Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
Most people think of Amazon as an online shopping store, but it’s actually much more than that.
Over the past 22 years, Amazon has turned itself into a $275 billion juggernaut that sells everything from cloud-computing services to its own hardware gadgets.
These 17 charts show just how scary its business really is.
Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.
Amazon went public in 1997. Its shares were priced at $18 each back then. Now they’re worth more than $580 each. In December 2015, the stock went up to $675 a share, an all-time high.
Yahoo Finance
Amazon is famous for its relentless focus on long-term growth. It’s why they shun profits in favor of revenue growth. In 2015, Amazon generated $107 billion in revenue, but made only $596 million in net profit.
Statista
In fact, Amazon’s growing so fast, it’s now outgrown Walmart as the largest retailer in the US.
Andy Kiersz, data via Bloomberg
Amazon sells everything from electronics to groceries. This chart shows it’s the top destination for US consumers buying everyday products online.
BI Intelligence
It’s also the top seller for personal care and beauty products in the US.
BI Intelligence
It’s no surprise that more than half of US consumers planned to do most of their online shopping on Amazon.
Statista
And there’s still a huge opportunity lying ahead of Amazon. Only 6% of total US retail sales came from ecommerce, and given Amazon is the leading ecommerce site in the US, there’s a lot of room to grow.
Benedict Evans
This chart explains it in more detail. Amazon accounted for 51% of all US ecommerce growth, and 24% of all growth in retail, which includes brick-and-mortar sales.
Macquarie Securities
In fact, Deutsche Bank predicts major retail-store sales will remain flat, while Amazon’s North American sales will continue to grow.
Deutsche Bank
Amazon’s now eating into Google’s business too. This chart shows Amazon driving 42% of its mobile traffic growth from web browsers — meaning the rest of its growth (58%) came from its own mobile apps. That means people are searching for Amazon products in its own apps instead of using search engines like Google.
Morgan Stanley
Amazon seems to have captured the public mindshare too. It eclipses its retail competitors when it comes to the number of Google search queries.
Google Trends
Amazon Prime is its $99/year membership service that includes free shipping and access to tons of video, music, and online books. According to this chart, nearly half of all US households will become Amazon Prime members by 2020.
Macquarie
But what’s really driving Amazon’s growth isn’t its ecommerce business. It’s Amazon Web Services, its cloud-computing business, which is expected to hit roughly $10 billion in revenue this year.
Deutsche Bank
AWS is blowing away its competition.
Statista
AWS is also the fastest-growing enterprise business by a long shot. Nobody’s even close when it comes to revenue-growth rate.
FactSet
One reason why AWS is so dominant is its fast pace of adding new features. Wall Street analyst Jeffries wrote in a research note, “The pace of AWS innovation is very likely unmatched by any of its competitors.”
Amazon
Amazon’s latest big hit is the Echo, its voice-controlled-speaker device. Although Amazon will not divulge specific sales numbers, the Echo consistently ranks at the top of Amazon’s best-selling-gadget list, and some forecast it to be its next billion-dollar business. As this chart shows, Amazon’s already winning the speaker market by a wide margin.
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