Amazon’s £1bn deal so you’ll never miss a delivery again
AMAZON has splashed out £1bn on a video doorbell firm, paving the way for delivery men to let themselves in to shoppers’ homes to drop off parcels.
The deal for Ring is understood to have set amazon back between £870m and £1.3bn, and is its secondlargest takeover after it bought Whole Foods for £10.3bn last year.
Ring allows users to see and speak to anyone who presses their front door bell via an app on their mobile phone.
When someone rings, customers can talk to visitors through a small camera hidden in the bell.
a small microphone and speaker allows them to communicate.
It also connects to digital locks to allow the homeowner to let the person at the door in.
The purchase is seen as amazon’s next step in making deliveries easier, and also linking up a number of household devices. Ring has also worked with Los angeles police to deter break-ins and identify burglars.
amazon is already selling its own wifi- connected indoor security cameras, which work with its voice-assistant alexa device.
Last year, it paid more than £65m for Blink, which makes wireless home security cameras that send alerts to the user’s phone when they detect movement.
according to reports, before deciding to buy Ring, amazon was trying to develop a similar product. It had previously invested in the Californian company through its alexa fund, which offers funding to firms which make devices powered by alexa.
analysts believed the purchase could enable delivery men to put food orders inside homes to stop fresh produce from going bad.
Colin Sebastian, analyst at Baird equity Research, said buying Ring could help amazon entice more customers to subscribe to services like next-day delivery Prime and its grocery service, Fresh. Last year, there were around 8m Prime subscribers in the UK.
It has also launched a smart lock and app service for Prime subscribers. The service, which is so far only available in the US, allows customers to authorise delivery drivers to unlock their front door via a smartphone.
It has been a success, despite security concerns. amazon raked in £125bn worth of sales last year as it races against tech rivals apple and Google owner alphabet become the world’s first $1 trillion company.
amazon is worth $ 736.5bn (£535bn), compared to apple at $912.1bn (£663bn) and alphabet which is valued at $ 781.2bn (£567bn). Its growth has made boss and founder Jeff Bezos the richest person in the world, with a net worth of £91.4bn.
Bezos, 54, founded amazon in 1994 as an online bookseller and it is now the second-largest internet retailer in the world, behind Chinese giant alibaba.
Last month, reports that amazon was cutting hundreds of jobs within its consumer business suggested that the group had recruited too many people too quickly after it created around 130,000 jobs worldwide last year.
The cuts are likely to have hit its consumer business, which includes its retail and marketplace divisions, as amazon focuses on investing heavily in growing areas like its voice control assistant, alexa.
amazon hired 66pc more people in the last three months of 2017, and now employs 566,000 staff.