Business Strategy Concepts
COMPANY PROFILE
Amazon.com, Inc.
REFERENCE CODE: 2B52E1D8-E964-4D7F-8B1B-C48DBC97815F PUBLICATION DATE: 24 Aug 2018 www.marketline.com COPYRIGHT MARKETLINE. THIS CONTENT IS A LICENSED PRODUCT AND IS NOT TO BE PHOTOCOPIED OR DISTRIBUTED
A Progressive Digital Media business
Amazon.com, Inc. TABLE OF CONTENTS
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Company Overview ........................................................................................................ 3 Key Facts ......................................................................................................................... 3 Business Description ..................................................................................................... 4 History ............................................................................................................................. 6 Key Employees ............................................................................................................. 73 Key Employee Biographies .........................................................................................74 Major Products & Services ..........................................................................................79 SWOT Analysis ............................................................................................................. 83 Top Competitors ........................................................................................................... 88 Company View .............................................................................................................. 89 Locations And Subsidiaries ........................................................................................95
Amazon.com, Inc. Company Overview
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 3
Company Overview
COMPANY OVERVIEW
Amazon.com, Inc. (Amazon or 'the company') is a global online retailer. The company offers a range of merchandise, including books, apparel, electronics, home and garden tools, toys and baby games, sports and outdoor products, automotive and industrial products and other general merchandise products. It also provides services that includes web services, order fulfillment, publishing, advertising and co-branded credit cards services. Additionally, the company also manufactures and sells electronic devices, including Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets, Fire televisions (TVs) and Echo. It markets its products through website, www.amazon.com. Amazon also operates through various international websites. The company has business presence across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Amazon is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, the US.
The company reported revenues of (US Dollars) US$177,866 million for the fiscal year ended December 2017 (FY2017), an increase of 30.8% over FY2016. In FY2017, the company’s operating margin was 2.3%, compared to an operating margin of 3.1% in FY2016. In FY2017, the company recorded a net margin of 1.7%, compared to a net margin of 1.7% in FY2016.
The company reported revenues of US$52,886.0 million for the second quarter ended June 2018, an increase of 3.6% over the previous quarter.
Key Facts
KEY FACTS
Head Office Amazon.com, Inc. 410 Terry Ave North Seattle Washington Seattle Washington USA
Phone 1 206 2661000 Fax 1 302 6365454 Web Address www.amazon.com Revenue / turnover (USD Mn) 177,866.0 Financial Year End December Employees 566,000 NASDAQ Ticker AMZN
Amazon.com, Inc. Business Description
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 4
Business Description
BUSINESS DESCRIPTION
Amazon.com, Inc. is an online retailer. The company offers a range of products and services through its trademark e-commerce site, amazon.com. The products offered by the company include merchandise and content purchased for resale from vendors and products offered by third party sellers. The company also manufactures and sells the Kindle devices. Additionally, it provides services such as advertising services and co-branded credit card agreements.
The company operates through three business segments: North America, International and Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The North America segment focuses on retail sales of consumer products (including from sellers) and handles subscriptions through North America-focused websites, including www.amazon.com, www.amazon.ca and www.amazon.com.mx. This segment also includes export sales generated from these websites. In FY2017, the North America segment reported revenue of US$106,110million, which accounted for 59.7% of the company's total revenue.
The International segment earns revenue from the retail sales of consumer products (including from sellers) and subscriptions from international websites. This segment also includes export sales from international websites (including export sales from their respective sites to customers in the US, Canada and Mexico), but excludes export sales from North American websites. The segment operates websites such as www.amazon.com.au, www.amazon.com.br, www.amazon.cn, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.in, www.amazon.it, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.nl, www.amazon.es, and www.amazon.co.uk. In FY2017, the International segment reported revenue of US$54,297 million, which accounted for 30.5% of the company's total revenue.
The Amazon Web Services (AWS)segment earns revenues from global sales of compute, storage, database, and other AWS service offerings for start-ups, enterprises, government agencies, and academic institutions. In FY2017, the AWS segment reported revenue of US$17,459 million, which accounted for 9.8% of the company's total revenue. Amazon caters to four primary customer sets: consumers, sellers, developers and enterprises, and content creators.
The company designs its websites to enable the sale of millions of unique products; some of these products are sold by Amazon, while the others are sold by third party vendors. The company also manufactures and sells electronic devices, including Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets, Fire televisions (TVs) and Echo. It also develops and produces media content. Amazon offers merchandise at the lowest possible prices by adopting everyday low product pricing strategy and through shipping offers, including through membership in Amazon Prime. The company also provides order fulfillment services to its consumers. Amazon fulfills customer orders through its fulfillment centers and delivery networks located in North America and other foreign countries; co-sourced and outsourced arrangements in certain countries; and digital delivery.
Amazon caters to sellers by offering programs that enable them to sell their products on their websites and also on Amazon's websites. The company earns fixed fees, revenue share fees, per-unit activity fees
Amazon.com, Inc. Business Description
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 5
and interest on such transactions.
The company serves developers and enterprises through AWS, which provides a broad set of global compute, storage, database, and other service offerings.
Amazon serves content creators such as authors and independent publishers through Kindle Direct Publishing, an online platform that allows independent authors and publishers to select a 70% royalty option and make their books available in the Kindle Store. The company also offers its own publishing arm, Amazon Publishing. It also offers programs that allow authors, musicians, filmmakers, application developers, and others to publish and sell content.
In addition, Amazon generates revenues through co-branded credit card agreements and advertising services.
Geographically, the company classifies its operations into five regions: the US, Germany, Japan, the UK, and Rest of the World. In FY2017, the US segment accounted for 67.7% of the company's total revenues, followed by Germany with 9.5%, Japan with 6.7%, the UK with 6.4%, and Rest of the World with 9.6%.
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 6
History
HISTORY
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2018
In January, Amazon acquired Sqrrl Data Inc., a Massachusetts-based cybersecurity software company.
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In January, Apple launched the new HomePod smart speaker, that uses Siri voice assistant, taking on Google, Amazon.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2018
In January, Amazon opened its new Head Quarter building, The Spheres, in Seattle, the US.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In January, Westpac partnered with company for voice technology through its Alexa Skill.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2018
In January, the company opened the new store, Amazon Go, in downtown Seattle, the US.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2018
In January, the company plans to release a software development kit, the Virtual Dash Button Service, that makes easy to implement virtual versions of Amazon Dash Buttons for brands.
Contracts/Agreements
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 7
Year: 2018
In January, Bonitasoft partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to operate the Bonita platform with AWS cloud technology.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In January, Polk Audio launched its voice-controlled sound bar, Polk Command Bar with Amazon Alexa Voice Service built-in.
Patent Grant
Year: 2018
In January, Amazon received a patent from the US Patent and Trademark Office for a digital mirror for the customers to virtually try on clothes with different backgrounds.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In February, the company partnered with Bank of America Merrill Lynch to expand its lendtech programme for small businesses that sell on company’s websites.
New Product Approvals
Year: 2018
In February, the company launched the new AR (Augmented Reality) feature for its Android users.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2018
In February, Amazon agreed to acquire a connected-doorbell startup, Ring Inc, for a value at US$1 billion.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2018
In February, the company introduced its Prime Music service in India.
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 8
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In February, the company plans to introduce Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) services in Australia to support local businesses store and to sell their goods to customers through FBA program.
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In February, Amazon launched the new foldable Holy Stone HS160 Shadow FPV RC Drone with HD camera.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2018
In March, Amazon plans to stop sale of its Nest smart home products through marketplace.
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In February, the company launched Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) services in Australia.
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In February, the company launched its Prime Music service in India.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In February, the company entered into an agreement to acquire Ring for more than US$1 billion.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2018
In February, the company introduced delivery business for merchants in Australia.
Others
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 9
Year: 2018
In March, the company's Amazon Cash is available within its Now Prepay retail distribution network.
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In March, the company signed a deal to open its platforms up to Vietnamese exports.
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In March, the company announced the launch of JuvaLips.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2018
In March, Amazon expanded its presence to Australia for Northland retailers and suppliers.
Product Recall
Year: 2018
In March, the company plans to recall around 260,000 portable chargers that posses a fire and burn risk.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In March, Amazon and JPMorgan partnered to create a new current-account-like product.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2018
In March, Amazon.com plans to open its new fulfillment centre in St Peters, Missouri, the US.
Patent Grant
Year: 2018
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 10
In March, the company was issued a new patent from the US Patent and Trademark Office to deliver drone that can respond to human gestures.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In March, Amazon and Swiss Post entered into a contract to simplify transfer of merchandise across the Swiss border.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In March, the company and Kohl's partnered that drives foot traffic.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In April, the company and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital partnered for the fight against childhood cancer through a new service, Alexa Donations.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In March, Amazon entered into a distribution agreement with Casino Group for Amazon’s high-speed delivery service.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2018
In April, the company plans to open a distribution center in Monroe County, New York, the US.
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In April, AWS launched a new Amazon S3 storage class, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) One Zone-Infrequent Access (Z-IA).
New Products/Services
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 11
Year: 2018
In April, the company plans to launch one up HomePod to its Echo product portfolio, supporting for music automation.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2018
In April, Amazon plans to open a new facility in North Las Vegas, Nevada, the US.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2018
In April, Amazon acquired Ring, a manufacturer of security cameras and internet-connected doorbells, worth US$1 Billion.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2018
In April, the company acquired Ring Video Doorbell to work together to reduce crime in neighborhood.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In April, the company entered into a partnership with Best Buy to offer New Fire TV Edition Smart TVs in the US and Canada.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2018
In April, Cox Automotive announced its plans to move its infrastructure to company's Amazon Web Services.
Patent Grant
Year: 2018
In April, Amazon secured a patent for a system that tracks and identifies Bitcoin users and to feed their details to law enforcement agencies.
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 12
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2018
In April, Amazon Web Servers launched its blockchain template for Ethereum and Hyperledger fabric.
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In April, Amazon introduced a new service, Amazon Key, that enables in-home delivery and keyless guest access to its customers.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2018
In April, the company introduced its product, Echo Spot in Canada.
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In April, Amazon launched a new music automation feature to Amazon Alexa’s Routines.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In April, the company and Whole Foods Market together introduced a free two-hour delivery service of natural and organic products from Whole Foods Market through Prime Now in Denver, Sacramento and San Diego, in California, the US.
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In April, the company introduced the new international shopping experience in its Amazon Shopping app, for Thailand customers to browse and shop eligible items that would be shipped from the US.
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In May, Amazon introduced Prime Book Box, a services for kids whi are avid readers.
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 13
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In May, Amazon and Synchrony, a consumer financial services firm, partnered to introduce voice commands for Amazon's Alexa, to provide customers with services through Amazon.com store card.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In April, Amazon and Volvo partnered to provide delivery of packages into customers’ cars in the US.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In May, Verizon's Oath selected Amazon's AWS as its preferred public cloud provider to expand its use of AWS to migrate legacy workloads and to build new cloud-based applications.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2018
In May, the company announced its plan to opne a fulfilment centre in Sydney, Australia.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In June, the company along with AliExpress, eBay and Rakuten-France entered into an agreement with the European Commission to combat the list of dangerous products on Europe’s online shopping sites.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2018
In June, the company agreed to acquire PillPack, an online pharmacy.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2018
In July, Amazon announced its plans to open a new fulfillment center in Thornton, Coloardo, the US.
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 14
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In May, Amazon and Lennar partnered and opened interactive Amazon Experience Centers in selected Lennar model homes all over the US.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In May, the company entered into a partnership with Sears Auto Centers, to make tire purchases and installations easier and more convenient for customers.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In July, Amazon and Major League Baseball (MLB) entered into a partnership to provide real time data- driven insights on live games using machine learning and AI.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In July, the company and Hyundai Motor planned to open a virtual showroom on Amazon platform.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In May, Amazon and NASA together formed outposts in France for the development of air traffic control systems specifically for drones.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In July, the company collabrated with SSC Napoli football club to introduce an integrated ‘brandstore’ on the company's Amazon digital retail platform.
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 15
In July, Amazon Video announces new TV shows and movies for August 2018.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In July, Amazon in partnership with Whole Foods Market launched a delivery of natural and organic products from Whole Foods Market through Prime.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2018
In July, Amazon announced to open fulfillment centre in Caledon, Canada.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2018
In September, the company opened a new Research and Development centre in Barcelona, Spain.
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In February, NAS Insurance Services introduced Momentum, an insurance product for online sellers like Amazon.
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In August, Amazon launched Merch by Amazon service in the UK and Germany.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In June, the company and RedAwning Group paired up to introduce RedAwning Smart Concierge.
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 16
In August, the company and Whole Foods Market launched the grocery pickup services in Virginia Beach and Sacramento, California.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2018
In June, Amazon opened its second Oklahoma fulfillment center in Tulsa.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In August, Amazon Web Services and DXC Technology signed a multi-year contract to form DXC - AWS Integrated Practice, to advance IT services and deepen client migrations to AWS.
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In August, Amazon Web Services announced the availability ofAmazon Aurora Serverless.
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In August, the company launched the basket bargains service.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2018
In August, the company planned to open its customer service center in Colombia.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2018
In August, the company planned to launch an insurance price comparison site in the UK.
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In August, Xiaomi launched the Mi A2 in India, via Amazon and Mi.com online platforms.
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 17
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In August, Amazon introduced Avalara TrustFile on its Amazon Marketplace Appstore.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2018
In August, Amazon plans to open a customer service center in Colombia.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2018
In August, the company to launch its new delivery service center in Austin, Texas.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2018
In August, the company announced to open a new Amazon Go store in downtown Seattle, Washington, the US.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In August, Amazon expanded its Tire Purchase and Installation Program with Sears Auto Center to provide full-service tire installation for customers.
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In August, the company introduced its Prime membership for CAD 7.99 per month in Canada.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2018
In August, Amazon planned to open a new package delivery center in Ladson, the US.
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 18
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In August, the company launched Prime Book Box, a subscription children book service, to all U.S. Prime members.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2018
In August, the company planned to launch a video service for its Fire TV streaming users.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2018
In August, the company to sell snacks, sweets, and wines online in Mexico.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2018
In August, the company planned to acquire a minority stake in Spencer’s Retail.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2018
In August, the company launched fashion and sports stores in Brazilian marketplace.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2018
In September, the company and Samara Capital planned to buy supermarket chain More from Aditya Birla Group (ABRL).
