Looking at the Future of Local Delivery
This week Amazon released a new video of it’s forthcoming Amazon Prime Air service, which promises to deliver Amazon products via drone. And while we thought free next-day delivery was a godsend, we can’t wait until we can get our stuff in under 30 minutes.
Amazon Air isn’t exactly a new idea, and Amazon has been working on it since at least 2013. As TechCrunch points out, they’ve been strategically sending out updates on the service during the consistently news-dead time directly after Thanksgiving.
Romain Dillet as TechCrunch notes: “Amazon is already one of the leading Black Friday retailers. But the company wants to capture the mindshare in December as well.”
“The message is clear,” he continues, “ordering on Amazon is like magic. You press a button and a tiny drone will fly to your doorstep in less than an hour.” The drone can cover 15 miles and fly over 55 miles per hour.
Amazon Air is just one part of businesses that are looking at local in a whole new way. Target is testing a same-day food delivery service, and Best Buy is exploring a similar idea in San Francisco.
And then there’s the bustling realm of food delivery, with Seamless and Grubhub now facing competition from Uber Eats. We’re still waiting for Tacocopter to expand to New York, however.
Of course, when Amazon Air is up and running, it won’t be long before other companies follow suit. And that opens up a lot of exciting possibilities for both local businesses and local advertisers. It’s a very exciting time to be in the local media biz!
It’s almost 2016, and we still don’t have jetpacks, but this seems like a pretty decent consolation prize.