Amazon now accounts for 37% of total U.S. online retail sales, up from 34% in 2017, according to the just-released 2019 Amazon Reportt from Internet Retailer. With 58% of its $232.9 billion revenue coming from its marketplace, Amazon is the largest online U.S. marketplace. Last year alone, more than 25,000 sellers worldwide sold more than $1 million on Amazon, with the average U.S. marketplace merchant selling more than $90,000 on the site.
But Amazon’s marketplace is only a fraction of what the industry giant is focusing on these days. In the past year, Amazon has been growing its fulfillment sector, housing 155.4 million square feet of warehouse space in the U.S. and will be investing in more aircraft carriers, bringing its total fleet up to 50, said the report. Other significant Amazon investments include a rapidly growing advertising business, which has quickly become the third-largest digital advertising platform in the U.S., behind Facebook and Google; its profitable Amazon Web Services division, which grew its sales of cloud computing and storage services by 68.6% last year; and Whole Foods Stores, Amazon Go outlets and other physical retail locations, which generated three times more revenue last year than the year before.
