The future of business? An Amazon drone delivers a 5Ib package to a home within half an hour of an order being processed
E-commerce giant Amazon is trialling a new type of delivery service whereby airborne drones will pick up packages from depots and deliver them to a house or business within half an hour of the order being placed.
In what might be a breakthrough for services and goods delivery across the world or yet another nail in the coffin for local businesses that fail to embrace the digital age, the ‘Amazon effect’ is likely to be an airborne affair.
Amazon has 225m customers around the world and its goal is to ‘sell everything, to everyone’.
On a 60 Minutes segment at the weekend, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos demonstrated how quadcopters – actually octo-copters with five rotor blades – can bring packages weighing up to 5lb to a home or business.
About 86pc of Amazon’s goods – and let’s not forget it began in business in the late 1990s selling books – weigh less than 5lb.
Already Amazon is attempting new models of delivery and pick-up for tech-savvy consumers. For example, it is in negotiations with the London Underground to turn defunct ticketing kiosks at Tube stations into elaborate pick-up points for goods.
The new airborne service will be known as Amazon Prime Air and the drones wait at the end of every conveyor belt to pick up orders.
Considering how it has been 16 years since Bezos personally delivered packages to the post office, this new airborne service could be up and flying in no time.
