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Amazon Partners With Hello Sunshine to Gain Competitive Edge

Amazon’s AMZN audiobook unit, Audible announced its collaboration with Hello Sunshine, an American media company that produces films, unscripted stories and TV shows.

Per the partnership, Audible will launch Book Club x Hello Sunshine in June, which is an online community where Reese Witherspoon, the founder of Hello Sunshine selects a book on a monthly basis. It also offers space for discussion and Q&A session with author.

Consequently, listeners of Audible will now be able to enjoy the audio play of the books curated by Reese, which mainly feature unique stories celebrating women. This is likely to attract more listeners to Audible platform.

Further, both the companies are planning to introduce Audible Original by Hello Sunshine in the later part of the year, containing original audio productions.

Audiobooks Hold Promise

Amazon is well poised to reap benefits from growing demand for audiobooks in today’s fast paced world where readers prefer listening to a book instead of reading it. We believe the latest move will help Amazon in gaining momentum in the audiobook space.

Notably, Amazon stock has returned 35.2% on a year-to-date basis, outperforming the industry’s rally of 19.9%.

Last year, the audiobook segment gained significant traction in the digital publishing industry, particularly the United States. The segment generated $2.5 billion revenues, reflecting year-over-year growth of 18%. Additionally, there was an increase of 33.9% in the number of audiobooks published according to Audiobook Publishers Association.

The recent partnership of Amazon will improve the company’s offerings by expanding the audio content and book portfolio. The readers will now have access to the best collection of Hello Sunshine audios. Currently, Audible’s strong portfolio contains more than 425,000 audio programs from renowned publishers.

This is expected to bolster customer base of the company which will further drive top-line growth.

Further, Amazon’s customer friendly features remain positive. Audible is based on subscription model and offers credits roll over plan that benefits the listeners who take more than a month to finish a book.

According to the data from the research firm named Codex Group, Audible accounts for 41% of U.S. audiobook sales.

Improving Competition

With the latest partnership, Amazon is trying to reinforce its position in the audiobook market where there are other major players like — Walmart WMT and Alphabet GOOGL.

Earlier this year, Walmart teamed up with Japan’s Rakuten to form a joint venture and sell e-books and audiobooks in order to challenge Amazon.

Moreover, the ongoing battle between Amazon and Google is intensifying with their innovative products competing in many of the emerging markets.

Notably, Amazon’s initiatives toward expanding content portfolio give it an edge over Google Play Audiobooks.

Recently, Google has updated its audiobook by adding some useful features, which was lacking previously in comparison with Audible. However, Amazon still enjoys a first mover advantage in the audiobook space with its huge collection of books.

Moreover, pricing strategies of both the companies are different and Amazon seems to be a better option for the regular book readers or the ones who have strong interest in book reading.

Amazon’s subscription based model seems to be the best for the ones who read more than one book in a month. Meanwhile, the readers have to purchase the audio version of the book which they like from Google Play since there is no subscription service offered by Google in this particular sector.

Even in case of one book a month, Audible’s Gold Plan is still cheaper than the cost of one book on Google Play.

Amazon.com, Inc. Revenue (TTM)

Amazon.com, Inc. Revenue (TTM) | Amazon.com, Inc. Quote

Zacks Rank & Other Stock to Consider

Currently, Amazon carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

Another top-ranked stock to consider in the broader technology sector is Akamai Technologies AKAM which sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Long-term earnings growth rate for Akamai is currently pegged at 14.4%.

The Hottest Tech Mega-Trend of All

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