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In August, Amazon Music introduced new voice commands for Alexa.
New Products/Services
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 19
Year: 2018
In September, Amazon.in introduced a link for a Hindi option on its e-commerce portal for users.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In April, Amazon partnered with Best Buy to sell smart TVs through Amazon's Fire TV operating system.
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In September, the company introduced the All-New Fire HD 8 Kids Edition.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In September, Amazon entered into a partnership with Drybar, to release of Life Itself.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2018
In September, the company planned to open Amazon Go, its checkout-free grocery store, in New York, the U.S.
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In September, Amazon and Whole Foods launched delivery of natural and organic products from Whole Foods Market through Prime Now in Charlotte, Las Vegas, Memphis, Nashville, New Orleans, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Raleigh, Seattle, Tucson, New York City, Los Angeles and Dallas/Ft. Worth.
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In September, Amazon launched two new product categories to expand its offering in Australia.
New Products/Services
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 20
Year: 2018
In September, Amazon launched Amazon Charts, a weekly bestseller list which shares the most read and sold books across all formats each week in Canada.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In September, Amazon partnered with Good Housekeeping and Mall of America to launch the GH Lab Store.
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In September, Amazon.com introduced its own-brand activewear label, Aurique.
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In September, Amazon launched Amazon Storefronts, a new online store for customers to shop exclusively from U.S. small and medium-sized businesses selling on Amazon.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In September, the company collaborated with Snap to test Snapchat camera to search products on Amazon.com.
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In September, Amazon launched Ring Stick Up Cam, a home security cameras.
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In September, the company launched Alexa-powered products to advance smart home capabilities.
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 21
Financing Agreements
Year: 2018
In September, the company announced its plan to invest US$951 million, with Amazon Web Services and its e-commerce services, in Indonesia over 10 years.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In September, Amazon partnered with Subaru to create a custom co-branded landing page featuring its new three-row large SUV, Ascent, and Amazon products together.
New Products/Services
Year: 2018
In September, the company introduced its AWS Storage Gateway hardware appliances such as Amazon Simple Storage Service, Amazon Elastic Block Store, and Amazon Glacier.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In September, Amazon and Audi partnered to equip Amazon Alexa powered dashboard in Audi vehicles.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2018
In September, the company and Audi partnered to equip Amazon Alexa powered dashboard in Audi vehicles.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2018
In September, the company opened up Amazon 4-Star store, with its highly rated items, in New York.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2018
In September, the company opened its new fulfillment center in West Deptford, New Jersey.
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 22
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2018
In September, Amazon has planned Amazon plans to invest US$944 million in Indonesia to launch Amazon Web Services.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
Amazon introduced a new voice ordering service, which enables its customers to voice-order their next meal from Amazon Restaurants on their Alexa-enabled devices including the Amazon Echo and Echo Dot. This new Alexa skill allows the customers to reorder from any restaurant available on the service in over 20 cities by saying, ‘Alexa, order from Amazon Restaurant’.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2017
The company announced plans to open a one million square feet fulfillment center in Colorado. It is the first fulfillment center in Colorado.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2017
Live Nation Entertainment, one of the leading live entertainment and ticketing companies, selected AWS as its public cloud infrastructure provider and is moving its global information technology infrastructure to the AWS Cloud.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
AWS launched Amazon Chime, a new unified communications service that makes meetings easier and efficient. Amazon Chime allows its customers to start high-quality video and audio meetings with one- click, enabling them to join a meeting, chat, and share content and screens with a synchronized experience across desktops, iOS, and Android devices.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 23
The company introduced the latest generation Amazon Fire TV Stick in the UK, Germany, and Japan.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
Amazon launched a solar energy initiative on fulfillment center rooftops to generate clean energy. The company plans to install solar systems on 50 fulfillment facility rooftops worldwide by 2020.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
The company launched its one-hour delivery service, Prime Now, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2017
Amazon entered into an agreement to acquire SOUQ.com, one of the e-commerce leaders in the Middle East. The acquisition allows the company to offer its services for millions of customers in the Middle East.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
AWS introduced Amazon Connect, a self-service, cloud-based contact center service that enables any business to deliver better customer service at lower cost. Amazon Connect is based on the contact center technology.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2017
AWS plans to open an infrastructure region or a data center in Stockholm, Sweden by 2018.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
The company announced the availability of high-performance far-field microphone array and voice processing technology, found in Amazon Echo, to hardware makers. With the Amazon Alexa 7-Mic Far- Field Development Kit, hardware makers can build and introduce far-field voice-initiated products with Alexa by decreasing development time and cost.
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 24
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2017
Dunkin' Brands Group (the parent company of Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin-Robbins) and HERE Technologies (one of the leading global providers of maps and location services), in two different transactions, selected AWS as their preferred cloud infrastructure provider.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
Amazon Lex, an artificial intelligence (AI) service for building applications that can have conversations using voice and text, was made available to all customers by AWS.
Others
Year: 2017
AWS introduced Amazon Redshift Spectrum, a new feature that enables Amazon Redshift customers to run SQL queries against exabytes of their data in Amazon S3.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
AWS launched Amazon DynamoDB Accelerator, a fully managed in-memory cache that can reduce Amazon DynamoDB response times from milliseconds to microseconds.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
The company introduced a self-service subscriptions marketplace, which allows digital subscription providers to reach millions of Amazon customers.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2017
Red Hat, one of the world's leading providers of open source solutions, and AWS announced an extended strategic alliance to integrate access to AWS services into Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. Through this unique offering, customers can deploy AWS services from within Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform both on-premises and in the cloud.
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 25
Commercial Operation
Year: 2017
In May, the company expanded its operations with the addition of seven new warehouses in India.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In March, the company launched AmazonFresh Pickup click and collect grocery services in the US.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2017
In May, Samsung announced to sell its new 360-degree camera at a cost of US$229 and it is available at online platforms such as -Mobile, Verizon, Best Buy, Amazon, AT&T, Sprint, U.S. Cellular, and ShopSamsung app.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In May, American Express launched the new Amex skill for Amazon Alexa, at its Innovation Showcase event in New York.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2017
In June, the company plans to open its first Oregon fulfillment center in Troutdale.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2017
In June, the company plans to open a new fulfillment center in North Haven.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2017
In June, the company plans to open its second Colorado fulfillment center in Thornton.
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 26
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2017
In June, the company planned to open a new fulfillment center in Sunshine, Miami.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2017
In July, the company acquired e-commerce firm Souq for US$580 million.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2017
In July, Amazon signed an agreement to acquire Whole Foods for a consideration of US$13.7 billion.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2017
In June, the company to construct a facility at Salt lake City valued US$200 million.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2017
In July, the company planned to open new office in the Seaport District in the Bay State.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2017
In July, the company planned to initiate underwater warehouses.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2017
In July, the company acquired Game Sparks Technologies, a cloud service provider.
Financing Agreements
Year: 2017
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 27
In July, the company invested in its payments entity, Amazon Pay India, with INR130 crore.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2017
In June, the company opened up a Hub Warehouse in Wynwood, US.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2017
In February, the company planned to expand in the UK by hiring 5,000 additional staff.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In April, the company launched the Echo Look, a new device with artificial-intelligence powered speakers that includes a camera to take videos and photos of their outfits.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In March, the company launched Prime membership in Mexico.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In September, the company launched streaming services that compete with Apple and Spotify.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In April, the company launched Amazon cash for the unbanked and underbanked customers.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In March, the company launched a new grocery-store pickup service in Seattle.
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 28
Commercial Operation
Year: 2017
In April, the company planned to open a big new office in downtown Bellevue, Wash.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In March, the company launched an Indian entertainment channel, Heera in the US.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In February, the company opened a bookstore in the San Francisco Bay area.
Commercial Operation
Year: 2017
In February, the company open two customer service facilities in Coimbatore, Noida.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In April, the company planned to launch an online emporium with full-fledged retail presence in Australia.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In April, the company launched its Amazon Pay service in Italy.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2017
In January, the company signed an agreement with EU regulator for e-books contracts.
New Products/Services
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 29
Year: 2017
In May, the company launched new Fire tablets, Fire 7 and the Fire HD.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In May, the company expanded its prime reading service to Prime subscribers in the UK.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In May, the company launched UK pay-TV service.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In May, the company planned to enter UK and Europe’s retail industry with check-out free supermarkets.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In May, the company expanded OTT channel subscriptions to the UK, Germany.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In June, Bango enabled a new payment option for Amazon customers in Japan.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In June, the company announced that it will receive an approval from FDI for its proposal of investment in retail of food products in India.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 30
In June, the company expanded its Prime Now Service to members in Denver.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In June, the company launched new cashback perk service.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In June, the company rolled out its first payments integration on Instagram.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2017
In June, the company expanded its Dash button service with 20 new brands.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In June, the company planned to introduce a new service that translates multiple languages.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In June, the company launched a new, China-Specific Kindle E-reader.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2017
In June, the Aurora City Council approved an agreement for intersection work for Amazon project.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2017
In June, the company opened up a Hub Warehouse in Wynwood, the US.
Contracts/Agreements
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 31
Year: 2017
In June, the company and Olive Garden signed a partnership for new food services.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In July, the company launched its own wine brand with king vinters.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2017
In July, the company planned to invest US$260 million in its Indian unit.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In July, the company initiated selling of spectacles with snappy delivery.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2017
In January, Amazon planned to open Brick & Mortar Bookstore in New York City.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2017
In July, the company's Treasure Truck facility expanding to other US cities.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In July, the company partnered with Coway to develop a hi-tech water purifier.
Commercial Operation
Year: 2017
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 32
In July, the company opened its new London HQ in a 15-storey building in Shoreditch to increase the research & development staff range from 450 to 900.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In July, the company announced to offer sprouts groceries through Prime Now same-day service.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In July, the company launched its Prime Now delivery service in Singapore.
Commercial Operation
Year: 2017
In July, the company opened location in Westwood with added benefits for Prime members.
Commercial Operation
Year: 2017
In August, the company confirmed plans to set up a fulfilment centre in Melbourne in Australia.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2017
In July, the company launched its second fulfilment centre in Lucknow.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2017
In August, Titan tied up with Amazon to foray into the US market.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In August, the company rolled out instant pickup points in the US.
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 33
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In August, the company launched high-volume hiring for new Michigan warehouse.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2017
In February, Amazon Development Centre plans to establish two customer service facilities, in Coimbatore and Noida, the US.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In August, the company opened packing and shipping warehouse in Salem, India.
Commercial Operation
Year: 2017
In August, the company opened its second Oregon fulfillment center in Salem, India.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2017
In August, the company plans to open a new fulfillment center in North Randall, Ohio, the US.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2017
In August, the company and DTS to launch the first DTS Play-Fi-enabled wireless speakers with Amazon Alexa Voice Service (AVS).
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2017
In September, Amazon plans to open a new fulfillment center in Charter Township of Shelby, Michigan, the US.
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 34
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2017
In June, Amazon prime extended their partnership with DIA for providing customer online purchase and delivering order within one or two hour within preferred location in Ciudad Condal ,Barcelona.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In October, Amazon launched e-book reader Kindle Oasis featuring the highest-resolution Paperwhite Display.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2017
In October, Amazon,NTT Communications, PCCW Global, PLDT, Facebook signed a partnership with SoftBank to construct and operate JUPITER a Trans-Pacific Submarine Cable System that will connect Japan, Philippines and the US .
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In September, the company launched a dirt cheap 4K Fire TV.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2017
In September, the company entered into a partnership with Dabur India, to launch ayurveda e- marketplace.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2017
In September, the company announced a partnership with Kohl’s, on smart-home shops.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2017
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 35
In December, Amazon announced the acquisition of Immedia (Blink).
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2017
In November, Best Buy announced a partnership with Amazon for voice shopping through Alexa.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2017
In November, Amazon opened its drones facility in Cambridge, England.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In November, Amazon introduced two new furniture brands such as Rivet and Stone & Beam feature.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In October, Amazon announced that the availability of Alexa, Echo, Echo Plus, and Echo Dot services in India.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2017
In November, Amazon opened its new 60000 sq ft development centre in Cambridge, the UK.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2017
In November, Amazon paired up with Calvin Klein on holiday Pop-ups.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2017
In January, Amazon opened new rainforest office complex in Seattle, the US.
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 36
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2017
In November, Amazon planned to enter into Swiss market, post office to provide customs clearance.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2017
In December, DialogTech Integrated with Amazon connect to help contact centers convert callers to customers.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2017
In December, Amazon partnered with Bsquare Corporation, and Microsoft to help drive powerful industrial IoT data visualizations.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In December, Amazon launched the latest version of their Linux offering, Amazon Linux 2.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2017
In May, Deposco extended its integration with Amazon for the Seller Fulfilled Prime program.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2017
In December, the company and GEP partnered to integrate its SMART by GEP procurement software with Amazon Business.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2017
In November, the company and Sift Security partnered to integrate its CloudHunter with Amazon EC2 Container Service (ECS) for its improved visibility and to enhance detection, threat hunting, and incident
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 37
response capabilities.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2017
In November, the company opened a new shipping center in Israel.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In November, the company introduced the new AWS PrivateLink to access third-party SaaS applications from Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In November, Amazon launched the new fully managed intelligent threat detection service, Amazon GuardDuty.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2017
In November, the company and Voysis partnered to create an artificial intelligence voice assistant that aims to license to retailers to help them compete.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2017
In October, the company plans to open Liquor Bar in Tokyo, Japan.
New Products/Services
Year: 2017
In September, Amazon introduced the new addition to the Echo portfolio, Echo Spot.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2017
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 38
In September, the company plans to open its new fulfillment center in Monroe, Ohio, the US.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2017
In July, Sears and Amazon signed an agreement to the launch Sears' Kenmore products on Amazon.com.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2017
In September, the company opened its first fashion imaging studio, Blink, in Gurgaon, India.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2017
In May, Amazon and DataArt signed an agreement to integrate Amazon Alexa with DataArt’s open source IoT data platform, DeviceHive.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2017
In April, DiagnosisAI launched the Alexa, Ask Doctor Dex (DexMD) skill for Amazon Alexa.
New Products/Services
Year: 2016
The company launched Prime Reading, which gives Prime members access to unlimited selection of books, magazines and comics at no additional cost.
