Amazon will significantly ramp up Prime Air drone capacity this year as part of a multi-pronged initiative to move beyond same-day delivery and deliver e-commerce orders within hours, or even minutes, CEO Andy Jassy said in an annual letter to shareholders on Thursday.
Speed is the driving force for Amazon’s logistics operation because management says customers are more likely to complete online orders when faster delivery is promised. At the same time, there is a counter movement in retail away from ultra-fast delivery based on concerns about the unsustainable cost of service and whether consumers really expect quick fulfillment turnaround.
Jassy said Prime Air service will be able to serve communities with 30 million customers by the end of the year, with a much wider catalog of goods to choose from, and is expected to annually deliver 500 million packages by the end of the decade in under 30 minutes. The ability to scale up drone deliveries is possible now because of more than 85 same-day fulfillment centers that carry Amazon’s top 90,000 products and serve as launch pads for the autonomous delivery vehicles.
The more streamlined fulfillment centers have already enabled Amazon to deliver more than 500 million same-day packages in 2026 so far, according to the CEO.
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