Amazon Prime Day arrives with thousands of deals, expected to bring in $26 billion

Amazon Prime Day kicks off Tuesday, giving Prime members thousands of deals on beauty, electronics, fashion, groceries, home, kitchen, and so much more.

The online shopping sale lasts through Friday.

“With new deals dropping as often as every five minutes during select periods, there’s always something new to discover,” Amazon Web Services stated. “We’ve handpicked some of the best deals available right now—these are just a fraction of the millions of deals available to Prime members this Prime Day.”

The Amazon News Team created a guide detailing the year’s best deals for Amazon Prime Day.

This year’s Prime Day is expected to generate $26.3 billion in sales. That’s more than last Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined, according to forecast data from Adobe,” Mike Dobuski, a technology reporter with ABC News, said. “It also marks a 9% increase over last year’s Prime Day — which happened in July.”

Amazon looks to redefine a need for speed with 30-minute deliveries

More than 20 years after it redefined fast shipping, Amazon is preparing to raise the bar on consumer expectations again by offering to fulfill customers’ most urgent product needs in a half-hour or less for an extra fee.

The company, which revolutionized online shopping in 2005 with two-day deliveries for Prime members, is rapidly opening small order-processing hubs in dozens of U.S. and foreign cities to cater to shoppers who can’t or don’t want to wait for cough medicine to relieve flu symptoms or tomatoes for tonight’s dinner salad.

The ultrafast service, called Amazon Now, first launched in India last June. Amazon says 30-minute deliveries now are also available in urban areas of Brazil, Mexico, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The mini-warehouses devoted to Amazon Now are about the size of a CVS drugstore. They stock about 3,500 products for expedited delivery, including beer, diapers, pet food, meat, nonprescription medications, playing cards, and cellphone charging cables.

“We know that customers love speed and always have,” Beryl Tomay, Amazon’s head of transportation, told The Associated Press on Monday. “What we see customers doing, when we offer faster speeds, are they purchase more from Amazon. And Amazon becomes more top of mind for that or other types of items as well.”

In the U.S., the company first tested Amazon Now in Seattle, the home of its headquarters, and in Philadelphia. Most residents of Atlanta and the Dallas-Fort Worth area now have access as well. The service is also live in Houston, Denver, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Oklahoma City, Orlando, Florida, and dozens of other cities, Amazon said, with New York City and others expected by year-end.

The service charges for Amazon Now start at $3.99 for Prime members, who pay an annual fee of $139, and $13.99 for non-members. A $1.99 small basket fee applies to orders under $15, Amazon said.

The company’s bet on a need for speed also comes as some consumers are rebelling against rushed deliveries as they weigh the potential impact on the environment and the workers tasked with preparing orders at a rapid rate.

Contributing: The Associated Press