New Products/Services
Year: 2016
AWS introduced P2 instances for Amazon EC2, which is designed for compute-intensive applications. The company and Twitch, one of leading social video platforms and communities for gamers in the world, announced Twitch Prime, a new set of Amazon Prime benefits created for gamers.
Plans/Strategy
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 39
Year: 2016
The company announced plans to introduce new features to Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick. The new features enable customers to use their voice to search for favorite content, find the best subscription deals, and also see recommendations for popular programming from applications including Netflix, HBO GO and HBO NOW. Amazon plans to build a new 253 MW Amazon Wind Farm in Scurry County, Texas. It is expected to open in 2017.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2016
Amazon opened a fulfillment center in Edgerton, Kansas. The company opened a fulfillment center in Shakopee, Minnesota.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2016
AWS announced the availability of Amazon Kinesis Analytics, a new service that enables developers to gain actionable insights from streaming data. The company announced Amazon Vehicles, a car research destination and automotive community, where customers can view specifications, images, videos, and customer reviews for various car models on Amazon.com. In addition, customers can ask questions about their vehicle and find parts and accessories that fit their current car.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2016
The company opened a fulfillment center in Obetz, Ohio.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2016
The company announced plans to open a new fulfillment center in Kansas City, Kansas; and Sacramento, California. Amazon announced plans to open a new fulfillment center in Houston, Texas. It is the seventh fulfillment center to be opened in Texas.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2016
AWS expanded its global footprint with the introduction of Asia Pacific (Mumbai) Region, which provides Indian customers a local choice to build their businesses and run their applications in the cloud. It is the
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 40
sixth location in Asia Pacific.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2016
Amazon opened The Mark Cuban Collection (www.amazon.com/exclusives) on Amazon Exclusives, which gives customers direct access to innovative new products. Georgia.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2016
The company announced plans to open two new fulfillment centers in Edwardsville, Illinois. Amazon announced that Prime Now service in Atlanta will deliver food from local restaurants, including Aviva by Kameel, Chai Pani, Flip Burger, Flying Biscuit, Grindhouse Killer Burgers, and Varasano’s Pizzeria, among others. The company announced plans to open a new fulfillment center in Braselton,
New Products/Services
Year: 2016
The company launched Amazon Video Direct (AVD), a new self-service program that enables creators and storytellers to make their video content available to Amazon customers. Amazon introduced Handmade, a store that comprises over 20,000 handmade items (accessories, baby, and toys and games, among others) crafted and sold directly from artisans. Amazon launched Prime Now service in Manhattan, which will deliver food from local restaurants, including Blue Ribbon Fried Chicken, Burger Joint, ilili, John’s of Bleecker Street, Junior's Restaurant & Cheesecake, Momofuku Milk Bar, Num Pang and Sarabeth’s Tribeca, among others. AWS introduced X1 instances for Amazon EC2. X1 instances offer more memory than any other SAP-certified cloud instance.
New Products/Services
Year: 2016
The company launched Kindle Oasis, an eight generation of Kindle, which is thinner and lighter Kindle ever. AWS announced the availability of two new low-cost hard disk drive (HDD)-backed storage options for Amazon EBS.
New Products/Services
Year: 2016
The company introduced the Amazon Payments Partner program, which provides tools and services to help partners grow their business by offering easy integration with Amazon Payments. Amazon
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 41
introduced its one-hour delivery service, Prime Now, in 11 new metro areas, including Charlotte, Cincinnati, Fresno, Louisville, Milwaukee, Nashville, Raleigh, Richmond, Sacramento, Stockton, and Tucson; and new areas in Central New Jersey, Dallas-Fort Worth, Los Angeles, and San Diego.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2016
Amazon announced plans to open a new fulfillment center in Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, Texas. This is the company’s sixth fulfillment center in Texas. Amazon announced plans to open two fulfillment centers in Florence and Carteret, New Jersey.
New Products/Services
Year: 2016
Amazon launched two new Alexa-enabled devices: Echo Dot and Amazon Tap. Echo Dot is a hands-free, voice controlled device, which uses the same far-field voice recognition as Echo, whereas Amazon Tap is a portable bluetooth and Wi-Fi speaker. AWS introduced AWS Database Migration service, which enables customers to migrate their production Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, MariaDB, and PostgreSQL databases from on-premises datacenters to AWS with virtually no downtime.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2016
Amazon.ca introduced two new unlimited cloud storage plans with Amazon Cloud Drive. These plans enable customers to securely store their existing content collections and automatically upload unlimited new content. The company announced plans to open a new fulfillment center in San Bernardino, California.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2016
The company signed a multi-year production agreement with American Girl, a premium brand for girls and subsidiary of Mattel, to produce four live-action specials and options to produce multiple seasons of episodic content. The company, in partnership with Brita, launched first Wi-Fi-enabled Brita Infinity pitcher, which automatically orders a new filter through Amazon Dash Replenishment.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2016
AWS opened its fifth technology infrastructure region in Asia Pacific. This platform enables Korean-based
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 42
businesses, as well as global companies with customers in Korea to build their businesses and run their applications in the AWS cloud. The company announced that Prime Now service in Chicago will deliver food from local restaurants, including Balena, Big Bowl, Big Star, Chicago q, M Burger, RPM Italian and Wildfire, among others.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2016
Amazon acquired Twitch Interactive, a live video platform for gamers. Through this acquisition, the company strengthened its market position in the gaming industry.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2016
The company announced that Prime Now service in Dallas will deliver food from local restaurants, including Blue Goose Cantina, Deep Sushi, Ellen’s Southern Kitchen, Fireside Pies, Greenville Avenue Pizza Company, Grub Burger Bar, and Terilli’s Restaurant and Bar, among others.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2016
Amazon announced the availability of Fire, its fastest selling tablet, in new colors and more storage options.The company also announced that Prime Now service in San Francisco will deliver food from local restaurants, including Big Chef Tom’s Belly Burgers, Buca di Beppo, DOSA, The Monk’s Kettle, Nick’s Crispy Tacos and Pressed Juicery, among others.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2016
Amazon opened a new fulfillment center in Fall River, Massachusetts. The company opened a fulfillment center in San Marcos, Texas.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2016
Brother printers, a General Electric washer, and the Gmate SMART blood glucose monitor joined DRS program. These are the first devices to join the program.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 43
Year: 2016
The company announced that Prime Now service in Houston will deliver food from local restaurants, including Carrabba’s, El Tiempo Cantina, Max’s Wine Dive, P.F. Chang’s, Thai Gourmet, and The Hay Merchant.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2016
The company expanded Handmade at Amazon into Europe. Amazon customers in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the UK and across Europe can shop for more than 30,000 handcrafted products.
New Products/Services
Year: 2016
Amazon announced that Prime Now service in San Diego will deliver food from local restaurants, including Carnitas’ Snack Shack, Dumpling Inn, Rubicon Deli, T Deli, Tajima and Tandoori Hut, among others.
New Products/Services
Year: 2016
Amazon Prime introduced Prime Music, allowing its members to have unlimited, advertisement-free access to more than a million songs without additional cost to their membership
New Products/Services
Year: 2016
Amazon.ca launched a new ‘Business, Industrial and Scientific Supplies’ store (www.amazon.ca/industrial), which features lab and scientific products; professional medical supplies; power and hand tools; additive manufacturing products including 3D printing products; janitorial and sanitation supplies; occupational health and safety products; tapes, adhesives and sealers; and test, measure and inspection products.
New Products/Services
Year: 2016
AWS introduced Amazon Lumberyard, a free, cross-platform, 3D game engine for developers. The platform enables the developers to create and connect their games to the wide compute and storage of the AWS Cloud, and engage fans on Twitch.
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 44
New Products/Services
Year: 2016
Kindle launched Singles Classics with essays and stories by well-known authors.
New Products/Services
Year: 2016
The company announced a new feature to Kindle: Page Flip, which helps in the navigation of pages.
New Products/Services
Year: 2016
The company introduced new Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote, which provides access to more than 300,000 movies and TV episodes.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2016
Amazon announced plans to open a new fulfillment center in Coppell, Texas, and Monee, Illinois.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2016
AWS acquired NICE, one of the leading providers of software and services for high performance and technical computing.
New Products/Services
Year: 2016
In June, the company expected to launch music service for echo users soon.
New Products/Services
Year: 2016
In September, the company launched commuter bus service for Eastside employees.
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 45
New Products/Services
Year: 2016
In November, the company launched prime video service in India.
New Products/Services
Year: 2016
In August, the company launched a 4G VoLTE ready Bingo 50+ smartphone.
Commercial Operation
Year: 2016
In November, the company launched Prime streaming video in Canada.
Commercial Operation
Year: 2016
In October, the company planned to provide Internet service with Prime bundle in Europe.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2016
In November, the company extended its partnership with Morrisons to launch same day delivery service.
New Products/Services
Year: 2016
In November, the company launched its services in the Netherlands and working on launching its video service.
New Products/Services
Year: 2016
In November, the company planned to launch new video chat service.
New Products/Services
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 46
Year: 2016
In December, the company planned to launch a live TV package in 2017.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2016
In November, Amazon plans to enter Singapore in early 2017.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2016
In June, AWS and C3 IoT partnered for creating an integrated enterprise stack for deployments.
New Products/Services
Year: 2015
Amazon launched its one-hour delivery service, Prime Now, in Baltimore, Maryland. The company introduced Amazon Fire tablet in China. The company launched Fire HD 8 Reader’s Edition, which is the combination of all-new Fire HD 8, a year of Kindle Unlimited with access to more than one million books, and a limited edition leather cover. It also comprises Blue Shade, a new feature that adjusts and optimizes the display on Fire HD 8 tablet to reduce blue light exposure before bedtime. The company introduced its one-hour delivery service, Prime Now, in Austin, Texas.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2015
The company announced plans to open two fulfillment centers in Obetz and Etna, Ohio.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2015
Amazon expanded its Prime FREE Same-Day Delivery to Chicago and Orlando, as well as new locations in the New York City, Northern New Jersey and Philadelphia areas.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2015
Amazon opened one fulfillment center each in Dallas, Texas; and Joliet, Illinois.
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 47
New Products/Services
Year: 2015
AWS announced two new capabilities: AWS Snowball and Amazon Kinesis Firehose, which help customers to transfer any type or any size of data to the AWS Cloud quickly and cost-effectively. AWS Snowball transfers terabytes to petabytes of data into and out of AWS, whereas Amazon Kinesis Firehose is a fully managed service for loading streaming data into AWS. AWS announced two new database services: AWS Database Migration service and Amazon RDS for MariaDB. AWS Database Migration service enables customers to transfer production databases to AWS without any interruption, whereas MariaDB is available as a managed service in AWS.
New Products/Services
Year: 2015
AWS introduced a new platform, AWS Internet of Things (IoT). This platform enables devices such as cars, turbines, sensor grids and light bulbs, among others, to connect to AWS services so that companies can store, process, examine, and act on the volumes of data generated by connected devices on a global scale. The company launched its one-hour delivery service, Prime Now, in Portland, Oregon; San Antonio, Texas; and San Francisco Bay area, California.
New Products/Services
Year: 2015
AWS launched Amazon QuickSight, a cloud-powered business intelligence service that enables all employees to build visualizations, perform ad-hoc analysis, and to quickly get business insights from their data. Amazon QuickSight, which integrates automatically with AWS data services, makes use of a new, Super-fast, Parallel, In-memory Calculation Engine (SPICE) to execute advanced calculations and render visualizations.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2015
Amazon expanded Kindle Scout, its reader-powered publishing platform, to authors and readers outside the US, including Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, and India.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2015
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 48
The company expanded the Prime video downloads to iOS and Android platforms. As a result, Prime members in the US, UK, Germany and Austria will be able to download movies and TV episodes, including Amazon Original Series, to iPhones, iPads and Android phones and tablets for offline viewing, at no additional charge.
New Products/Services
Year: 2015
Amazon introduced Fire TV and Fire TV stick in Japan.
New Products/Services
Year: 2015
The company launched its one-hour delivery service, Prime Now, in Los Angeles. Amazon launched its first Amazon Fire TV, which offers more than 3,000 channels, applications and games. It also provides a new Fire TV stick with voice remote. The company introduced new Fire HD tablets, which feature a wide screen, thin and light design, quad-core processor, stereo speakers with Dolby audio, front- and rear- facing cameras, and micro secure digital (microSD) card. Fire HD also launched Fire operating system (Fire OS) 5 ‘Bellini’, with an updated user interface.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2015
General Electric, Samsung, August, Gmate, Oster, Obe, Petnet, CleverPet, Sutro, Thync, and Sealed Air joined the Amazon Dash Replenishment Service (DRS) program. The program enables connected devices to automatically order physical goods from Amazon when supplies are running low. It also provides convenience and ease for both customers and device makers. Amazon and CBS, a mass media company, announced a new multi-year, multi-series agreement to make Prime Video the exclusive subscription streaming home for three new CBS summer series through 2018.
New Products/Services
Year: 2015
The company introduced Amazon Launchpad, a new program that offers a streamlined onboarding experience, custom product pages, a complete marketing package, and access to Amazon's global fulfillment network. The program enables the startups to launch, market, and distribute their products to hundreds of millions of Amazon customers across the globe. Amazon launched its one-hour delivery service, Prime Now, in Seattle.
Contracts/Agreements
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 49
Year: 2015
AWS contracted with Iberdrola Renewables, the US renewable energy division of parent company Iberdrola, to construct and operate a 208 MW wind farm in Perquimans and Pasquotank counties, North Carolina, called the Amazon Wind Farm US East. This new wind farm generates approximately 670,000 MWh of wind energy annually.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2015
AWS announced that enterprise software providers such as Looker, Qlik, Sumo Logic, and Works Applications declared themselves 'all-in' with AWS as the core infrastructure platform that powers their Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions.
New Products/Services
Year: 2015
AWS introduced Amazon API Gateway, a new fully managed service that enables AWS customers to create, publish, maintain, monitor, and secure APIs at any scale. AWS introduced AWS Device Farm, a new service that enables mobile application developers quickly and securely test their applications on smartphones, tablets, and other devices to enhance the quality of their Android and Fire OS applications.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2015
AWS partnered with Community Energy, a developer of renewable energy with a long history in solar and wind energy, to construct an 80 MW solar farm in Accomack County, Virginia, called Amazon Solar Farm US East. This new solar farm is expected to start generates approximately 170,000 MWh of solar power annually.. It is the largest solar farm in the state of Virginia, with all energy generated delivered into the electrical grids that supply both current and future AWS Cloud datacenters.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2015
AWS contracted with EDP Renewables, one of the global leaders in the renewable energy sector and the fourth largest producer of wind power in the world, to construct and operate a 100 MW wind farm in Paulding County, Ohio, called the Amazon Wind Farm US Central. This new wind farm is expected to start generating approximately 320,000 MWh of wind energy annually starting May 2017.
