What corporations will rule the future: Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft?
It’s brazen and unwise to claim that any corporation can rule the future. Over the long run, all incumbents lose (even the most powerful ones) and are eventually replaced by new incumbents, who also fall in time, etc.
Having said the above, it’s hard to imagine Amazon not continuing to rise over the next decade, at least. In the foreseeable future, Amazon will continue to prosper because it is on the right side of history as commerce (particularly in the US) continues to transition from an offline to an online consumption model.
As of Q3 2019, Amazon’s current TTM (trailing twelve months) revenue was $266B, growing at 20%+ year-over-year. These are mind-boggling numbers, which make it hard to believe that Amazon could sustain such lofty growth rates. But the story looks different when you evaluate it in the context of the US commerce transitioning from offline to online consumption.
Per the US Department of Commerce, US online retail sales in Q3 2019 ($145.7B) account for 11.2% of total retail sales. This 11.2% encompasses the entire market segment (Paypal and eBay and Amazon and Apple and Tesla, etc.) Depending on which public figures you choose to believe, Amazon accounts for roughly 40% of the US online retail total. This means that Amazon has roughly a 4ish% share of the total US retail commerce.
Is it likely that Amazon could, at least, double its share in the foreseeable future? I think so. Could they triple their share? I don’t see why not. Could they quadruple it, or quintuple it? You do the math… Also, keep in mind that this is just US retail commerce. Amazon derives roughly 50% of its e-commerce revenue from overseas market segments like Europe, Latin America, India, etc. Speaking of India, Amazon has made some of its most prominent investments to-date in the Indian market segment. India and all other non-US territories will undoubtedly continue to provide additional sources of e-commerce growth, too.
Another interesting data point comes from Alibaba (when in doubt about the future, it’s not a bad idea to look to China.) Some context first: Alibaba invented Singles Day, an online discount event on Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms. In 2019, Singles Day generated $38B in sales for the 24 hours of the event.
Amazon’s version of Singles Day is Prime Day. Each year, Prime Day becomes Amazon’s biggest sales day of the year, beating the previous year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday days. J.P. Morgan’s analyst Doug Anmuth, Prime Day 2019 generated approximately $5B in sales for the 48 hours of the event. In comparison, Singles Day 2019 generated $12B in sales in the first hour alone.
Am I saying that Prime Day will overtake Singles Day, in the future? No. But I believe that Alibaba paints a picture of the type of results that a more mature online market segment could possibly deliver, in the future.
Barring some extremely unforeseen circumstances, it is guaranteed that Amazon will continue to rapidly grow its US online retail sales on Prime Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas Day, and any other day of the year. This growth will continue to be fueled by the macro transition of US retail commerce from offline to online consumption and will help ensure Amazon’s continued strong performance in the foreseeable future.
This originally appeared on https://amazonbound.today.
