Brass Tacks Emerge on Amazon’s Stake in the Mobile Payments / eCommerce Market
With Amazon’s earnings figures now out in the open, it’s clear that the company has done bang-up business for itself. Our friends at eMarketer recently dropped word our way about the brass tacks of Amazon’s earnings report, showing us how deep the rabbit hole goes in this company so much a part of our everyday mobile payments use.
Amazon’s ecommerce sales in the US were poised to increase 17.7 percent over 2018’s. That would bring the total to a hefty $221.13 billion, giving Amazon effective control over better than a third—37.7 percent—of the total US ecommerce market. It also gives Amazon control over four percent of the total US retail market.
The interesting part of this, though, is that Amazon is seeing gains in ecommerce sales at the same time that ecommerce in the US is exploding. This year, US ecommerce sales are slated to increase 14 percent over last year’s figures, hitting $586.92 billion. That also accounts for 10.7 percent of expected US retail sales, showing that ecommerce—and by extension mobile commerce and mobile payments—are gaining ground substantially.
Andrew Lipsman, eMarketer principal analyst, noted “The story of Amazon’s past few quarters has been continued supercharged growth in its more profitable business lines like cloud and advertising. However, recent signs of moderating growth rates in these segments—on top of ecommerce growth that’s now only slightly outpacing the overall sector—could weigh on Q2 earnings. Amazon will also face questions over a heightened risk of antitrust scrutiny in the US in light of the recently reported EU probe.”
While Amazon has certainly gained a lot of ground in the ecommerce space, it’s a boat that, much like the rest of the field, seems to have been lifted by a rising tide overall. Perhaps even better, as ecommerce gains ground in sales, brick-and-mortar is still holding on as the biggest part of US retail sales by a wide margin. Sure, we’ll still see closures as we’ve seen recently, but brick-and-mortar is far from out of the game.
Still, Amazon is proving a force to be reckoned with, and an excellent use for mobile payments. Anyone who’s ever pulled out their smartphones to window shop while waiting at a doctor’s office or what have you knows this much firsthand.