Amazon Moves Prime Day; Foursquare And Factual Merge

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Sub-Prime

Amazon will delay Prime Day until at least August, Reuters reports. Amazon hasn’t confirmed the postponement, but it’s mentioned in a memo obtained by Vice News last week. The delay would mean $100 million to $300 million in losses on excess devices Amazon has already manufactured. Amazon originally planned to move Prime Day up from July to June this year, to create separation from back to school shopping (i.e., so Prime Day is its own retail marketing event, not bundled with another shopping season).

Location, Location, Location

Location data sales took another step toward consolidation on Monday with the merger of Foursquare and Factual. Terms were not disclosed, and the deal was in the works since before the coronavirus turned the whole upside down, TechCrunch reports. The company will keep the Foursquare brand (no surprise, given people know its consumer app) and Foursquare CEO David Shim will still be in charge. There will be layoffs, since there are redundancies between the two companies – two of the last standing competitors in the category. “Both companies have long maintained that there is a need for independent, neutral location data, available outside of the walled gardens, and we expect near-term that the walled gardens will relent and seek out an independent partner,” Shim said.

The Quibi Question

Quibi launched as planned on Monday, with 50 shows with episodes 10 minutes or less across genres. Backed by tech and media vets Meg Whitman and Jeffrey Katzenberg, Quibi has garnered $1.8 billion in funding. Now, the question remains: Will millions of people subscribe? Before the pandemic, Quibi pitched itself as a service for consumers on the go. But with nowhere to go, can Quibi stand on its own against established players such as Netflix and Amazon Prime? Will consumers foot the bill for another streaming service with a recession around the corner? “This is either going to be a massive home run or a massive swing and miss,” Michael Goodman, a media analyst at Strategy Analytics, told The New York Times.

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