Amazon

History
[Link] was promoted by Jeff Bezos in 1994. The company's website was publicly launched in
1995 when it became the exclusive book retailer on the Netscape and America Online websites. The
company's initial public offering on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange took place in 1997. Amazon
acquired Bookpages, Telebook, Internet Movie Database, Planet All and Junglee Corp in 1998. In
1999, Amazon expanded further with the acquisitions of stakes in [Link], [Link],
[Link] and [Link]. Amazon formed a strategic alliance with [Link] in 2000. Amazon
turned its first profit in the fourth quarter of 2001: $5 million or 1¢ per share, on revenues of more
than $1 billion. The company has operations in North America, Europe and Asia. It is headquartered
in Seattle, Washington, and employs 33,700 people.

Products
Retail goods
Amazon product lines include books, music CDs, videotapes and DVDs, software, consumer
electronics, kitchen items, tools, lawn and garden items, toys & games, baby
products, apparel, sporting goods, gourmet food, jewelry, watches, health and personal-care
items, beauty products, musical instruments, clothing, industrial & scientific supplies, and groceries.

Consumer electronics
In November 2007, Amazon launched Amazon Kindle, an e-book reader which downloads content
over "Whispernet", via the Sprint Nextel EV-DO wireless network. The screen uses E Inktechnology
to reduce battery consumption and to provide a more legible display. As of March 2011, the stated
library numbers over 850,000 titles.

Digital content
In July 2010, Amazon announced that e-book sales for its Kindle reader outnumbered sales
of hardcover books for the first time ever during the second quarter of 2010. Amazon claims that,
during that period, 143 e-books were sold for every 100 hardcover books, including hardcovers for
which there is no digital edition; and during late June and early July sales rose to 180 digital books for
every 100 hardcovers.
Amazon Prime
Amazon Prime is a service of free two-day shipping on all eligible purchases, for a flat annual fee, as
well as discounted one-day shipping rates. Amazon launched the program in the contiguous United
States in 2005, in Japan, the United Kingdom and Germany in 2007, and in France (as "Amazon
Premium") in 2008.

Private labels and exclusive marketing arrangements

In August 2005, Amazon began selling products under its own private label, "Pinzon";
the trademark applications indicated that the label would be used for textiles, kitchen utensils, and
other household goods. In March 2007, the company applied to expand the trademark to cover a more
diverse list of goods, and to register a new design consisting of the "word PINZON in stylized letters
with a notched letter O whose space appears at the "one o'clock" position". Coverage by the
trademark grew to include items such as paints, carpets, wallpaper, hair accessories, clothing,
footwear, headgear, cleaning products, and jewelry. In September 2008, Amazon filed to have the
name registered. USPTO has finished its review of the application, but Amazon has yet to receive an
official registration for the name.

Computing services
Amazon launched Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2002, which provides programmatic access to
latent features on its website. Amazon Web Services (AWS) was first launched as a public beta of
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud running Microsoft Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server This
was later expanded to several operating systems, including various flavors of Linux and OpenSolaris.

Amazon continues to refine and add services to AWS, adding such services as Scalable DNS service
(Amazon Route 53), payment handling, and AWS specific APIs for their Mechanical Turkservice.

In August 2012, Amazon announced Amazon Glacier, a low-cost online storage web service that
provides reliable data archiving, storage, and backup.

Content production
Amazon Publishing is Amazon's publishing unit. It is composed of AmazonEncore, AmazonCrossing,
Montlake Romance, Thomas & Mercer, 47 North, and Powered by Amazon. Additional imprints are
planned. Launched in 2005, Amazon Shorts offered exclusive short stories and non-fiction pieces
from best-selling authors for immediate download. By June 2007, the program had over 1,700 pieces
and was adding about 50 new pieces per week. The program was discontinued on June 1, 2010.
Competitors
The following companies are the major competitors of [Link], Inc.

Barnes & Noble Inc.

eBay Inc.

Hastings Entertainment, Inc.

Columbia House Company

Apple Inc.

Best Buy Co., Inc.

Books-A-Million, Inc.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

Business Model
The company operates through two geographical business segments: North America, and international.

The North American segment focuses on retail sales and handles subscriptions through websites including,
[Link] and [Link] segment also includes export sales generated from these websites.
The North American segment also serves developers and enterprises of all sizes through Amazon Web Services
(AWS), by providing access to technology infrastructure that enables any type of business. The company also
offers customers membership program, Amazon.

The company caters to three primary customer sets: consumers, sellers and enterprises.