Plans/Strategy
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 50
Year: 2015
The company announced plans to open a fulfillment center in Carteret, New Jersey.
New Products/Services
Year: 2015
AWS announced Amazon Machine Learning, a fully managed service that helps developers to use historical data to build and deploy predictive models easily. The company introduced Amazon shopping application for Apple Watch in Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, the US and the UK. The application is designed for the on-the-go customer and it offers a custom-made Amazon experience with voice search and quick tap features including 1-Click purchase and save to wish list. Amazon launched Amazon Business (www.amazon.com/business), a new marketplace on Amazon.com with new features and unique benefits tailored to businesses.
New Products/Services
Year: 2015
Amazon Cloud Drive launched two new unlimited cloud storage plans, including Unlimited Photos Plan and Unlimited Everything Plan. Through these plans, customers can securely store their existing content collections and automatically upload unlimited new content, including photos, videos, movies, music, and files. The company launched Amazon Home Services, a new marketplace for on-demand professional services.The partnership enables prime members in the US to enjoy the selection of films from Bleecker Street through the Amazon Instant Video application for TVs, connected devices and mobile devices, or online at Amazon.com/PIV without additional cost to their membership.
New Products/Services
Year: 2015
The company introduced Amazon Giveaway, a new self-service tool, designed to modernize the time- tested radio giveaway. Amazon.ca introduced Kindle Unlimited, a new subscription service which allows customers to freely read as much as they want from over 750,000 Kindle books, for only C$9.99 ($7.98) per month.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2015
The company entered into a content licensing agreement with Starz Digital Media, one of the leading integrated global media and entertainment companies. Starz Digital Media will make Prime Instant Video the exclusive online-only subscription streaming home in the US for The White Queen - the Golden Globe and Emmy nominated original miniseries from premium entertainment service provider, Starz. As per the deal, Prime members can watch the miniseries from the Amazon instant video application for TVs,
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 51
connected devices and mobile devices, or online at Amazon.com/PIV, without additional cost to their membership.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2015
The company signed a power purchase agreement with Pattern Energy Group, one of the leading independent power companies in the US, to support the construction and operation of a wind farm in Benton County, Indiana, called the AWS Wind Farm. This new wind farm is expected to start generating about 500,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of wind power annually.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2015
AWS acquired Elemental Technologies, a provider of software-defined video solutions for multiscreen content delivery. This acquisition strengthens the company's position in the media and entertainment industry.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2015
Amazon and Bleecker Street, an independently-financed film distribution company in the US, entered into a multi-year content licensing agreement.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2015
Amazon China entered into an agreement with Baidu, one of the leading internet services companies, to provide a search, applications, and online video experience on Amazon tablets in China.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2015
Accenture and AWS formed a business group, the Accenture AWS Business Group, to help clients to migrate and run their businesses in AWS cloud. The group delivers information technology and business services through AWS cloud.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2015
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 52
Amazon announced that Prime Now service in Los Angles will deliver food from local stores, including Sprouts Farmers Market, Bristol Farms, Sprinkles Cupcakes, Fresh & Easy, Erewhon Organic Grocer and 99 Ranch Market.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2015
Amazon.ca introduced its Wearable Technology store (www.amazon.ca/wearabletechnology). The new store, which offers products in wearable technology including activity trackers, smart watches, and wearable cameras, features several products from top brands including Jawbone, Garmin, Fitbit and Motorola, as well as products from emerging brands like Lumo and Spire.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2015
Prime Now expanded its delivery options in Chicago, to include groceries, prepared meals and baked goods from local stores such as Plum Market, Sprinkles Cupcakes, and My Fit Foods.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2015
The company announced that Prime Now service in Seattle will deliver food from local restaurants, including Cactus, Wild Ginger, Skillet, Marination Station, Re:public, Cafe Yumm!, Ten Mercer, and Mamnoon.
New Products/Services
Year: 2015
Amazon introduced its one-hour delivery service, Prime Now, in San Diego, California.
New Products/Services
Year: 2015
Amazon introduced Kindle Textbook Creator, which makes it easy to create e-Textbooks and other educational content with features like flashcards, highlighting, and note-taking. Kindle Textbook Creator enhances the learning experience of the educators and authors.
New Products/Services
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 53
Year: 2015
AWS introduced Amazon WorkMail, an email and calendaring service in the cloud. With Amazon WorkMail, users can send and receive email, manage contacts, share calendars, and book resources using the same email applications (Microsoft Outlook, their Web browser, or their native iOS and Android email applications) without buying and managing email server software.
New Products/Services
Year: 2015
The company launched the Collectible Coins store, a marketplace that gives customers direct access to more than 10,000 US coins from over 75 dealers.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2014
Amazon acquired comiXology, a company that operates in the comic book and graphic novel industry. comiXology offers a wide variety of digital comic book content from over 75 of the top publishers and top independent creators. This acquisition significantly increased the product offering of the company.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2014
Amazon and Giunti, an Italian bookstore chain, announced an exclusive agreement to launch a new bookstore model, as well as to offer Giunti customers access to a wide selection of Amazon products.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2014
Amazon announced that as part of its licensing agreement with Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution, Prime Instant Video became the exclusive online-only subscription home for streaming all 192 episodes of the award-winning series 24.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2014
Amazon entered into a US content licensing agreement with Aardman Animations, under which Prime Instant Video became the exclusive subscription streaming home for award-winning TV and short film series, Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, Timmy Time and classic animation Rex the Runt.
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 54
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2014
Amazon and CBS, a mass media company, announced a content licensing agreement for the new CBS Television series Extant.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2014
Amazon entered into a content licensing agreement with HBO to make Prime Instant Video the exclusive online-only subscription home for select HBO programming. The collection includes various shows like The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Wire, Big Love, Deadwood, Eastbound & Down, Family Tree, Enlightened, Treme, early seasons of Boardwalk Empire and True Blood, as well as mini-series like Band of Brothers, John Adams and others.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2014
HIT Entertainment, a preschool entertainment company and a division of Fisher-Price, announced Amazon as its exclusive US home to the preschool franchise Fireman Sam. According to the agreement, TV episodes, eBooks, and physical products like apparel, toys and lunch boxes were made available at Amazon with free shipping and free two-day shipping with Amazon Prime. .
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2014
Kindle Worlds entered into licensing agreements with Hasbro and Warner Bros. Television Group's Alloy Entertainment. Under the agreement, Kindle Worlds will open seven new Worlds, including Worlds based on Hasbro's G.I. JOE brand, and Warner Bros. TV shows Veronica Mars and Pretty Little Liars' spinoff Ravenswood.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2014
The company opened fulfillment centers in Windsor, Connecticut; Kent, Washington; and Redlands, California.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2014
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 55
The company announced the availability of Amazon coins for customers in the US, UK and Germany to buy, spend and earn on android devices.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2014
The company opened one million square feet fulfillment center in Baltimore, Maryland and a 1.2 million square feet fulfillment center in Moreno Valley, California.
New Products/Services
Year: 2014
Amazon introduced Fire, the first smartphone designed by the company. Fire has two new technologies, Dynamic Perspective and Firefly. Dynamic Perspective uses a new sensor system which responds to the way the user holds, views, and moves the Fire smartphone, while Firefly quickly recognizes the web and email addresses, phone numbers, bar codes, movies and music, and allows the user to take action in seconds.
New Products/Services
Year: 2014
Amazon launched a new 3D printed products store (www.amazon.com/3dp), a marketplace that gives customers access to more than 200 print on-demand products. Many of these products can also be customized by material, size, styles and color variations, and personalized with text and image imprints. Amazon Publishing and Alloy Entertainment, a division of Warner Bros. Television Group, introduced a new digital-first imprint with focus on young adult, new adult and commercial fiction.
New Products/Services
Year: 2014
Amazon.ca introduced two new stores: musical instruments and wireless, further expanding its selection available to customers in Canada.
New Products/Services
Year: 2014
AWS announced the availability of a new SSD-backed volume type for Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) that delivers high-performance storage at a low cost.
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 56
New Products/Services
Year: 2014
AWS announced the EC2 container service. This container management service makes it easy to run and manage distributed applications using containers on AWS. With this service, customers can start, stop, and manage thousands of containers in seconds. AWS introduced AWS Lamba, a compute service that runs developers' code in reply to events and manages the compute resources automatically. This service is feasible to build and manage applications that respond quickly to new information.
New Products/Services
Year: 2014
AWS launched its new AWS for the Frankfurt region, marking its 11th technology infrastructure region globally for AWS and the second region in the European Union. Through this new AWS, customers can leverage AWS to build their businesses and run applications on infrastructure located in Germany.
New Products/Services
Year: 2014
Amazon launched Amazon Elements, a new line of premium, everyday essentials with transparent origins.
New Products/Services
Year: 2014
Amazon.ca launched same-day delivery service in Toronto and Vancouver. AWS introduced three new services: AWS Key Management Service, which helps customers in creating and controlling the encryption keys used to encrypt their data on the AWS Cloud; AWS Config, which provides customers with full visibility into their AWS resources and associated relationships; and AWS Service Catalog, which allows enterprise administrators to create and share catalogs of customized products that incorporate company-approved standard architectures and configurations. AWS introduced AWS CodeDeploy, a fully managed service that allows developers to automate the process of deploying and updating applications on Amazon EC2.
New Products/Services
Year: 2014
AWS announced the availability of Dense Compute nodes, a new SSD-based node type. Dense Compute nodes allow customers to create faster, lower-cost data warehouses with Amazon Redshift.
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 57
New Products/Services
Year: 2014
AWS announced the availability of T2 instances, a new Amazon EC2 instance type. T2 instances was designed to significantly reduce costs for applications that do not require sustained high central processing unit (CPU) performance but benefit from the ability to burst to full core performance. AWS launched several new capabilities, including Amazon Cognito, Amazon Mobile Analytics and Mobile Software Development Kit (SDK), to help developers in building, deploying, and scaling mobile applications in a better way. AWS introduced Amazon Zocalo, an enterprise storage and sharing service that improves user productivity. The company introduced Kindle Unlimited, an eBook subscription service which gives customers access to over 600,000 eBooks and audiobooks, for $9.99 per month.
New Products/Services
Year: 2014
The company introduced Amazon Local Register, a secure card reader and mobile application. This application provides local businesses with the tools they need to quickly and easily accept credit and debit cards from a smartphone or tablet and keep track of their growing business.
New Products/Services
Year: 2014
The company introduced Fire TV, a tiny box that allows easy and instant access to Netflix, Prime Instant Video, Hulu Plus, WatchESPN, SHOWTIME, low-cost video rentals, and others. Amazon Game Studios introduced Sev Zero, its first game built from the ground up for Fire TV. The company launched its wearable technology store, which offers a variety of wearable technology and research wearable devices, including activity trackers, smart watches and wearable cameras.
New Products/Services
Year: 2014
The company launched the new German-language publishing program under Amazon Publishing. The European Amazon Publishing team acquired German-language fiction for publication in Kindle and print editions available on Amazon.
New Products/Services
Year: 2014
The company launched Waterfall Press, a new Christian imprint specializing in faith-based non-fiction and fiction.
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 58
New Products/Services
Year: 2013
The company launched Amazon Coin, a new virtual currency for purchasing games, applications and in- app items on Kindle Fire. AWS introduced AWS OpsWorks, an application management solution for the complete lifecycle of complex applications, including resource provisioning, configuration management, deployment, monitoring and access control. This enables developers to manage all tasks required to model, deploy, scale, and maintain their applications. Amazon.ca launched Amazon Mobile Application for iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows Phone. This allows customers to browse and shop for products, compare prices, read reviews and make purchases on the go.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2013
Amazon acquired IVONA Software, a text-to-speech technology company.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2013
The company acquired Touchco, a touch screen technology company.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2013
Amazon reached an agreement to acquire Goodreads, one of the world's largest sites for readers and book recommendations.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2013
Amazon reached an agreement to acquire TenMarks, a company which designs web-based mathematics curriculum for students. Amazon and TenMarks will together develop educational content and applications, across multiple platforms.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2013
Amazon opened a one million square feet fulfillment center in Tracy, California as well as in Coppell,
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 59
Texas.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2013
The company opened a new customer service facility in Winchester, Kentucky.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2013
The company allowed authors and publishers to use the self-service Kindle DTP to upload and make available their books in Spanish, Portuguese and Italian to customers worldwide.
New Products/Services
Year: 2013
Amazon announced the availability of Amazon Cloud Player for iOS in BMW applications and MINI Connected-equipped vehicles from model year 2011 forward. Amazon Cloud Player customers using iPhone and iPod Touch devices can access their music using the vehicle's controller and screen. Amazon Publishing launched StoryFront, a new imprint offering short fiction across genres. Amazon introduced a new version of Kindle FreeTime on Kindle Fire tablets with several new educational books, applications, games and videos, including Common Core Standard-aligned books, educational applications from developers like BrainPOP and Agnitus, and movies and TV shows.
New Products/Services
Year: 2013
Amazon launched the Australian Kindle Store, offering more than two million eBooks, the most English language best sellers and more than 400,000 Kindle-exclusive titles. AWS launched Amazon WorkSpaces, a fully managed desktop computing service in the cloud. AWS launched Amazon AppStream, a new service that enables developers to stream resource-intensive applications and games from the cloud to a broad range of devices.
New Products/Services
Year: 2013
Amazon Studios, the original film and series production arm of Amazon, introduced Amazon Storybuilder, a new product to help writers. Amazon Storybuilder makes notecarding digital, giving screenwriters the ability to lay out digital notecards on a virtual corkboard to capture the beats of their story. Also, these notecards are saved online, giving users access to their projects on their computer, tablet or smartphone.
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 60
New Products/Services
Year: 2013
AWS launched Amazon Elastic Transcoder, a highly scalable service for transcoding video files between different digital media formats. Through this, customers can convert their large high resolution master video files into smaller versions that are optimized for playback on websites, mobile devices, connected TVs and other video platforms.
