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Comment by johnfactorial | Hacker News Reader

> They control close to 50% of e-commerce which itself represents less than 12% of total retail sales.

Both of these numbers are surprising to me, can you source them? Particularly the first one, which I assume is a global measure, and I'd be interested to know what % of North American e-commerce Amazon controls. I wager I could walk outside my home and ask 100 people on the sidewalk to name one e-commerce site and far more than 50% would name Amazon first.

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> I wager I could walk outside my home and ask 100 people on the sidewalk to name one e-commerce site and far more than 50% would name Amazon first.

I don't know how many people would consider the likes of Wal-Mart, Target, and Kohl's "e-commerce sites" even though they have probably ordered stuff through their websites.

I'm not the original commenter, but here's two sources [1] [2] for the 50% number, with [1] saying this represents 5% of US retail sales. It's 50% of US e-commerce.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/13/amazons-share-of-the-us-e-... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/12/amazon-to-take-almost-50-per...

Thanks very much. Some great other replies to my question in this thread as well.

In North America, Walmart seems to be a significant competition amongst others.

Clothing is also a big part of e-commerce, and Amazon doesn't have a good hold on that.

I would struggle to name a single online general retailer that isn't Amazon.

Unless you count, like, Walmart. Basically everyone else has some kind of niche. Amazon sells everything.

Jet still exists (a Walmart acquisition), but I don't hear much about them and have a feeling they're not doing so great.

Why wouldn't you count Walmart or Target? For household consumables I bounce between Amazon and Target's subscribe and save offerings depending on whichever is cheaper.

Naming something popular != market share.

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