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You really can't compare profit margins between a retailer and a software company. Amazon books the full price of the products it sells as revenue, but must pay
by necubi 14y ago
You really can't compare profit margins between a retailer and a software company. Amazon books the full price of the products it sells as revenue, but must pay most of that to its suppliers, whereas the marginal cost of most of Google's products is very near 0.
- brisance 14y agoFair enough, but even then, AMZN is doing worse than Wal-Mart.
- suby 14y agoWalmart has to compete with whatever local stores are in your area. Amazon has to compete with every other website that sells things on the 'net. Plus I'm under the impression that Amazon is investing more into growth at the moment than Walmart is.
- npsimons 14y agoPrime is really a killer feature. I'll find myself ordering things I never would have dreamed of buying online, or possibly at all (because I didn't know it existed). And this from someone who balked when Amazon first started selling things besides books!. Living in a small town might be a factor in this, however.
- arethuza 14y agoI was surprised to read that Wal-Mart has had some fairly large failures in some markets - notably Germany where they gave up and lost £3 billion. Is there any country where Amazon has tried and failed to compete?
- smackfu 14y agoIf you look at 3Q numbers, AMZN had 27% revenue growth, while Walmart had 4%. That's a huge difference. (Walmart didn't announce 4Q numbers yet.)