New Products/Services
Year: 2013
Amazon entered into an exclusive content licensing agreement with new film studio A24 to make Prime Instant Video the exclusive premium subscription home for all of the current and forthcoming A24 titles shortly following their release on DVD and Blu-Ray.
New Products/Services
Year: 2013
AWS also introduced Amazon Kinesis, a fully managed service for real-time processing of high-volume, streaming data. It also introduced Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for PostgreSQL. Amazon RDS manages complex and time-consuming administrative tasks such as PostgreSQL software installation and upgrades, storage management, replication for high-availability and back-ups for disaster recovery.
New Products/Services
Year: 2013
The company also launched Amazon Storyteller, a free online tool for writers and filmmakers, which turns scripts into storyboards. Amazon launched Amazon Art (www.amazon.com/art), a marketplace offering customers direct access to more than 40,000 works of fine art from over 150 galleries and dealers. The company launched 'Login and Pay with Amazon', allowing participating companies to empower customers to browse and buy using their Amazon account information. The company's Wine Store introduced shipping to customers in New York, Michigan, Arizona and Louisiana.
New Products/Services
Year: 2013
The company launched Kindle Fire HD with a large 8.9 inch display in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Japan. Amazon.ca launched beauty and health and personal care stores offering more than
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 61
80,000 items, including diapers and wipes, household supplies, health care and nutrition, personal care items and beauty products.
New Products/Services
Year: 2013
The company launched 50+ Active and Healthy Living Store (www.amazon.com/50activeliving) featuring several nutrition, wellness, exercise and fitness, medical, personal care, beauty and entertainment items. Amazon Wine Store introduced shipping to customers in Texas. Amazon Publishing launched Kindle Worlds, the first commercial publishing platform that will enable writers to create fan fiction based on a range of original stories and characters and earn royalties.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2013
AWS announced the availability of I2 instances, the next generation of Amazon EC2 storage-optimized high I/O instances based on solid state disk (SSD) technology that provides customers with high random I/O performance.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2013
In May, the company acquired Liquavista from Samsung Electronics.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2012
Amazon acquired Kiva Systems, one of the leading developers of material handling technology.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2012
AWS entered into an agreement with Netflix to operate a number of mission-critical, customer-facing and backend applications for Netflix.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2012
LOVEFiLM, an Amazon company, and Sony Pictures Television signed a multi-year content deal,
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 62
allowing LOVEFiLM members access to new and future Sony Pictures titles, as well as catalog titles and TV series.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2012
Amazon expanded its fulfillment center in Phoenix by 400,000 square feet.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2012
The company opened a 193,500 square feet fulfillment center in Canada, 450,000 square feet fulfillment center in the UK, 1,000,000 square feet fulfillment center in Germany, and 860,800 square feet fulfillment center in Japan.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2012
The company opened 1,000,000 square feet fulfillment center in Germany and 430,400 square feet fulfillment center in France. Amazon also opened nearly one million square feet fulfillment center in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2012
The company opened a 244,000 square feet fulfillment center in Saga, Japan.
New Products/Services
Year: 2012
Amazon launched Amazon Textbook Rental program. Through this program, students can rent textbooks for the semester and save up to 70%. The company launched India Kindle Store on Amazon.com (www.amazon.com/kindlestoreindia). Amazon launched its Amazon Appstore in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. This gives the European customers access to Amazon's broad range of Android applications with the convenience of shopping on Amazon from their Android phones and tablets.
New Products/Services
Year: 2012
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 63
Amazon launched Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle Paperwhite third Generation (3G). These are the most advanced e-readers created with 62% more pixels and 25% higher contrast. Amazon.co.jp introduced Japanese Kindle Store and Kindle Paperwhite, the first Japanese-language Kindle. Amazon introduced a new Kindle application designed for Windows 8. The company opened fulfillment centers in the following locations: one each in Delaware, Indiana and Spain, and two each in Tennessee and Virginia.
New Products/Services
Year: 2012
Amazon Services, a subsidiary of the company, launched a new version of Amazon WebStore, a full- featured e-commerce product that enables small and medium sized retailers and manufacturers to design, build and manage their multichannel e-commerce businesses using the company's technology.
New Products/Services
Year: 2012
AWS introduced Amazon Simple Workflow Service, a workflow service for developing scalable and resilient applications. The company launched a new Spanish-language eBook store within the Amazon Kindle Store, eBooks Kindle en Espanol (www.amazon.com/tiendakindle). AWS introduced Amazon CloudSearch, a new service that allows customers to easily integrate fast and highly scalable search functionality into their applications. Amazon launched AmazonSupply (www.amazonsupply.com), a new website offering a broad range of parts and supplies to business, industrial, scientific and commercial customers. Amazon.ca launched its new Baby store (amazon.ca/baby) with more than 25,000 baby- related products.
New Products/Services
Year: 2012
Amazon launched Kindle Fire high definition (HD) tablet which has seven inch display and is sold for $199.
New Products/Services
Year: 2012
The company launched Fulfillment by Amazon, a new service for third-party sellers that provides access to Amazon's fulfillment and customer service resources and expertise. Amazon launched Amazon Wine (www.amazon.com/wine), a new website offering customers a broad range of wines crafted by wineries around the country.
New Products/Services
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 64
Year: 2012
The company launched the Brazil Kindle Store (www.amazon.com.br) and Free Portuguese Kindle reading applications for Android phones and tablets, iPads and iPhones. Amazon launched Friends & Family Gifting, a feature that allows customers to keep track of birthdays and special occasions, get shopping reminders and manage gift ideas for everyone on their list.
Patent Grant
Year: 2012
Amazon Publishing acquired the publication rights from Avalon Books to more than 3,000 backlist titles mainly in the romance, mystery and Western categories.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2011
The company announced plans for a new fulfillment center in Romeoville, Illinois, and Jacksonville, Florida.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2011
Amazon acquired the remaining shares in LOVEFiLM International, one of the leading European subscription entertainment services.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2011
CBS Corporation (CBS) and Amazon entered into a non-exclusive licensing agreement enabling Amazon's customers to stream TV shows from CBS's library. Further in the year, Amazon signed a licensing agreement with NBCUniversal Domestic TV Distribution allowing Amazon Prime members to stream select Universal Pictures movies through Prime Instant Video.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2011
The company entered into a partnership with Triggit, a San Francisco based company, to strengthen its focus on online display advertisement business.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 65
Year: 2011
Amazon and Hearst Corporation (Hearst) entered into an expanded, multi-faceted consumer marketing, e-commerce and content relationship. Through this relationship, Amazon became Hearst's single-largest third-party seller of print subscriptions for its magazines through digital channels.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2011
Amazon opened a 900,000 square feet fulfillment center in Indianapolis, Indiana
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2011
The company opened 1.2 million square feet fulfillment center in Phoenix, Arizona. Amazon company opened 500,000 square feet fulfillment center in Lebanon, Tennessee.
New Products/Services
Year: 2011
Amazon launched Kindle Fire selling at $199, much lower than Apple's cheapest iPad priced at $499.
New Products/Services
Year: 2011
Amazon Launchpad announced a Kickstarter Collection, which features over 300 Kickstarter products available for purchase on Amazon.com.
New Products/Services
Year: 2011
Amazon.es launched the Spanish Kindle Store offering its customers access to more than 22,000 Spanish-language Kindle books, including best sellers, and more than a thousand free classics in Spanish. Amazon.it launched the Italian Kindle Store offering its customers more than 16,000 Italian- language Kindle books, a wide range of best sellers and hundreds of free Italian classics
New Products/Services
Year: 2011
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 66
Amazon.fr launched the French Kindle Store offering its customers more than 35,000 French-language Kindle books, 28 L'Express best sellers, graphic novels and more than 4,000 free classics in French. Amazon.ca launched its new Tools and Building Supplies Store (amazon.ca/tools) featuring more than 60,000 tool and home improvement-related products. Further in the year, Endless.com launched its free endless.com application for iPhone. This application allows Amazon's customers to purchase from a wide assortment of shoes and accessories for men, women and kids.
New Products/Services
Year: 2011
The company launched the biggest eBook store in Germany. .
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2011
Amazon, in partnership with the UK government, announced plans to explore the steps required to make the delivery of parcels by small drones a reality.
Plans/Strategy
Year: 2011
The company announced plans work with Hearst in e-commerce.
Regulatory Approval
Year: 2011
A cross government team supported by the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) provided Amazon with permissions to explore three key innovations: beyond line of sight operations in rural and suburban areas; testing sensor performance to make sure the drones can identify and avoid obstacles; and flights where one person operates multiple highly-automated drones.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2011
In November, the company acquired a Charlotte-based company Yap, which expert in voice-to-text technology.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 67
Year: 2010
Amazon acquired Quidsi, which operates Diapers.com, an online baby care specialty site, and Soap.com, an online site for everyday essentials.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2010
The company acquired BuyVIP.com, a fashion and lifestyle online buying community.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2010
Amazon allowed authors and publishers around the world to use the self-service Kindle Digital Text Platform (DTP) to upload and sell books in English, German and French to customers worldwide in the Kindle Store. Previously, the service was available only to authors and publishers in the US.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2010
BuyVIP.com has more than six million members in countries such as Spain, Germany and Italy.
New Products/Services
Year: 2010
Amazon introduced Kindle DX with Global Wireless, a new version of Kindle with the convenience of wireless content delivery, in over 100 countries.
New Products/Services
Year: 2010
Amazon launched its Wheels Store, a shopping destination for wheels and related parts and accessories. Subsequently, Amazon also launched a new generation of Kindle, with electronic ink screen, 21% smaller body and 15% lighter weight. Endless.com launched its new jewelry category featuring 68 brands and more than 3,500 styles.
New Products/Services
Year: 2010
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 68
Amazon.ca launched its new Sports and Outdoors Store featuring several brands and sports and activity related products.
New Products/Services
Year: 2010
AWS launched the beta release of Amazon Simple Notification Service. This service allows developers to publish messages from an application and immediately deliver the message to subscribers or other applications. AWS launched its Amazon Relational Database Service in the European Union. The service provides cost-efficient and resizable database capacity in the cloud by automating database administration tasks. Amazon launched a new customer education center, Amazon 3D 101, a one stop information and shopping center for all 3D related merchandise.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2009
Amazon completed the acquisition of Zappos.com, an online apparel, footwear and accessories retailer.
New Products/Services
Year: 2009
The company introduced 'Amazon Kindle 2'. Amazon launched the Amazon Xbox LIVE Store, www.amazon.com/xboxlive, offering customers the option to purchase and gift selected Xbox LIVE games, subscription cards and Microsoft Points cards. The company launched Amazon Kindle DX, a reading device that offers Kindle's wireless delivery and a massive selection of content with a large 9.7 inch electronic paper display, built-in PDF reader, auto-rotate capability, and storage for up to 3,500 books.
New Products/Services
Year: 2009
The company launched AmazonBasics (www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics), a new private-label collection of consumer electronics.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2008
Amazon acquired Fabric.com, an online fabric store offering custom measured and cut fabrics, as well as patterns, sewing tools and accessories.
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 69
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2008
Amazon completed the acquisition of AbeBooks, an online marketplace for books, with over 110 million primarily used, rare and out-of-print books listed for sale by thousands of independent booksellers from around the world.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2008
LOVEFiLM, a digital versatile disc (DVD) rental subscription service provider in the UK, acquired Amazon's DVD rental business in the UK and Germany. Amazon completed the acquisition of Audible.com. Audible is a provider of spoken audio information and entertainment on the Internet. As a result of the transaction, Audible became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2008
Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com), a subsidiary of Amazon, agreed to acquire Without A Box, an online service that enables independent filmmakers to submit their works to festivals worldwide and to promote movies online.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2008
AWS extended Amazon EC2 to the European market.
New Products/Services
Year: 2008
Amazon launched its new Indie & Art House store at www.amazon.com/indies.
New Products/Services
Year: 2008
The company also launched Motorcycle & all-terrain vehicle (ATV) Store (www.amazon.com/motorcycle), a single shopping destination for motorcycle and ATV parts, accessories and protective gear. AWS launched a public beta of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) running Microsoft Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server, which provided even greater flexibility for deploying solutions in the
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 70
AWS cloud.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2007
Amazon acquired www.dpreview.com, a site for digital camera information and reviews. The company acquired Brilliance Audio (www.brillianceaudio.com), the largest independent publisher of audio books in the US.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2006
Amazon acquired Shopbop.com (www.shopbop.com), a retailer of fashion-forward apparel, shoes and accessories for women.
New Products/Services
Year: 2006
The company launched Endless.com, an online shoe and accessories store.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2005
Amazon acquired BookSurge, a global leader in inventory-free book printing and fulfillment based in Charleston, South Carolina.
New Products/Services
Year: 2005
The company officially launched its search engine A9. AWS launched 'Amazon S3', a simple storage service for software developers at very low costs.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 2004
Amazon acquired joyo.com, one of the largest online retailers of books, music and videos in China. Through this acquisition, the company entered the Chinese internet market.
Contracts/Agreements
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 71
Year: 2004
The company signed a strategic alliance with The Bombay Company to launch new websites powered by Amazon's e-commerce technology for Bombay, Bombay Kids, Bombay Outlet, and Bombay's Canadian operations.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2003
Amazon signed a multi-year agreement with the National Basketball Association (NBA) and Foot Locker to operate the NBA Store on NBA.com and the Women's NBA Store on WNBA.com.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 2003
The company added over 40,000 gourmet food items, more than 60,000 jewelry items, and over 70,000 health and personal care items to its product portfolio.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2002
Amazon established a strategic alliance with the Virgin Entertainment Group to re-launch Virgin Megastore's US and Japanese websites using the Amazon e-commerce platform.
New Products/Services
Year: 2002
The company launched its Canadian website.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2001
Amazon established a strategic alliance with Borders Group to re-launch the Borders.com website on the Amazon e-commerce platform.
New Products/Services
Year: 2001
Amazon.com, Inc. History
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 72
The company launched imaginarium.com, a co-branded specialty and learning toy store.
Contracts/Agreements
Year: 2000
Amazon formed a strategic alliance with Toysrus.com to create a co-branded toy and video games store as well as a co-branded baby products store.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 1999
Amazon expanded with the acquisition of stakes in drugstore.com, HomeGrocer.com, Pets.com and Exchange.com.
