Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said the company now has more than 100 million paid Prime members, a huge milestone for the company's premium service whose subscriber count had never been publicly revealed before. Bezos noted the milestone in his annual shareholder letter. “13 years post-launch, we have exceeded 100 million paid Prime members globally,” he wrote. “In 2017 Amazon shipped more than five billion items with Prime worldwide, and more new members joined Prime than in any previous year — both worldwide and in the U.S.” The size of Amazon’s Prime subscriber base has long been a topic of speculation and prediction; Statista, for example, had pegged the total number of Prime members in the US at 90 million as of last September. If those numbers are close, then Amazon Prime's international membership would then be around 10 million, which would be impressive if not earth-shattering. No specific data is available for Indian subscribers, but it must be noted that the price of Prime membership in India (Rs 999 per year, or around $15) is significantly lower than that of US ($99 per year). The Prime membership generally represents Amazon’s best, highest-spending customers, who receive benefits like free or discounted priority shipping, unlimited access to Prime streaming videos, music, online photo storage, preferred pricing in Amazon’s retail bookstores and more. The letter also disclosed that Amazon Music has “tens of millions of paid customers” — compared to Spotify’s 71 million and Apple Music’s more than 40 million. “Amazon Music Unlimited,…
