Amazon is an American e-commerce retailer, which operates in multiple international locations. Over the years, the company has expanded its business into multiple sectors through diversification, which has played a major role in its growth. At present, Amazon is the second higher revenue generator with USD 280 billion in the year 2019, following Walmart. Moreover, the company is also among the top 5 most valued brands in the world. The success of the company has attracted a lot of competitors, which seek to offer identical value propositions to the customers in order to achieve higher market share. However, it should be noted that for a diversified company like Amazon, the threat of competition comes from every industry where it operates. In this article we have identified and discussed about all the competitors of Amazon. You can refer to this PenMyPaper article when you are preparing your own college essay on Amazon.
As we have mentioned earlier, Amazon operates in multiple industries, catering in various product and service categories.As a result, the company faces competition from various market players in each of the industries where it operates. To make it simpler for your professional essay writing we have segregated the competitors of Amazon based from different industries or sectors, such as e-commerce (online retail), media streaming, music streaming, cloud computing service, voice assistant and smart speakers, and e-readers.
Walmart: Walmart is a global retail giant, which operates in the US and many other international locations. As per the Walmart mission statement, the company is primarily focused on its physical retail stores, but alongside it also has established a strong online presence, especially in the domestic market of the US. Walmart is also one of the top e-commerce retailers in the US. Being the largest retail company in the world, Walmart has the financial capacity to pose serious threat to Amazon, by expanding its business operations on the e-commerce platform.
Alibaba: Alibaba is the leading ecommerce company in China. It acts as an online marketplace, which brings sellers and buyers together to facilitate transactions. Unlike, Amazon which only operates in B2C sector, Alibaba operates in B2C, B2B and C2C sectors. Alibaba also offers its services in international markets which increases the competition for Amazon even further. Alibaba is the biggest rival of Amazon, especially in the Chinese market. The steep competition compelled Amazon to close its China division and step out of the host market.
eBay: eBay is an American online marketplace which also operates internationally. Just like Alibaba, eBay provides a platform for buyers and sellers to make their transaction, under the moderation of the company. eBay is a well-established brand among customers, as it has been under operations longer than Amazon. It offers identical value proposition to its customers, thereby posing strong competition for Amazon.
Netflix: Netflix is the biggest competitor to Amazon’s Prime Video, in the subscription-based media streaming sector. Want to know how does Netflix make money? Just know that Netflix enjoys the highest market share in terms of media streaming traffic at 26.6%, which is staggeringly high in comparison to Amazon Prime Video, with a traffic of 5.7%. Both Netflix and Prime Video offers its service in domestic and international markets, providing exclusive as well as third party contents. Netflix is the most popular brand in the streaming sector and is best known for its good quality exclusive contents.
Hulu: Hulu is another streaming service provider based in the US. However, unlike Amazon Prime Video, Hulu is only operational in the domestic market. As a result, it only poses competitive threats in the US. Hulu also offers free ad supported services to its customers, which can prove to be a compelling value proposition for many users. On the other hand, Prime Video does not have any such free services.
Disney Plus: Disney Plus is a relatively new market player in the global media streaming sector. However, even though it is a new entrant in the market, Disney has the ownership of several production houses and rights to uncountable media titles. As a result, it can prove to be a formidable opponent to Prime Video.
Spotify: Spotify is the biggest competitor to Amazon Prime Music. Spotify is the leading music streaming service provider in the world in terms of subscriber count. As of 2019, the company holds 35% market share in global music streaming followed by Apple Music and Prime Music. Spotify wins the market through its massive music library, curated playlists and competitive pricing.
Apple Music: Apple Music is another fast-growing competitor to Prime Music. According to a research paper abstract, it currently holds 18% market share in music streaming, following Spotify. Apple Music leverages the highly popular brand of Apple to appeal to new customers. Moreover, it also provides an exhaustive library of Music to its customers at a highly competitive price.
