Amazon, The Best and Foremost Enemy of Apple Part.I

It is frequently contrasted with Apple to Microsoft, Apple and more recently in Google. Amazon is to forget: in many ways, the firm of Jeff Bezos is perhaps the most formidable competitor to Apple, the electronic book to digital music, sales of applications for sale of equipment.

Amazon-smile, The fictionalized story of Apple based much of its current image: the return of the prodigal son has helped to revive the phoenix from the ashes, to replay the scene of the Macintosh iPod, iPhone and iPad and iTunes in the background. Less well known is the story of Amazon, so it is no less exciting.

Founded in 1994 and launched in 1995, Amazon.com is designed as the "largest bookseller in the world" free from physical constraints, the site was ambitious to sell more books than all its competitors combined. Its founder, Jeff Bezos, quickly launched an ambitious acquisition policy, increasing the acquisition of electronic bookstores (Bookpages, future Telebook and Amazon UK, Amazon DE future, in 1998, Audible in 2000) and many and varied many Internet services (IMDb, Wise in 1998, Alexa in 1999, several management systems in 1999 and 2000).

Amazon's business model has long been atypical in the first version scribbled by Jeff Bezos, it was not about generating profits, but simply to attract capital (the company goes public in 1997) and grow fast enough to reach many markets. The competitive advantage allows it to keep prices low. The genius of Bezos was to take calculated risks: to provide the delivery is a dead loss, but can attracting customers and hope to sell enough to generate a high margin on volume. This set of communicating vessels is the trademark of Amazon.

After years of losses as investors impatient and have to find all the patches available to present the results at their best, the activity becomes profitable Amazon bookstore in mid-2000 before all the activities going on green end of 2001. The demonstration is striking: 80% of sales are made by regular customers, who then spend about € 30 a month on Amazon.

Consolidation accounting rules, limiting or omitting certain practices disguising costs, Amazon is in the red board? Bezos offers delivery and conceded large reductions: sales explode and losses are reduced by half. Amazon MP3 should be promoted and its companion Cloud Drive? Jeff Bezos's company made loss of $ 2.6 million in selling off the last album in fashion; But earned nearly half a million users.

(Cont.)