Amazon is trying to compete better in the discount shopping space, where mobile apps like Wish dominate, by rolling out a section in its iOS app that hawks items priced at $10 and under.
According to news from TechCrunch, the items cost $10 or less and ship without any fee. Some of the products are also available via Amazon Prime, although they aren’t limited only to those consumers who have Prime memberships. The report noted that Amazon hasn’t made an official announcement regarding the new section in the app but does display it in the What’s New section of Apple’s App Store. The section is called 10 & Under and is found in the app’s main navigation, reported TechCrunch, which noted that Amazon often trials new features in that area. The new section organizes the cheap products via category and also includes a New Year’s-themed section.
While consumers aren’t going to get the highest-quality products from this new section of the Amazon app, there is a growing market for low-cost products, upon which Wish has capitalized. According to TechCrunch, the Wish mobile app offers more than 300 million items to cost-conscious consumers. The report noted that the Wish app was the number one shopping app last year in the U.S. when looking at downloads. Sensor Tower stated that the Wish app had 32.5 million downloads last year, compared to 29.2 million for Amazon’s mobile app.
While Wish may be making inroads when it comes to cheap products, Amazon is winning overall it when it comes to selling items online. Earlier in January, the eCommerce company announced that more than 5 billion items were shipped worldwide in 2017 through its Prime membership program. In a press release, the company said more new paid members joined Prime around the globe in 2017 than in any other year.