How robots are helping e-commerce meet demand

“CNBC’s Frank Holland reports on the use of robots and artificial intelligence to help meet the demand in online shopping.“

Amazon saw some big changes in online shopping this Christmas

“The ecommerce giant has released a new blog post in which it revealed that it delivered more than 1.5bn toys, home products, beauty and personal care products and electronics to its customers all over the world.
At the same time, third party sales on Amazon rose by more than 50 percent year-over-year worldwide.
If this turns out to be true, it would represent a year-over-year increase of 28 to 38 percent and mark the first time the ecommerce giant has brought in over $100bn in a single quarter.
According to Mastercard SpendingPulse, ecommerce sales in the US grew by 47.2 percent year-over year from November 1 to December 24 as more consumers preferred to shop from the safety of their homes.”

“In early 2020, news emerged that Facebook had acquired London-based computer vision startup Scape Technologies
Though this acquisition was actually finalized in December 2019, it wasn’t until February that Facebook confirmed it had quietly bought London-based deep learning research startup Atlas ML.
In November, Facebook confirmed it was buying New York-based customer relationship management (CRM) platform Kustomer in a deal thought to be worth $1 billion.”

13 acquisitions highlight Big Tech’s AI talent grab in 2020

“According to our COVID-19 B2B Buying Trends Report, 37% of businesses have been primarily purchasing through digital channels since the start of the pandemic, a 29% increase compared to before. That figure is expected to rise to 40% post-pandemic.”

“U.S. retail sales rose 3% during this year’s expanded holiday shopping season from Oct. 11 to Dec. 24
U.S. ecommerce sales jumped 49% in this year’s holiday shopping season,
Holiday e-commerce sales made up 19.7% of total retail sales this year, the data showed, noting that options such as buy online and pick-up-in-store, contactless technologies were key for retailers.”