Acquisitions/Mergers/Takeovers
Year: 1998
Amazon acquired Bookpages, Telebook, Internet Movie Database, Planet All and Junglee Corp.
Stock Listings/IPO
Year: 1997
The company's initial public offering on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange took place.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 1995
The company's website was publicly launched, when it became the exclusive book retailer on the Netscape and America Online websites.
Corporate Changes/Expansions
Year: 1994
Amazon was promoted by Jeff Bezos.
Amazon.com, Inc. Key Employees
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 73
Key Employees
KEY EMPLOYEES
Name Job Title Board Compensation Jeffrey P. Bezos President, Chief Executive
Officer and Chairman of the Board
Executive Board 1681840 USD
John Seely Brown Director Non Executive Board Jamie S. Gorelick Director Non Executive Board Daniel P. Huttenlocher Director Non Executive Board 890730 USD Judith A. McGrath Director Non Executive Board Jonathan J. Rubinstein Director Non Executive Board 793087 USD Thomas O. Ryder Director Non Executive Board 793087 USD Patricia Q. Stonesifer Director Non Executive Board 793087 USD Wendell P. Weeks Director Non Executive Board 676125 USD Brian T. Olsavsky Senior Vice President and
Chief Financial Officer Senior Management 4558647 USD
Jeffrey M. Blackburn Senior Vice President, Business Development
Senior Management 22194343 USD
David A. Zapolsky Senior Vice President Senior Management Andrew R. Jassy Chief Executive Officer-
AWS Senior Management 35609644 USD
Jeffrey A. Wilke Chief Executive Officer- Worldwide Consumer
Senior Management 32958114 USD
Tom A. Alberg Director Non Executive Board Shelley L. Reynolds Vice President, Worldwide
Controller and Principal Accounting Officer
Senior Management
Eric L. Broussard Head-International Seller Services, Vice President
Senior Management
Rohit Prasad Vice President-Amazon Alexa
Senior Management
Tim Leslie Vice President-Amazon Prime Video
Senior Management
Henry Tajer Managing Director- Amazon Australia, Amazon Media Group
Senior Management
Sahar Baghery Business Development Executive, EMEA-Amazon Prime Video
Senior Management
Amazon.com, Inc. Key Employee Biographies
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 74
Key Employee Biographies
KEY EMPLOYEE BIOGRAPHIES
Jeffrey P. Bezos
Board:Executive Board Job Title:President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board Since:2000 Age:53
Mr. Jeffrey P. Bezos has been the President at Amazon since 2000, Chief Executive Officer since 1996 and Chairman of the Board since 1994. Previously, he served as the company's President until 1999.
John Seely Brown
Board:Non Executive Board Job Title:Director Since:2004 Age:76
Mr. John Seely Brown has been a Director at Amazon since 2004. He has been a Visiting Scholar and Advisor to the Provost at the University of Southern California since 1996 and an Independent Co- Chairman of the Deloitte Center for Edge since 2006. Mr. Brown served as the Chief Scientist at Xerox Corporation and a Director at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in the past. He served as a Director at Corning Incorporated from 1996 to 2014 and at Varian Medical Systems from 1998 to 2013.
Jamie S. Gorelick
Board:Non Executive Board Job Title:Director Since:2012 Age:66
Mr. Jamie S. Gorelick has been a Director at Amazon since 2012. She has also been a Partner with the law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr since 2003. Previously, Ms. Gorelick was the Deputy Attorney General of the US, General Counsel of the Department of Defense, an Assistant to the Secretary of Energy, and a member of the bipartisan National Commission on Terrorist Threats Upon the US. She has been a Director at VeriSign since 2015. Ms. Gorelick served as a Director at United Technologies Corporation from 2000 to 2014 and at Schlumberger Limited from 2002 to 2010.
Daniel P. Huttenlocher
Board:Non Executive Board Job Title:Director
Amazon.com, Inc. Key Employee Biographies
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 75
Since:2016 Age:58
Mr. Daniel P. Huttenlocher has been a Director at Amazon since 2016. Mr. Huttenlocher has been the Dean and Vice Provost of Cornell Tech at Cornell University since 2012. Currently, he also serves as a Director at Corning Incorporated.
Judith A. McGrath
Board:Non Executive Board Job Title:Director Since:2014 Age:64
Mr. Judith A. McGrath has been a Director at Amazon since 2014. She has also been the President of Astronauts Wanted * No experience necessary, a multimedia joint venture between Ms. McGrath and Sony Music Entertainment, since 2013. Ms. McGrath was the Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer at MTV Networks Company, a subsidiary of Viacom, from 2004 to 2011.
Jonathan J. Rubinstein
Board:Non Executive Board Job Title:Director Since:2010 Age:60
Mr. Jonathan J. Rubinstein has been a Director at Amazon since 2010. He was the Co-Chief Executive Officer at Bridgewater Associates from 2016 to April 2017. Mr. Rubinstein served as the Senior Vice President of Product Innovation for the Personal Systems Group at Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) from 2011 to 2012. He was also a Senior Vice President and the General Manager of Palm Global Business Unit at HP from 2010 to 2011. Mr. Rubinstein was the Chief Executive Officer and President at Palm, a smartphone manufacturer, from 2009 until its acquisition by the HP in 2010, and the Chairman of its Board of Directors from 2007 through the acquisition. Prior to joining Palm, he was a Senior Vice President at Apple and was the General Manager of the iPod Division. Mr. Rubinstein served as a Director at Qualcomm Incorporated in the past.
Thomas O. Ryder
Board:Non Executive Board Job Title:Director Since:2002 Age:72
Mr. Thomas O. Ryder has been a Director at Amazon since 2002. He served as the Chairman at the Reader’s Digest Association 1998 to 2006 and its Chief Executive Officer from 1998 to 2005. From 1984 to 1998, Mr. Ryder also held various roles at American Express, including President of American Express
Amazon.com, Inc. Key Employee Biographies
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 76
Travel Related Services International. He has been a Director at RPX Corporation since 2009, at Quad/Graphics since 2010, and at Interval Leisure Group since 2016. Mr. Ryder served as a Director at Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide from 2001 to 2016, and the Chairman of the Board of Directors at Virgin Mobile USA from 2007 to 2009.
Patricia Q. Stonesifer
Board:Non Executive Board Job Title:Director Since:1997 Age:60
Ms. Patricia Q. Stonesifer has been a Director at Amazon since 1997. She has also been the President and Chief Executive Officer at Martha's Table since 2013. Previously, Ms. Stonesifer was the Vice Chairperson of the Board of Regents at Smithsonian Institution from 2012 to 2013 and the Chairperson from 2009 to 2012. She also served as a Senior Advisor to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation from 2008 to 2012. Previously, Ms. Stonesifer served as the Chief Executive Officer at Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation from 2006 to 2008 and the President and Co-Chairperson from 1997 to 2006. During 1988–97, she served in many roles at Microsoft Corporation, including Senior Vice President of the Interactive Media division. Since 2009, Ms. Stonesifer has been a Private Philanthropy Advisor. She also served as the Chairperson at the Gates Learning Foundation from 1997 to 1999.
Wendell P. Weeks
Board:Non Executive Board Job Title:Director Since:2016 Age:57
Mr. Wendell P. Weeks has been a Director at Amazon since 2016. He has been the Chief Executive Officer at Corning Incorporated since 2005, the President since 2010 and the Chairman since 2007. Mr. Weeks also serves as a Director at Merck & Co.
Brian T. Olsavsky
Board:Senior Management Job Title:Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Since:2015
Mr. Brian T. Olsavsky has been a Senior Vice President and the Chief Financial Officer at Amazon since 2015. Prior to this position, he served as the Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer for the Global Consumer Business at the company. Mr. Olsavsky joined Amazon in 2002. He also served as the Vice President of Finance for North America retail business unit and acquisitions at the company from 2007 to 2010, and also led the finance departments for Amazon's Worldwide Operations organization from 2002 to 2007. Prior to joining Amazon, Mr. Olsavsky held several financial and business management positions at Fisher Scientific and several financial and operational roles at BF Goodrich and
Amazon.com, Inc. Key Employee Biographies
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 77
Union Carbide.
Jeffrey M. Blackburn
Board:Senior Management Job Title:Senior Vice President, Business Development Since:2006 Age:47
Mr. Jeffrey M. Blackburn has been the Senior Vice President of Business Development at Amazon since 2006. He served as the Vice President of Business Development at the company from 2004 to 2006, the Vice President of European Customer Service from 2003 to 2004 and the Vice President of Operations Integration from 2002 to 2003. Prior to joining Amazon in 1998, Mr. Blackburn was an Assistant Vice President at Deutsche Morgan Grenfell.
David A. Zapolsky
Board:Senior Management Job Title:Senior Vice President Since:2014
Mr. David A. Zapolsky has been a Senior Vice President, the General Counsel and Secretary at Amazon since 2014. Prior to this position, he served as a Vice President, the General Counsel and Secretary at the company. Mr. Zapolsky joined Amazon in 1999 as an Associate General Counsel for Litigation and Regulatory matters and was named Vice President in 2002. Prior to joining the company, he was a Partner at the Seattle offices of Dorsey & Whitney and Bogle & Gates. Mr. Zapolsky also served as an Assistant District Attorney in the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office and later practiced law at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz.
Andrew R. Jassy
Board:Senior Management Job Title:Chief Executive Officer-AWS Since:2016
Mr. Andrew R. Jassy has been the Chief Executive Officer of AWS at Amazon since 2016. Previously, he served as the Senior Vice President of AWS at the company from 2006 to 2012.
Jeffrey A. Wilke
Board:Senior Management Job Title:Chief Executive Officer-Worldwide Consumer Since:2016
Mr. Jeffrey A. Wilke has been the Chief Executive Officer of Worldwide Consumer at Amazon since 2016. Prior to this position, he served as the Senior Vice President of Consumer Business at the company from
Amazon.com, Inc. Key Employee Biographies
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 78
2012 to 2016. Mr. Wilke also served as the Senior Vice President of North American Retail at Amazon from 2007 to 2012, and Senior Vice President of Worldwide Operations from 2002 to 2006. He joined the company as a Vice President and the General Manager of Operations in 1999. Mr. Wilke also served as a Vice President and General Manager of Pharmaceutical Fine Chemicals at Honeywell International.
Tom A. Alberg
Board:Non Executive Board Job Title:Director Since:1996 Age:76
Mr. Tom A. Alberg has been a Director at Amazon since 1996. He has also been a Managing Director at Madrona Venture Group, a venture capital firm, since 1999 and a Principal at Madrona Investment Group, a private investment firm, since 1996. Prior to co-founding Madrona Investment Group, Mr. Alberg served as the President at LIN Broadcasting Corporation; and an Executive Vice President at McCaw Cellular Communications and at AT&T Wireless Services.
Shelley L. Reynolds
Board:Senior Management Job Title:Vice President, Worldwide Controller and Principal Accounting Officer Since:2007
Mr. Shelley L. Reynolds has been the Vice President of Worldwide Controller and Principal Accounting Officer at Amazon since 2007. She served as the Vice President of Finance and Controller at the company from 2006 to 2007. Prior to joining Amazon, Ms. Reynolds was a Partner at Deloitte & Touche from 1998.
Amazon.com, Inc. Major Products & Services
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 79
Major Products & Services
MAJOR PRODUCTS & SERVICES
Amazon is one of the largest global online retailers. The company's key products and services include the following:
Products:
Books:
Children's Books Magazines Textbooks Kindle Books Audible Audiobooks
Movies, Music and Games: Movies Blu-Ray Amazon Videos Compact Discs (CDs) and Vinyl Digital Music Musical Instruments Headphones Video Games Personal Computer Games Digital Games Entertainment Collectibles
Electronics and Computers: TVs and Videos Home Audio and Theater Camera, Photo and Video Cell Phones and Accessories Headphones Video Games Bluetooth and Wireless Speakers Car Electronics Musical Instruments Wearable Technology Products Electronic Accessories Computers and Tablets Monitors Computer Accessories Drives and Storage Products Computer Parts and Components
Amazon.com, Inc. Major Products & Services
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 80
Software Products Printers and Ink Office and School Supplies
Home, Garden and Tools: Kitchen and Dining Furniture Bedding and Bath Appliances Patio, Lawn and Garden Equipment Fine Art Arts, Crafts and Sewing Pet Supplies Wedding Registry Items Event and Party Supplies Home Improvement Supplies Power and Hand Tools Lamps and Light Fixtures Kitchen and Bath Fixtures Hardware
Beauty, Health and Food: Beauty Products Men's Grooming Products Health, Household and Baby Care Products Vitamins and Dietary Supplements Grocery and Gourmet Food Wine
Toys, Kids and Baby: Toys and Games Baby Products Video Games for Kids
Clothing, Shoes and Jewelry:
Clothing for Men, Women, Kids and Infants Luggage Jewelry
Handmade Products: Jewelry Handbags and Accessories Beauty and Grooming Products Home Decors Artwork
Amazon.com, Inc. Major Products & Services
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 81
Stationery and Party Supplies Kitchen and Dining Products Furniture
Sports and Outdoors: Athletic Clothing Exercise and Fitness Equipment Hunting and Fishing Equipment Team Sports Golf Equipment Leisure Sports Products Sports Collectibles Camping and Hiking Equipment Cycling Outdoor Clothing Scooters, Skateboards and Skates Water and Winter Sports Climbing
Automotive and Industrial: Automotive Parts and Accessories Automotive Tools and Equipment Car/Vehicle Electronics and Global Positioning System (GPS) Tires and Wheels Motorcycle and Powersports Industrial Supplies Lab and Scientific Products Janitorial and Safety Products
Amazon Music: Prime Music Open Web Player
Kindle E-Readers and Books: Kindle Kindle Paperwhite Kindle Voyage Kindle Oasis Kindle For Kids Bundle Kindle Accessories Kindle Books Newsstand Kindle Unlimited Free Kindle Reading Applications Kindle Cloud Reader
Amazon.com, Inc. Major Products & Services
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 82
Fire Tablets
Amazon Fire TV: Fire TV Stick Fire TV and HD Antenna Bundle Prime Video Amazon Video Fire TV Applications and Channels Games for Fire TV Amazon Photos and Drive
Echo and Alexa: Amazon Echo Echo Dot Amazon Tap Alexa Application Alexa Smart Home Accessories Alexa Skills Guide
Services:
Web Services (Compute, Storage, and Database Offering) Publishing Services Advertising Services Co-Branded Credit Cards
Amazon.com, Inc. SWOT Analysis
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 83
SWOT Analysis
SWOT ANALYSIS
Amazon.com, Inc. (Amazon) is one of the largest global online retailers. Strong distribution channel network enables the company to serve a large customer base. However, intense competition and seasonality could affect the revenue margins and future growth of the company.
