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December 26, 2008

Amazon, By the Numbers: The Schumpeterian Version

The folks at TechCrunch have a useful historical look at Amazon's big unit numbers this selling season. Many will rightly dismiss these, pointing out that it doesn't make Amazon equity a buy, and that's fine, but it's also beside the point.

The right way to think about these figures is in Schumpeterian terms: With retail sales down across the board, whose businesses are being destroyed here, and what is the future of physical retail? Amazon is merely goosing this process along, of course, and may not even end up being a survivor.

Speaking of Amazon, however, what was your personal tipping point wrt shopping, the date where you bought more online than offline, and most of that through Amazon? Mine was likely 2002-ish.

Peak items ordered on a single day

2008: 6.3M
2007: 5.4M
2006: 4.0M
2005: 3.6M
2004: 3.6M

Items ordered per second

2008: 72.9
2007: 62.5
2006: 46.3
2005: 41
2004: 32

Peak items shipped on a single day

2008: 5.6M
2007: 3.9M
2006: 3.4M
2005: 2.7M
2004: 2M+

More here.

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