building in the areas that are expected to see large population growth in the near future. Based on the locations of these new fulfillment centers, I can see same-day delivery in Orlando and Tampa in 5-10 years. Amazon is skating to where the puck will be, not where it is.
- There’s danger in any major construction project near the coast in Florida, primarily because of hurricanes. Another major hurricane in the Miami could cause hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. The same goes for Jacksonville. Why take the risk right now? By building in Central Florida, away from the Atlantic, where the strongest hurricanes develop, Amazon is protecting itself in case of future disasters.
Amazon’s Shareholder Letter
Amazon released their yearly letter to shareholders last week and it’s full of cool innovations that Amazon’s been working on:
- Amazon is already testing its 5th and 6th generation of delivery drones! That seems amazing considering how recently the project was made public.
- Amazon is paying warehouse workers to quit. They got this idea from Zappos (owned by Amazon). Starting with their second year of employment, warehouse workers will be offered $2,000 to quit. It goes up by $1,000 each year, capping at $5,000 in the 5th year. I wonder if we’ll ever get insights into how many workers take the deal? Probably not, considering Amazon loves to announce cool things, but seems to hate showing what’s behind the curtain.
- Groceries! The Amazon Dash is the coolest thing I’ve seen in awhile. It’s a little device that can be used to scan barcodes and “shop” for groceries (using Amazon Fresh) in your own kitchen. For busy people, I can see this being a HUGE timesaver! But what will it take for something like this to reach critical mass and really start to disrupt traditional grocery stores? I’m not sure I’ll ever use it, I just like grocery shopping too much!
The Amazon 3D Phone
People have been talking about an Amazon smartphone for years. And we’d been hearing rumors about it from our sources at Amazon since late last year. And it looks like they’re true!
Amazon plans to introduce a 3D smartphone before the end of the year! The big feature everyone’s talking about are the 5 front-facing cameras that will track the user’s face and allow for glasses-less 3D. Kind of like the parallax homescreen in iOS7 on steroids.
But as of now, nobody knows what it’s going to be like. Will it be the next Virtual Boy or will it blow us away? Unfortunately, I’m preparing myself to be underwhelmed, at least at first. The original Kindle was revolutionary, but it was straight up clunky. The current Paperwhite, on the other hand, is amazing. But it took nearly 5 years to get there. So maybe by 2018 or so the Amazon phone will be the amazing device we’re all hoping for.