Amazon has announced it’s going to have a drone delivery service within months, according to a report by Reuters.
The announcement was made by CEO of Worldwide Consumer Jeff Wilke on Wednesday (June 5) at the company’s “re:MARS” conference in Las Vegas.
The drone will be able to lift off and land like a helicopter, and it’s more stable than previous Amazon drone models. It can also see objects in motion around it better than the human eye.
Wilke didn’t specify where the drones will be deployed, but in the past Amazon has delivered by drone in the U.K.
The drone delivery initiative by Amazon is not new, and the company has been talking about it for a number of years, but this is the first time it has had a release date attached.
Part of the problem with implementation was making sure difficult-to-see wires wouldn’t affect the drones. Also, the company has faced regulatory hurdles prohibiting commercial flights, especially in the United States.
Wilke said the fully electric drones can fly up to 15 miles and that Amazon is going to continue to build facilities closer to urban areas. The drones can transport packages under five pounds, which is the majority of what the eCommerce retailer sells.
In other Amazon news, Patrick Gauthier, the vice president of Amazon Pay, said voice payment through digital assistants will transform the payments industry in the same way mobile phones did, according to a report by CNBC.
He said the technology is a “new era in commerce. It is akin to what happened with mobile maybe 10 years ago or even with eCommerce 20 years ago.”
Apple’s Homepod, Google’s Home and Amazon’s Echo are the most rapid-selling segment of consumer technology since mobile phones, according to eMarketer.
As artificial intelligence becomes more ubiquitous, Gauthier says the move toward shopping by voice in inevitable.
Strategy consultants OC&C predicted last year that smart speakers would be the impetus for a huge jump in voice shopping. The firm said the industry was going to grow to upwards of $40 billion in 2022, an increase of $2 billion. Others say voice commerce could rise to as much as $80 billion by 2023.
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