“In the crusade to capture clicks and pull in dollars from online sales, Amazon remains the clear frontrunner,” Shelly Banjo reports for The Wall Street Journal. “But 2013 e-commerce sales data from trade publication Internet Retailer reveals that the race is heating up.”
“One big, gaining rival: Apple, which took the No. 2 spot long held by office supply chain Staples,” Banjo reports. “The iPhone maker notched a 24% increase in online sales to $18.3 billion last year. Part of the increase in Apple’s sales this year came from Internet Retailer’s inclusion of Apple’s online hardware sales for the first time, in addition to the digital sales from its App Store and iTunes.”
“Amazon sold $67.8 billion of electronics, media and other products last year — more than its next 10 biggest online competitors combined,” Banjo reports. “Yet for the first time in a decade, Wal-Mart’s Web sales grew faster than Amazon’s. Global Internet sales at Wal-Mart, which remained ranked as the fourth largest online seller by Internet Retailer, rose by 30% to $10 billion last year, topping Amazon’s 20% sales growth during the same period.”
Read more in the full article here.
With Amazon monopolizing the market, squeezing out local stores and ruling the ebook market with Gov/DOJ thumbs up, I am working hard to avoid Amazon for future purchases.
I don’t understand this sentiment.
Buy local and not from amazon.
Why? (not that I don’t on a lot of things).
We’ve been heading this directions for decades, and I don’t see the issue.
As far as the Kindle, I don’t read from a player and prefer books (from a local store…).
There are so many things I buy from Amazon that I can’t get locally, or they cost way more or aren’t exactly what I need or I have to wait while THEY get online and order it.
I have no qualms dealing with Amazon, but I will present a dichotomy for some of you: Does Wal-Mart count as local???
Does Wal-Mart count as local???
Even more confusing will be when the lines become more blurred with Amazon being local or not. They’re increasing their local warehouses and distribution centers. UPS is already employing a lot of local people for deliveries and Amazon may start doing that themselves and hiring locals as well.
In any case, I have no problem buying from Amazon. In this global “flat Earth” village, they’re already more local to me than the crap stores that don’t have what I want in stock and charge too much anyway.
Really?
Amen to that. It has been a few years since I ordered anything from Amazon. I shop local if possible and shop online elsewhere for the rest. Monoprice.com is great for cables and connectors and such.
I used to go to Amazon to read the reviews. Now I don’t even do that. They just didn’t seem that useful.
This could help explain why Apple Store sales have leveled off. Why get in your car, drive to the mall, park, and walk a 1/4 mile to the store inside the mall when you can simply order your stuff with a couple clicks on the net? Unless I needed something right now, almost all my Apple purchases over the past year have been via the website.
Definitely buying online for apple gear is preferable most of the time. I used to get the iPhone from the store but this time went to AT&T and the experience was not horrible.
The funny thing is that even though more people are buying from the online apple store the retail stores are still packed. Apple yet again have found a way to keep its customers and still attract new ones.