Microsoft Azure: Microsoft Azure is one of the top competitors of Amazon Web Service (AWS). Microsoft offers a complete range of cloud computing services for business clients, which can be used by IT teams to build, manage and deploy any application of choice. Moreover, the cloud services are scalable in nature, which means they can also be used by small companies with budget constraints.
Google Cloud: Google Cloud also offers identical services to its customers with a much wider range of services which are seamless in their usage. It allows the user to become free form managing the infrastructure or server configuration. For a scalable subscription price, Google offers its easy-to-use services to IT developers and business clients. The high quality of services along with competitive pricing makes Google Cloud, the most threatening competitor to AWS.
IBM: IBM is one of the oldest technology companies in the world and it also offers cloud computing services to business ventures. The services of IBM include IaaS, SaaS and PaaS. The company offers it service via public, private and hybrid cloud delivery models. Since, it offers identical value offering to its customers, IBM is also one of the top competitors to AWS.
Google Chromecast: The Chromecast from Google is the biggest competitor to Amazon Fire TV in media streaming device sector. Its compact design, seamless user interface, ability to install Google Play Store apps and low pricing has made it quite popular among its users.
Roku: Roku is a more feature alternative to Amazon Fire TV. It offers several different variants of its streaming devices that can be used on almost any display with an HDMI connection. If you have a compare and contrast essay to write, in such a case you can mention that, unlike Google Chromecast, Roku comes with its own remote controlling feature.
Apple TV: Apple TV is a more premium competitor to Amazon Fire TV. Apple TV allows users to install a range of applications from its App Store, including games. It also seamlessly connects with other Apple devices and becomes a part of the Apple ecosystem offering greater value to the customers.
Google Assistants: Google Assistant is the leading digital voice assistant and can be considered as the top competitor to Amazon’s Alexa. The Google Assistant takes advantage of Google’s advanced AI and access to practically unlimited source of information. Google Assistant is available in all Android devices as their default voice assistant. The Google Assistant also powers the smart speakers from Google, called Google Home.
Apple Siri: Siri is another competitor in the digital voice assistant sector. However, it should be noted that Siri is only available in Apple products, unlike Google Assistant and Alexa. Siri also offers compelling features such as better device control and management of other Apple products in the ecosystem. However, the information search is not as refined as that of Google. Siri also powers the smart speaker by Apple called Apple Home Pod.
Bixby: Bixby is a voice assistant by Samsung, which is mostly available in Samsung devices. Among all the voice assistants, Bixby is the least popular among the customers. This is due to poor performance in providing information and lack of more refined control of devices.
Cortana: Cortana is a voice assistant by Microsoft. This voice assistant can be found on Windows running devices and can be installed on other devices with iOS or Android. Cortana also works with other Microsoft services.
Kobo: Kobo is the closest competitor to Amazon’s Kindle line up. Kobo offers attractive features to its customers, which are almost identical to that of Kindle. Moreover, just like Amazon’s Kindle, Kobo also offers different variants of its e-reader, available at different price points, thereby attracting a wider range of customers. However, it should be noted that Kobo does not have its own e-book store like Amazon and customers need to procure e-books from third party stores.
Sony: Sony offers a more premium e-reader, at a significantly higher price. However, its price is justified by its superior design, better performance and addition feature of stylus mor PDF mark up and signing forms. Unlike Kobo and Kindle, Sony does not offer different variants of its products and it specifically targets to the niche customer segment.
Before you start to write my assignment, let us sum up what we have learnt so far We have found that Amazon faces steep competition in almost every industry that it operates in. While you write an essay, you need to make sure that you have identified all the different sectors where the chosen company operates. This is particularly important for diversified companies like Amazon. For Amazon, its biggest competitor in the online retail sector is Alibaba and Walmart. Since, the online retail is the dominant source of cash flow therefore the company needs to focus on strengthening its presence against its rivals. Moreover, in areas where the company is trying to expand its business such as the media and music streaming sector, it faces a strong competition from the market leaders like Spotify and Netflix. No matter which company you choose to write essay on, you need to look for key market players and identify their core value propositions.
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