Strength
Largest Online Retailer Revenue Growth Strong Distribution Channel Network
Weakness
Patent Infringement Issues Affect Stakeholder Confidence Declining Liquidity
Opportunity
Growing Demand for Cloud Computing Services Increase in Online Retail Sales in US Strategic initiatives
Threat
Intense Competition Stringent Regulations Seasonality Changes
Strength
Largest Online Retailer
Amazon is one of the largest online retailers in the world. With revenues of US$177,866 million in FY2017, Amazon is much bigger in size than its close competitors such as eBay (revenues of US$9567 million in FY2017), and Barnes & Noble (revenues of US$3894.6 million in FY2017). Amazon was ranked among top 100 of America's largest corporations by a business magazine in 2017. The company was ranked among the top five most valuable brands in the top 100 most valuable brands in the world 2017 list released by the same source. It was also featured among top 10 global brands in the top 500 global brands 2017 list released by an industry source specializing in brand valuation. The company offers products in various categories through its e-commerce website www.amazon.com in the US and through www.amazon.com.au, www.amazon.com.br, www.amazon.cn, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.in, www.amazon.it, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.nl, www.amazon.es, and www.amazon.co.uk in international markets. The online format helps Amazon to rotate its inventory rapidly and reduce its inventory management cost and thereby offer merchandise at comparatively low prices. Further, the company’s operating model enables it to turn its inventory quickly and have a cash- generating operating cycle. The online retail format also enables Amazon to enhance customer satisfaction as it offers customers with a broader selection and greater access to information. Dominant market position in the online retail format enables Amazon to target a larger customer base.
Revenue Growth
Amazon recorded a robust revenue growth in the recent years ending FY2017. Robust revenue growth improves company’s ability to allocate adequate funds and makes the company financially strong. In
Amazon.com, Inc. SWOT Analysis
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 84
FY2017, the reported revenues of US$1,77,866 million as compared to US$1,35,987 million in FY2016, representing a growth of 30.8%. The increase is primarily due to the healthy performance from each of its business segment during this period. For instance, the AWS segment of the company grew by 42.9% in FY2017 compared to previous year primarily due to increase the number of users of these services. Further, North America and International segments of the company also recorded growth of 33% and 23.4% respectively in FY2017. Growth in these segments attributed by growth in unit sales, increased sales from third-party sellers and also due to reduced price offerings. Thus, robust revenue growth of the company reflects the decision making of the company, which could be leveraged to fund growth plans in the future.
Strong Distribution Channel Network
Amazon has a strong distribution channel network that caters large number of customer. The company offers apparels and accessories, home appliances, foods and grocery items, health and beauty products, automotive and industrial equipments, toys, electronics and gardening equipments. Additionally, the company develops and produces media content as well as manufactures various electronic devices including fire TVs, echo devices, fire tablets and kindle e-readers. It primarily markets the electronics and media content to its centers operating in North America and other International markets and through agreements in certain countries. The company also delivers database, storage and other services to government agencies and academic institutions. Amazon is also involved in publishing and serves various authors and independent publishers to publish and display their books in its kindle stores by offering them 70% royalty option and also allows authors, musicians, filmmakers to publish and sell their content. The company sells its products through physical stores and its own retail websites. In addition, it enables various sellers and other third parties to offer their products through its e-commerce portal. Users can avail these services through mobile application compatible with both IOS and Android devices. A strong distribution channel network helps the group in catering to the needs of its customer base.
Weakness
Patent Infringement Issues Affect Stakeholder Confidence
The company is involved in various patent infringement cases. For instance, in October 2017, SRC Labs, LLC and Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe filed a complaint against Amazon Web Services, Inc., Amazon.com, Inc., and VADATA, Inc. in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The complaint alleges, among other things, that certain AWS EC2 Instances infringe U.S. Patent Nos. 6,434,687, entitled “System and method for accelerating web site access and processing utilizing a computer system incorporating reconfigurable processors operating under a single operating system image”; 7,149,867, entitled “System and method of enhancing efficiency and utilization of memory bandwidth in reconfigurable hardware”; 7,225,324 and 7,620,800, both entitled “Multi-adaptive processing systems and techniques for enhancing parallelism and performance of computational functions”; and 9,153,311, entitled “System and method for retaining DRAM data when reprogramming reconfigurable devices with DRAM memory controllers.”The complaint seeks an unspecified amount of damages, enhanced damages, interest, and a compulsory on-going royalty. Patent infringement cases have affected Amazon's brand image in the past and may further harm its brand equity in the future.
Amazon.com, Inc. SWOT Analysis
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 85
Declining Liquidity
Amazon reported decline in liquidity in FY2017. It reported current ratio was 1 in FY2017. Amazon’s current ratio was lower than its competitors, eBay Inc and Best Buy Co, Inc. which reported a current ratio of 2.2 and 1.3 respectively in the same year. Declining ratios indicates that the company is in a weak financial position. The performance of the company depends largely on the cash reserves and its ability to generate cash from operations. Increase in payables could hamper its operations.
Opportunity
Growing Demand for Cloud Computing Services
Cloud-based operations enable Amazon to expand its operations instantly, handle demand fluctuations, and also access systems and services over a variety of devices at a lower cost. According to in-house research, the global cloud computing market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 28.3% to reach US$69,929.6 million by 2022 from US$18,687.2 million in 2017. During the forecast period, Software-as- a-Service (SaaS) is expected to be the major contributor with market share of 53.2%, followed by Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) with 24.3%, and Platform-as-a-Service with 22.5%. The US is expected to account for 58.3% market share, followed by Europe (19.6%), Asia-Pacific (12.8%), Rest of the World (9.2%), and the Middle East (0.2%) during 2017-2022. Amazon has been expanding its web services business significantly. Thus, the company can leverage the increasing demand for cloud computing services to expand its business further.
Increase in Online Retail Sales in US
The company stands to benefit from growing online retailing, which provides consumers the convenience of shopping from home. With the increase in interactive methods and limitless content, the retail e- commerce is growing at a faster rate. According to in-house report, the US online retail sector recorded growth of 15.5% in 2017 and is expected to reach a value of US$447.4 billion by 2020, an increase of 50.3% since 2017. The US online retail sector generated total revenue of US$297.8 billion in 2017, with an anticipated CAGR of 8.5% over 2017–2022, which will drive the sector to a value of $447.4bn by the end of 2022. The online retail sector is heavily fragmented, with a number of large companies including Amazon. E-commerce sales in the third quarter of 2017 accounted for 9.1% of total sales. The use of smart phones, tablets and other internet enabled devices contributed to growing E-commerce market. The online retail sector’s growth will continue to be strong during the forecast period, largely driven by supply; the largest multichannel retailers will focus on increasing their proportion of online sales, while Amazon, as the leading online retailer, will continue to heavily expand its operations.
Strategic initiatives
Amazon intends to strengthen its position. For that, the company has made a number of investments and acquisitions over the past few years. For instance, in April 2018, the company acquired Ring Inc, global home security company to reduce crime neighborhoods. As a result of the acquisition, Amazon would work with Ring to create products and services that brings gives more security communities to neighbors. The acquisition includes Ring Video Doorbell, Ring Spotlight Cams, Ring Floodlight Cams and Ring
Amazon.com, Inc. SWOT Analysis
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 86
Accessories. The products and services of Ring would be sale through Amazon and help the company to increase number of customers and sales. Again in the same month, the company announced plans to open its fourth Nevada facility of 80,000 sq. in North Las Vegas. It ships products including household items, books and toys. This initiative is expected to help the company to offer its products in a new state and expand its customer base. In February 2018, the company partnered with Bank of America Merrill Lynch for providing loans to merchants. This could help the company to expand its lending program for small businesses that primarily sells on Amazon’s websites. It also reduces the risk and also allows it to access capital which in turn allows the company to provide credit to more number of merchants. In January 2018, the company partnered with Bonitasoft, the largest open source provider of low-code business process management and digital transformation software. This allows various organizations to operate the software with AWS cloud technology. The company helps various organizations to create a low-code business process management and digital transformation software. Its new version 7.6 is designed to reduce the time needed to deploy the platform to just a few minutes via automatic provisioning. Such strategic initiatives are likely to help Ashland strengthen its business; thus helping it to compete with its peers and also help it to increase its future revenues.
Threat
Intense Competition
Amazon operates in a highly competitive market. The company faces competition from different sectors around the world. The main competitive factors in its retail business include selection, price, and convenience, including fast and reliable fulfillment. The competitive factors for its seller and enterprise services include the quality, speed, and reliability of the company’s services and tools, as well as customers’ ability and willingness to change business practices. The key competitors include online, offline, and multichannel retailers, publishers, vendors, distributors, manufacturers, and producers such as eBay, Wal-Mart, and Target. In the media segment, it competes with Apple (iTunes) and Google (Playstore). The company’s Amazon CloudSearch competes with web search engines such as Google, whereas Amazon product Ads competes with comparison shopping websites. The company’s AWS platform competes with global technology giants such as IBM’s Bluemix, Google’s cloud platform, and Microsoft’s Azure platform in the public cloud services market. The company also competes with Best Buy, Dollar Tree, Wal-Mart, Sears, and Target in the electronics and general merchandise segment. Some of its major competitors have greater resources, strong heritage and customer base, greater brand recognition, and greater control over inputs important to its various businesses. These competitors can gain better terms from suppliers, adopt more aggressive pricing, pursue restrictive distribution agreements that restrict its access to supply, direct consumers to their own offerings, lock-in potential customers with restrictive terms, and spend more resources to technology, infrastructure, fulfillment, and marketing. Therefore, increased competition could affect the revenue growth and profitability of Amazon.
Stringent Regulations
Increasing intervention of the US Government may affect future prospects of the company. The company is subject to general business regulations and laws, as well as regulations and laws specifically governing the Internet, e-commerce, electronic devices, and other services. Any existing and future law related to taxation, privacy, data protection, pricing, content, copyrights, distribution, transportation, mobile
Amazon.com, Inc. SWOT Analysis
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 87
communications, electronic device certification, electronic waste, energy consumption, environmental regulation, electronic contracts and other communications, competition, consumer protection, employment, trade and protectionist measures, web services, the provision of online payment services, information reporting requirements could impact the growth of company. Unfavorable regulations and laws could diminish company’s demand for its products and services and increase its cost of doing business.
Seasonality Changes
Changes in seasonality could affect Amazon's business operations. For reducing risk, the company stocks or restocks popular products in sufficient amounts to meet the customer demand. Seasonality changes could affect the financial and future growth of the company. Overstocking products is required to take inventory make down and incur commitment cost that could reduce profitability. The company may experience an increase in net shipping cost due to complimentary upgrades, split-shipments, and additional long-zone shipments necessary to ensure timely delivery for the holiday season. In the event, if large number of customers access the company’s site within a short period of time, due to increased demand, the company may experience system interruptions that make its websites unavailable or prevent it from efficiently fulfilling orders. The interruption could reduce the volume of goods that the company sells and the demand for its products and services. Also, the company would not be able to adequately staff its fulfillment network and customer service centers during these peak periods.
Amazon.com, Inc. Top Competitors
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 88
Top Competitors
TOP COMPETITORS
The following companies are the major competitors of Amazon.com, Inc.
Barnes & Noble, Inc. Best Buy Co, Inc. Costco Wholesale Corporation Dollar Tree Inc eBay Inc Sears Holdings Corporation Target Corp United Parcel Service, Inc. Walmart Inc
Amazon.com, Inc. Company View
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 89
Company View
COMPANY VIEW
A statement by Jeffrey P. Bezos, the President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board at Amazon, is given below. The statement has been taken from the company's 10-K filing for fiscal year 2017.
Overview
Our primary source of revenue is the sale of a wide range of products and services to customers. The products offered through our consumer-facing websites and physical stores primarily include merchandise and content we have purchased for resale from vendors and products offered by third-party sellers, and we also manufacture and sell electronic devices. Generally, we recognize gross revenue from items we sell from our inventory as product sales and recognize our net share of revenue of items sold by third-party sellers as service sales. We seek to increase unit sales across our businesses, through increased product selection, across numerous product categories. We also offer other services such as compute, storage, and database offerings, fulfillment, publishing, certain digital content subscriptions, advertising, and co-branded credit cards.
Our financial focus is on long-term, sustainable growth in free cash flows1. Free cash flows are driven primarily by increasing operating income and efficiently managing working capital2 and cash capital expenditures, including our decision to purchase or lease property and equipment. Increases in operating income primarily result from increases in sales of products and services and efficiently managing our operating costs, partially offset by investments we make in longer-term strategic initiatives. To increase sales of products and services, we focus on improving all aspects of the customer experience, including lowering prices, improving availability, offering faster delivery and performance times, increasing selection, increasing product categories and service offerings, expanding product information, improving ease of use, improving reliability, and earning customer trust.
We seek to reduce our variable costs per unit and work to leverage our fixed costs. Our variable costs include product and content costs, payment processing and related transaction costs, picking, packaging, and preparing orders for shipment, transportation, customer service support, costs necessary to run AWS, and a portion of our marketing costs. Our fixed costs include the costs necessary to build and run our technology infrastructure; to build, enhance, and add features to our websites and web services, our electronic devices, and digital offerings; and to build and optimize our fulfillment centers and physical stores. Variable costs generally change directly with sales volume, while fixed costs generally are dependent on the timing of capacity needs, geographic expansion, category expansion, and other factors. To decrease our variable costs on a per unit basis and enable us to lower prices for customers, we seek to increase our direct sourcing, increase discounts from suppliers, and reduce defects in our processes. To minimize growth in fixed costs, we seek to improve process efficiencies and maintain a lean culture.
