July 11th, Tuesday of this past week, was the third annual “Amazon Prime Day”. This year’s Prime Day smashed last year’s Prime Day sales record by more than 60% and now stands as the biggest sales day in Amazon’s entire history. Even more remarkable, as research firm Morningstar points out, is that the number of households with Amazon Prime video streaming is nearing the total number of homes with cable or satellite TV. According to estimates from Morningstar, nearly 79 million households now have an Amazon Prime membership, up from 66 million at the end of 2016. This compares to a projected 90 million households that pay for cable or satellite TV. Amazon doesn’t disclose the number of Prime members, so Morningstar’s estimates are based on an analysis of Amazon’s cash-flow statements. On the day after Prime Day, Amazon said they had more new members joining the Prime subscription service on Prime Day than any other single day in history. The following chart, from tech-industry commentary site “recode.net”, shows the skyrocketing Prime membership nearly intersecting the flat-to-declining cable-TV subscribership.
