Newsflash on November 17, 2018

Time: 2018-11-17 10:06:50Source: Digital360

Smartphones will account for 23% of e-commerce sales this year. U.S. smartphone sales are expected to surpass $117 billion this year, which would be 23% of U.S. e-commerce sales in 2018 and 3% of total U.S. retail sales, according to Forrester Research Inc.’s estimates in “The State of U.S. M-commerce 2018” report.

Even though smartphones only account for 3% of retail sales, they’ve impacted 36%, or $1.32 trillion, of total retail sales, according to Forrester’s estimates. Forrester estimates total retail sales at $3.68 trillion.



Ulta Beauty buys AI and AR technology startups. In an effort to bolster its digital operations, including improving the personalization it offers consumers on its website, Ulta Beauty has bought two technology companies.



Instagram keeps adding features aimed at convincing users to shop. Only a few months after Instagram added shopping to its popular Stories feature, the Facebook Inc.-owned social network on Thursday rolled out three new e-commerce-related features aimed at driving its more than 1 billion consumers to shop on its platform.

Alexa in the warehouse? ShippingEasy adds voice control to its fulfillment software. When an online order is being prepared for shipment, fulfillment center workers often switch between packing boxes with products and using a computer to print labels and confirm shipments. Those switches can slow workers down, says Katie May, CEO of ShippingEasy Inc.



Amazon picks New York City and Northern Virginia for HQ2. Amazon.com Inc. will build new offices in New York City and Arlington, Virginia, ending months of jockeying between potential locations across the country vying for a $5 billion investment that promises 50,000 high-paying jobs over almost two decades.

Amazon also said it will create more than 5,000 jobs in Nashville, Tennessee, at a new operations center.



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