Because of our model we are able to turn our inventory quickly and have a cash-generating operating cycle3. On average, our high inventory velocity means we generally collect from consumers before our payments to suppliers come due. We expect variability in inventory turnover over time since it is affected by numerous factors, including our product mix, the mix of sales by us and by third-party sellers, our continuing focus on in-stock inventory availability and selection of product offerings, our investment in
Amazon.com, Inc. Company View
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 90
new geographies and product lines, and the extent to which we choose to utilize third-party fulfillment providers. We also expect some variability in accounts payable days over time since they are affected by several factors, including the mix of product sales, the mix of sales by third-party sellers, the mix of suppliers, seasonality, and changes in payment terms over time, including the effect of balancing pricing and timing of payment terms with suppliers.
We expect spending in technology and content will increase over time as we add computer scientists, designers, software and hardware engineers, and merchandising employees. Our technology and content investment and capital spending projects often support a variety of product and service offerings due to geographic expansion and the cross-functionality of our systems and operations. We seek to invest efficiently in several areas of technology and content, including AWS, and expansion of new and existing product categories and service offerings, as well as in technology infrastructure to enhance the customer experience and improve our process efficiencies. We believe that advances in technology, specifically the speed and reduced cost of processing power and the advances of wireless connectivity, will continue to improve the consumer experience on the Internet and increase its ubiquity in people’s lives. To best take advantage of these continued advances in technology, we are investing in initiatives to build and deploy innovative and efficient software and electronic devices. We are also investing in AWS, which offers a broad set of global compute, storage, database, and other service offerings to developers and enterprises of all sizes.
We seek to efficiently manage shareholder dilution while maintaining the flexibility to issue shares for strategic purposes, such as financings, acquisitions, and aligning employee compensation with shareholders’ interests. We utilize restricted stock units as our primary vehicle for equity compensation because we believe this compensation model aligns the long-term interests of our shareholders and employees. In measuring shareholder dilution, we include all vested and unvested stock awards outstanding, without regard to estimated forfeitures. Total shares outstanding plus outstanding stock awards were 497 million and 504 million as of December 31, 2016 and 2017.
Our financial reporting currency is the U.S. Dollar and changes in foreign exchange rates significantly affect our reported results and consolidated trends. For example, if the U.S. Dollar weakens year-over- year relative to currencies in our international locations, our consolidated net sales and operating expenses will be higher than if currencies had remained constant. Likewise, if the U.S. Dollar strengthens year-over-year relative to currencies in our international locations, our consolidated net sales and operating expenses will be lower than if currencies had remained constant. We believe that our increasing diversification beyond the U.S. economy through our growing international businesses benefits our shareholders over the long-term. We also believe it is useful to evaluate our operating results and growth rates before and after the effect of currency changes.
Results of Operations
Net Sales
Net sales include product and service sales. Product sales represent revenue from the sale of products and related shipping fees and digital media content where we record revenue gross. Service sales represent third-party seller fees earned (including commissions) and related shipping fees, AWS sales, certain digital content subscriptions, certain advertising services, and our co-branded credit card
Amazon.com, Inc. Company View
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 91
agreements. Amazon Prime membership fees are allocated between product sales and service sales and amortized over the life of the membership according to the estimated delivery of services
Sales increased 27% and 31% in 2016 and 2017, compared to the comparable prior year periods. Changes in foreign currency exchange rates impacted net sales by $(5.2) billion, $(550) million, and $210 million for 2015, 2016, and 2017. North America sales increased 25% and 33% in 2016 and 2017, compared to the comparable prior year periods. The sales growth in each year primarily reflects increased unit sales, including sales by third- party sellers, and, in 2017, the impact of the acquisition of Whole Foods Market. Increased unit sales were driven largely by our continued efforts to reduce prices for our customers, including from our shipping offers, increased in-stock inventory availability, and increased selection.
International sales increased 24% and 23% in 2016, and 2017, compared to the comparable prior year periods. The sales growth in each year primarily reflects increased unit sales, including sales by third- party sellers. Increased unit sales were driven largely by our continued efforts to reduce prices for our customers, including from our shipping offers, increased in-stock inventory availability, and increased selection. Changes in foreign currency exchange rates impacted International net sales by $(5.0) billion, $(489) million, and $138 million in 2015, 2016, and 2017.
AWS sales increased 55% and 43% in 2016 and 2017, compared to the comparable prior year periods. The sales growth primarily reflects increased customer usage, partially offset by pricing changes. Pricing changes were driven largely by our continued efforts to reduce prices for our customers.
Operating Income (Loss)
Operating income was $2.2 billion, $4.2 billion, and $4.1 billion for 2015, 2016, and 2017. We believe that operating income (loss) is a more meaningful measure than gross profit and gross margin due to the diversity of our product categories and services.
The increase in North America operating income in absolute dollars in 2016 and 2017, compared to the comparable prior year periods, is primarily due to increased unit sales, including sales by third-party sellers, partially offset by increased levels of operating expenses to expand our fulfillment network and spending on technology and content and marketing efforts. Changes in foreign exchange rates impacted operating income by $30 million, $27 million, and $(4) million for 2015, 2016, and 2017.
The increase in International operating loss in absolute dollars in 2016 and 2017, compared to the comparable prior year periods, is primarily due to increased levels of operating expenses to expand our fulfillment network and spending on technology and content and marketing efforts, partially offset by increased unit sales, including sales by third-party sellers. Changes in foreign exchange rates impacted operating loss by $(278) million, $89 million, and $(85) million for 2015, 2016, and 2017.
The increase in AWS operating income in absolute dollars in 2016 and 2017, compared to the comparable prior year periods, is primarily due to increased customer usage and cost structure productivity, partially offset by pricing changes and increased spending on technology infrastructure and sales and marketing expenses and related payroll, which was primarily driven by additional investments to support the business growth. Changes in foreign exchange rates impacted operating income by $264
Amazon.com, Inc. Company View
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 92
million, $(5) million, and $(53) million for 2015, 2016, and 2017.
Operating Expenses
Cost of Sales
Cost of sales primarily consists of the purchase price of consumer products, digital media content costs where we record revenue gross, including video and music, packaging supplies, sortation and delivery center and related equipment costs, and inbound and outbound shipping costs, including where we are the transportation service provider.
The increase in cost of sales in absolute dollars in 2016 and 2017, compared to the comparable prior year periods, is primarily due to increased product and shipping costs resulting from increased sales.
Shipping costs to receive products from our suppliers are included in our inventory and recognized as cost of sales upon sale of products to our customers. Shipping costs, which include sortation and delivery center and transportation costs, were $11.5 billion, $16.2 billion, and $21.7 billion in 2015, 2016, and 2017. We expect our cost of shipping to continue to increase to the extent our customers accept and use our shipping offers at an increasing rate, we reduce shipping rates, we use more expensive shipping methods, and we offer additional services. We seek to mitigate costs of shipping over time in part through achieving higher sales volumes, optimizing our fulfillment network, negotiating better terms with our suppliers, and achieving better operating efficiencies. We believe that offering low prices to our customers is fundamental to our future success, and one way we offer lower prices is through shipping offers.
Costs to operate our AWS segment are primarily classified as “Technology and content” as we leverage a shared infrastructure that supports both our internal technology requirements and external sales to AWS customers.
Marketing
We direct customers to our websites primarily through a number of targeted online marketing channels, such as our sponsored search, Associates program, social and online advertising, television advertising, and other initiatives. Our marketing costs are largely variable, based on growth in sales and changes in rates. To the extent there is increased or decreased competition for these traffic sources, or to the extent our mix of these channels shifts, we would expect to see a corresponding change in our marketing costs.
The increase in marketing costs in absolute dollars in 2016 and 2017, compared to the comparable prior year periods, is primarily due to payroll and related expenses, as well as increased spending on online marketing channels.
While costs associated with Amazon Prime memberships and other shipping offers are not included in marketing expense, we view these offers as effective worldwide marketing tools, and intend to continue offering them indefinitely.
Technology and Content
Amazon.com, Inc. Company View
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 93
Technology and content costs include payroll and related expenses for employees involved in the research and development of new and existing products and services, development, design, and maintenance of our websites, curation and display of products and services made available on our websites, and infrastructure costs. Infrastructure costs include servers, networking equipment, and data center related depreciation, rent, utilities, and other expenses necessary to support AWS, as well as these and other efforts. Collectively, these costs reflect the investments we make in order to offer a wide variety of products and services to our customers.
We seek to invest efficiently in numerous areas of technology and content so we may continue to enhance the customer experience and improve our process efficiency through rapid technology developments, while operating at an ever increasing scale. Our technology and content investment and capital spending projects often support a variety of product and service offerings due to geographic expansion and the cross-functionality of our systems and operations. We expect spending in technology and content to increase over time as we continue to add employees and technology infrastructure. These costs are allocated to segments based on usage.
The increase in technology and content costs in absolute dollars in 2016 and 2017, compared to the comparable prior year periods, is primarily due to increased payroll and related costs associated with technical teams responsible for expanding our existing products and services and initiatives to introduce new products and service offerings, and an increase in spending on technology infrastructure.
For 2015, 2016, and 2017, we capitalized $642 million (including $114 million of stock-based compensation), $511 million (including $94 million of stock-based compensation), and $395 million (including $84 million of stock-based compensation) of costs associated with internal-use software and website development. Amortization of previously capitalized amounts was $635 million, $634 million, and $545 million for 2015, 2016, and 2017.
General and Administrative
The increase in general and administrative costs in absolute dollars in 2016 and 2017, compared to the comparable prior year periods, is primarily due to increases in payroll and related expenses and professional service fees.
Other Operating Expense, Net
Other operating expense, net was $171 million, $167 million, and $214 million during 2015, 2016, and 2017, and was primarily related to the amortization of intangible assets.
Interest Income and Expense
Our interest income was $50 million, $100 million, and $202 million during 2015, 2016, and 2017. We generally invest our excess cash in investment grade short- to intermediate-term fixed income securities and AAA-rated money market funds. Our interest income corresponds with the average balance of invested funds based on the prevailing rates, which vary depending on the geographies and currencies in which they are invested.
Amazon.com, Inc. Company View
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 94
Interest expense was $459 million, $484 million, and $848 million in 2015, 2016, and 2017. The increase is primarily due to increases in our capital and finance lease arrangements and long-term debt.
Our long-term debt was $7.7 billion and $24.7 billion as of December 31, 2016 and 2017. Our other long- term liabilities were $12.6 billion and $21.0 billion as of December 31, 2016 and 2017.
Other income (expense), net was $(256) million, $90 million, and $346 million during 2015, 2016, and 2017. The primary component of other income (expense), net is related to foreign currency and equity warrant valuation.
Income Taxes
Our effective tax rate is subject to significant variation due to several factors, including variability in our pre-tax and taxable income and loss and the mix of jurisdictions to which they relate, changes in how we do business, acquisitions (including integrations) and investments, audit-related developments, changes in our stock price, foreign currency gains (losses), tax law developments (including changes in statutes, regulations, case law, and administrative practices), and relative changes of expenses or losses for which tax benefits are not recognized. Additionally, our effective tax rate can be more or less volatile based on the amount of pre-tax income or loss. For example, the impact of discrete items and non-deductible expenses on our effective tax rate is greater when our pre-tax income is lower.
The 2017 Tax Act was signed into law on December 22, 2017. The 2017 Tax Act significantly revises the U.S. corporate income tax by, among other things, lowering the statutory corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, eliminating certain deductions, imposing a mandatory one-time tax on accumulated earnings of foreign subsidiaries as of 2017, introducing new tax regimes, and changing how foreign earnings are subject to U.S. tax. The 2017 Tax Act also enhanced and extended through 2026 the option to claim accelerated depreciation deductions on qualified property. We have not completed our determination of the accounting implications of the 2017 Tax Act on our tax accruals. However, we have reasonably estimated the effects of the 2017 Tax Act and recorded provisional amounts in our financial statements as of December 31, 2017. We recorded a provisional tax benefit for the impact of the 2017 Tax Act of approximately $789 million. This amount is primarily comprised of the remeasurement of federal net deferred tax liabilities resulting from the permanent reduction in the U.S. statutory corporate tax rate to 21% from 35%, after taking into account the mandatory one-time tax on the accumulated earnings of our foreign subsidiaries. The amount of this one-time tax is not material. As we complete our analysis of the 2017 Tax Act, collect and prepare necessary data, and interpret any additional guidance issued by the U.S. Treasury Department, the IRS, and other standard-setting bodies, we may make adjustments to the provisional amounts. Those adjustments may materially impact our provision for income taxes in the period in which the adjustments are made.
Amazon.com, Inc. Locations And Subsidiaries
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 95
Locations And Subsidiaries
LOCATIONS AND SUBSIDIARIES
Head Office
Amazon.com, Inc. 410 Terry Ave North Seattle Washington Seattle Washington USA Phone:1 206 2661000 Fax:1 302 6365454 www.amazon.com
Other Locations and Subsidiaries
Amazon EU S.a.r.l. 5 Rue Plaetis Luxembourg Luxembourg LUX
Amazon Europe Holding Technologies SCS 65, Boulevard Grande-Duchesse Charlotte Luxembourg City Luxembourg City LUX Phone:352 2299995235 Fax:352 2299995435
Amazon Fulfillment Services, Inc. Delaware Delaware USA
Amazon Services LLC Suite 220 8329 West Sunset Road Las Vegas Nevada Las Vegas Nevada USA
Amazon Technologies, Inc. 8329 West Sunset Road Suite 220 Las Vegas Las Vegas USA
Amazon.com Int’l Sales, Inc. 410 Terry Avenue North Seattle Washington Seattle Washington USA
Amazon.com LLC Delaware Delaware
Liquavista B.V. Zwaanstraat 1 Building Tam
Amazon.com, Inc. Locations And Subsidiaries
Amazon.com, Inc. © MarketLine
Page 96
USA Eindhoven Eindhoven NLD Phone:31 40 259 Fax:31 40 259 www.liquavista.com
A Progressive Digital Media business
John Carpenter House, John Carpenter Street, London, United Kingdom, EC4Y 0AN T: +44 (0) 203 377 3042 | F: +44 (0) 870 134 4371 | E: reachus@marketline.com | W: www.marketline.com
Copyright of Amazon.com, Inc. MarketLine Company Profile is the property of MarketLine, a Progressive Digital Media business and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
- Company Overview
- Key Facts
- Business Description
- History
- Key Employees
- Key Employee Biographies
- Major Products & Services
- SWOT Analysis
- Top Competitors
- Company View
- Locations And Subsidiaries