eMarketer forecast: Walmart to overtake Apple as No. 3 US online retailer by the end of 2018, after capturing 4.0% of all online retail spending, up 39.4% YoY
Big-box retailer has one of the fastest-growing online businesses — Heading into the fiercely competitive holiday shopping season …
Context & Ripple Effects
Walmart's climb to No. 3 has been building since its catalog expansion, when online sales grew 63% YoY as items on Walmart.com jumped from 10M to 50M. eMarketer had already sized the field in July, estimating Amazon would take 49.1% of all US online retail spend in 2018 — leaving a distant but contested pack behind it that Walmart now leads.
The forecast lands just before the holiday season, making the ranking both a milestone and a staging ground: Walmart's 39.4% YoY growth rate is the fastest among the top-tier players named in the coverage.
First-order effects
- Apple drops to No. 4 in US online retail, confirming that its direct-sales channel — however large in absolute terms — cannot match a mass merchant adding share at nearly 40% annually.
- Walmart enters the holiday quarter with third-place positioning and momentum, converting store traffic and grocery runs into online orders.
Second-order effects
- Online grocery becomes Walmart's differentiation engine against Amazon — the mechanism behind the 43% YoY US e-commerce growth Walmart reported the following quarter via pickup and delivery expansion ([[a:938695]]).
- Rivals below the top three face a squeeze: Walmart's share gains come out of the mid-pack of US e-commerce, forcing traditional retailers to fund pickup infrastructure and delivery programs to defend share.
Third-order effects
- US e-commerce structurally consolidates into Amazon plus scaled omnichannel mass merchants, shrinking the space for pure-play and single-brand retailers — a trajectory visible in Walmart's continued acceleration to 79% YoY growth by late 2020 ([[a:960098]]).
- The traffic Walmart accumulates becomes monetizable beyond merchandise: by 2024 its US ad business reached $3.7B in projected retail media revenue ([[a:873286]]), turning the e-commerce scale built here into a high-margin second business.
The trend: US online retail is consolidating around Amazon and omnichannel giants whose physical footprints double as fulfillment networks, pushing brand-led sellers like Apple down the rankings while their storefronts become advertising platforms.