Amazon has posted sales figures of $38bn (£29bn) for Q2 2017, 25 per cent up on the Q2 2016 figure of $30.4bn. Profits slumped, however, falling by 51 per cent to $628m, compared to $1.3bn a year ago. Amazon’s cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services, racked up sales of $4.1bn during the quarter.
Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezoz was keen to flag the investments the company has made in recent times. He said: “Our teams remain heads-down and focused on customers. In the last few months, we launched Echo Show, introduced calling and messaging via Alexa on all Echo devices, debuted Inside Edge on Prime Video, introduced Amazon Channels in both the UK and Germany, launched four new Fire tablets, expanded Amazon Fresh to Germany, launched Prime Now in Singapore, launched our 25th airplane with Prime Air, hired more than 30,000 new employees, opened three new Amazon Books stores, launched more than 400 significant AWS features and services, migrated more than 7,000 databases using AWS Database Migration Service, and held our third annual Prime Day — signing up more Prime members than ever before.”
At a time when many traditional retailers are struggling, these strong results will send a shiver down the corporate spine of many.
The company also announced last month that it planned to buy Whole Foods Market for $13.7bn. The company also revealed that there are now more than 15,000 Alexa skills available for the Echo and Dot devices. 
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