Amazon’s premium subscription service Prime is picking up new members at an accelerating pace – and, by the end of 2016, could reach half of households in the United States, an analyst has claimed.
While Amazon itself does not indicate the number of Prime members, Cowen and Company analyst John Blackledge today, as CNBC reports, put the current subscriber base at 49 million. Prime provides free shipping, exclusive films and TV shows, ad-free music streaming and many more goodies to those who pay $99 annually or $10.99 monthly for the service.
Cowen’s research has revealed that Prime should recruit another 12 million subscribers this year, compared to 10 million new subscribers last year and 7 million in 2014. Furthermore, he has estimated that about 44% of US households currently have Prime membership – and this penetration rate could rise to 50% by the year’s end.
Blackledge has attributed Prime’s continued “healthy growth” to its “increasing value proposition” – one example of this being a recent extension of the same-day delivery service for Prime members.