Amazon has ~35% of US ecommerce and ~6% of addressable US retail, and is two thirds the size of Walmart, which would make an antitrust case against it difficult
Benedict Evans : Tweets: @aaronbuley , @stevesi , @robertwiblin , @eicker , @mschoening , @evplusev , @sachinrekhi , and @mayank_b23 Tweets: Aaron Buley / @aaronbuley : Wow. Hard to believe, but after the antitrust talks, it's helpful to know this... “Amazon has ~35% of US ecommerce. But, it competes with physical retailers as well. On that basis, Amazon's real market share of its real target market is closer to 6%.” https://www.ben-evans.com/... Steven Sinofsky / @stevesi : What's Amazon's market share? 35% or 5%?@benedictevans “Amazon's real market share of its real target market is closer to 6% (it's 2/3 the size of Walmart)” // in US AT, market definition is everything and that can be political as much as economic. https://www.ben-evans.com/... Robert Wiblin / @robertwiblin : “Amazon has about 35% of US ecommerce. But, it competes with physical retailers as well and on that basis, Amazon's real market share of its real target market is closer to 6%” https://www.ben-evans.com/... @eicker : “What's #Amazon's #marketshare? 35% or 5%? Amazon has about 35% of #US #ecommerce. But, it competes with #physicalretailers as well... On that basis, Amazon's real market share of its real target market is closer to 6% (it's 2/3 the size of #Walmart).” http://j.mp/2ZvX5n9 Max Schoening / @mschoening : “Apple has (say) 15% of global smartphone unit sales, but it also has 80% share of US teenagers' phones.” https://www.ben-evans.com/... Dave Kelly / @evplusev : $AMZN “ if we're going to talk (and worry) about a company's size, we should probably want to know what size we're actually talking about.” Great Post Via @benedictevans https://www.ben-evans.com/... Sachin Rekhi / @sachinrekhi : Interesting stats from @benedictevans: Amazon's e-commerce business has a 35% market share of US e-commerce but a 6% share of US retail. It's about 2/3 the size of Walmart. https://www.ben-evans.com/... S B / @mayank_b23 : It boggles my mind that as per this https://www.ben-evans.com/... blog post by @benedictevans AWS revenue is 45% of facebook, 18% of Alphabet.
Context & Ripple Effects
Benedict Evans' share math lands mid-argument in the antitrust debate over Amazon: the same company that captures over 40% of US consumers' online spending is, once physical retail enters the denominator, a ~6%-share player two-thirds Walmart's size. The related grocery data makes the point concrete — Numerator puts Amazon at just 3% of US grocery including Whole Foods, against a market where physical stores still take ~90% of sales.
First-order effects
- Antitrust enforcers weighing a case against Amazon must first pick a market definition, and the 35%-of-ecommerce vs ~6%-of-retail gap means the legal verdict turns almost entirely on that choice.
Second-order effects
- Walmart and other omnichannel retailers gain a defensive frame: any dominance claim against Amazon can be answered by widening the market to all retail, where Amazon trails the largest incumbent.
Third-order effects
- If courts accept cross-channel market definitions, platform-antitrust cases will lean less on share statistics and more on conduct-based theories — such as the switching-cost dynamics documented in AWS' easy-to-enter, hard-to-leave architecture.
The trend: Antitrust scrutiny of big tech platforms is increasingly decided by how narrowly or broadly the relevant market is drawn, with channel boundaries as the battleground.