“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.”
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