The company serves its consumers through its retail websites. Amazon designed its websites to enable the sale
of millions of unique products; some of these products are Amazon's, while others are sourced from third party
vendors. The company offers merchandise at the lowest possible prices by adopting everyday low product
pricing strategy and through free shipping offers, including through membership in Amazon Prime. Amazon
also provides order fulfillment services to its consumers. The company fulfills customer orders through its
fulfillment centers and warehouses located in the US and other foreign countries. In certain countries, Amazon
operates through co-sourced and outsourced arrangements for order fulfillments.

The company caters to sellers by offering programs that enable its customers to sell their products on the sellers’
websites and also on Amazon's website. The company earns fixed fees, revenue share fees or per-unit activity
fees on such transactions.
Amazon serves enterprises through AWS, which provide access to technological infrastructure that
developers can use to enable virtually any type of business.

Firms Acquired

▪ 1998: PlanetAll, a reminder service based in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Junglee, an XML-based data
mining startup based in Sunnyvale; [Link],[ a UK online book retailer, which became Amazon
UK on October 15, 1998.

▪ 1999: Internet Movie Database (IMDb);[ Alexa Internet, [Link], and [Link]

▪ 2003: Online music retailer CD Now. By 2011, the web site [Link] was defunct and in use by a
different company.

▪ 2004: [Link], a Chinese e-commerce website.

▪ 2005: BookSurge, a print on demand company, and [Link], an eBook software

company. [Link] (formerly CustomFlix), a distributor of on-demand DVDs, based in Scotts
Valley, California. CreateSpace has since expanded to include on-demand books, CDs, and video.

▪ 2006: Shopbop, a retailer of designer clothing and accessories for women, based in Madison, Wisconsin.

▪ 2007: [Link], a digital photography review website based in London; Brilliance Audio, the largest
independent publisher of audiobooks in the United States.

▪ 2008: [Link]; [Link]; Box Office Mojo; AbeBooks; Shelfari; (including a 40% stake
in LibraryThing and whole ownership of [Link], [Link], and FillZ);Reflexive
Entertainment, a casual video game development company.

▪ 2009: Zappos, an online shoe and apparel retailer Lexcycle, SnapTell, an image matching startup

▪ 2010: Touchco., Woot, Quidsi, BuyVIP, Amie Street.

▪ 2011: Lovefilm, The Book Depository, Pushbutton

▪ 2012: Kiva Systems[

Investment

▪ 2008: Engine Yard, a Ruby-on-Rails platform-as-a-service (PaaS) company.

▪ 2010: LivingSocial, a local deal site.

Subsidiaries

▪ 2004: [Link], a company focused on researching and building innovative technology.

▪ 2004: Lab126, developers of integrated consumer electronics such as the Kindle.

▪ 2007: [Link], an e-commerce brand focusing on shoes.

▪ 2007: Brilliance Audio, the largest independent audio book producer in the U.S.

Recent News & Launches

● Tax avoidance: Starbucks Corporation, [Link] and Google Inc to face committee
o Amazon forces British publishers to cover a 20 percent VAT(std practice in UK)
o Amazons office is in Luxemburg which has just 3% VAT
o Amazon got profit of $2.2 on every $10 sale
● Judge Approves E-Book Pricing Settlement Between Government and Publishers:
o A federal judge on Thursday approved a settlement between the Justice
Department and three major publishers in a civil antitrust case that accused the
companies of collusion in the pricing of digital books
o Ruling promised to empower Amazon, the e-retailing giant, to drop the price of
many e-books back to $9.99 or even lower
● Amazon’s Movie Streaming Service:
o Amazon is offering movie streaming services and is directly competing with
Netflix in this area
o Amazon’s offers streaming-movie service free with the purchase of an Amazon
Prime membership — $79 a year, Netflix offers it for $8
● Amazon CFO Kinda, Sorta defends the company’s disappearing profits
● Amazon looks east: Launches first Japanese language kindle, The paperwhite; Debuts
Japanese Kindle store; sells kindle fire tablets
● Amazon’s Quidsi targets kids with new sites [Link] & [Link]
● Amazon’s ebook policing problems is getting worse

Ranks
Global

● Founders – Jeff Bezos

● Chairman - Jeff Bezos
● CEO - Jeffrey P. Bezos
 ● Senior Vice President, Business Development - Jeffrey M. Blackburn
India

● Senior Manager, Transportation - S. Sethuraman

Financials
Revenue: US$ 48.07 billion (2011)

Operating Income : US$ 862 million (2011)

Net Income : US$ 631 million (2011)

Total assets :US$ 25.27 billion (2011)

Total equity : US$ 7.75 billion (2011)

Employees: 69,100(2011)