Amazon Discovers That Even Paranoids Have Competitors

Its bids for iRobot and One Medical aren’t an attempt to take over the world but to keep up with Walmart.

By Allysia Finley. Excerpts:

"Despite its enormous reach, Amazon’s retail divisions lost $2.4 billion in the last quarter—a sharp swing from its $3.5 billion in profit during the same period last year."

"Amazon’s workforce shrank by roughly 100,000 during the second quarter of this year.

While many progressives cast Amazon as a monopoly, to Mr. Jassy it probably doesn’t feel like one. The company has been fast losing ground to Walmart. Profits from Amazon’s dominant cloud service are helping support its struggling retail operations, but such internal subsidization can’t continue indefinitely as cloud computing grows more competitive."

"Walmart’s membership service costs about $40 less a year and also offers free next-day delivery—plus gasoline discounts. The company recently inked a deal to provide its members with a free annual subscription to the Paramount+ streaming service (a $59 value). If that isn’t enough to keep Amazon execs up at night, Walmart is pioneering drone delivery and launching its own healthcare network."

"Walmart, for its part, is expanding its up-and-flying drone delivery service to up to four million households in six states. Alphabet’s drone delivery service is also lapping Amazon’s."

"In 2014, the company belatedly launched a relatively primitive smartphone, which it discontinued a year later."

"It was similarly late to enter the restaurant-delivery market and struggled to compete with the likes of Grubhub and Uber Eats. It ended its service in 2019"

"Earlier this month, Amazon shut down its in-home health and telehealth venture that it launched in 2019, after few businesses signed up for the service."