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Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jay8088 who wrote (22863)	10/24/1998 1:59:00 PM
From: SilverAG	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164685

AMZN competition Hi all, first time poster, long time lurker. Competition in the on-line book retailing business should not be underestimated. The industry is characterized by low technological barriers to entry and an ever increasing number of participants. The main competitors to look out for are Ebay, Barnes&Nobles, Wal-mart, Books.com, Warner Books, Borders.com and Shopping.com. You can bet that each of these competitors share one thing in common in their business models: take market share away from AMZN. And unlike AMZN, they are not going to rely on word-of-mouth to advertise their sites, they will go for the jugular and advertise all over the web. I don't believe that AMZN can maintain their high revenue growth (from books) much longer. It remains to be seen how successful AMZN will be at expanding their online book retailing business into other new areas such as CDs & music. To me, this is where AMZN's potential lies. Can AMZN succeed in changing its business from being a mere seller of books into a successful commerce portal? Can they develop into a true community-oriented commerce site? IMO I don't think so. Competition will kill them in the long run. Although AMZN is perceived as the market leader, emerging web commerce portals will steadily chip away at AMZN's market share. Maybe we'll see more M&A activity going forward (like CDnow/N2K), as companies go for size as a competitive advantage. I hope that management breaks down their revenue numbers in next week's earnings report- I want to see how AMZN's non-book selling business is going.