Amazon reveals Prime membership tops 100m members

Amazon chief executive officer Jeff Bezos revealed in his annual shareholders letter that the company had reached over 100m Prime members, marking the first time the online retail giant has revealed subscriber numbers.

Amazon also revealed for the first time the median annual salary of its employees, at $28,446, compared to the total of $1.68m taken home received by founder Bezos last year.

Bezos also said Amazon created more than 130,000 direct jobs in 2017, not including those taken on from acquired companies such as Whole Foods.

Prime membership numbers have been kept secret for years. Bezos said in the shareholder letter that 2017 had been the best year yet since its launch 13 years ago, with over 5bn purchases made with Prime, for which Amazon charges $99 or £79 in the UK.

Members usually spend more than non-Prime users and have a 90% renewal rate, according to data from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.

To try and appeal more households, Amazon has started to offer a monthly membership at $12.99 and a discounted Prime program for low-income Americans at $5.99 a month

Amazon Prime Video has in recent year played an important part of the package, with 2017 seeing an expansion in its slate of programming for its series and produced a number of movies. It has recently acquired rights to produce a series for ‘Lord of the Rings’ and ‘Cortés’ a miniseries based on the life of conquistador Hernán Cortés .

Amazon’s stock has gained 30.6% in 2018 already.