À la une
Amazon (AMZN) : du magasin universel au conglomérat multi‑technologique
Toutes les technologies convergent vers Amazon
Very few companies have been as transformative to the modern economy as Amazon. While it did not invent e‑commerce, it certainly made it the driving force of online retail as we know it today, from ultra‑fast deliveries to most of the design rules for websites and payment systems.
Progressively, Amazon added more services to its offerings, such as Prime, its subscription and streaming service.
As such, it has also been the inspiration and template to imitate for many other regional e‑commerce giants like Alibaba (BABA ), SEA (SE ), or Mercado Libre (MELI ) (suivez les liens pour le rapport d'investissement correspondant).
Cependant, Amazon ne doit pas être réduite à une simple société de commerce électronique. Au fil des ans, elle est devenue un géant technologique au même niveau qu'Apple (AAPL ) ou Google (GOOGL ).
Amazon est actuellement la plus grande entreprise de cloud computing au monde. C’est un maître de la logistique, s’aventurant dans l’alimentation et la production cinématographique, et pourrait bientôt s’étendre aux drones, à l'IA, à Internet spatial, et plus encore.
(AMZN )
L'évolution d'Amazon: petites origines mais jamais modestes
Lorsque Amazon a démarré, ce n'était pas un site « e‑commerce », mais une librairie en ligne. Elle a commencé en 1994 dans un petit bureau avec un panneau peint à la bombe, qui est depuis devenu légendaire.
Source: Snopes
L'idée clé de Jeff Bezos était que l'expérience d'achat de livres était loin d'être optimale. Il pouvait être difficile de trouver ce que l'on voulait, et c'était souvent cher. Ainsi, l'offre principale se concentrerait sur un large choix de livres au prix le plus bas possible.
“Chez Amazon, je sais quelles sont les grandes idées: bas prix, livraison rapide, et sélection vaste et énorme”
Une autre idée clé était ce que l’on appelle la longue traîne. Il s’agissait de produits avec une clientèle limitée mais très motivée, comme des livres rares qui ne se vendaient qu’en quelques milliers d’exemplaires. Un tel faible volume de ventes les rendait presque impossibles à trouver dans une librairie physique, car cela ne valait pas la peine de les stocker. Mais pour un entrepôt centralisé, ce n’était pas un problème et cela permettait aux amateurs de livres de s’habituer à acheter sur Amazon.
“Il y a plus d'articles dans la catégorie des livres que dans n'importe quelle autre catégorie, de loin,” a déclaré Bezos. “La musique est la n° 2 — il y a environ 200 000 CD musicaux actifs à tout moment. Mais dans l'espace livre, il y a plus de 3 millions de livres différents dans le monde actifs en impression à tout moment, toutes langues confondues, et plus de 1,5 million en anglais seulement.”
Loin de négliger cette activité d'origine, Amazon est aujourd'hui le leader de la vente de livres en ligne, ayant ajouté quelques composants importants à sa stratégie, consolidant sa domination absolue du monde de l'édition et de la librairie:
- Audible, le leader absolu des livres audio, est un format de plus en plus populaire par rapport aux formes écrites.
- Kindle, l'un des premiers grands succès de liseuse électronique.
- Goodreads, le plus grand réseau social d'auteurs et de lecteurs ainsi que le site d'avis de livres en langue anglaise.
Devenir le magasin tout‑en‑un
Les livres ont toujours été un marché initial attrayant, mais les objectifs de Jeff Bezos se sont largement élargis, déjà en 1997 lorsque l'entreprise a réalisé son introduction en bourse.
“Nous avançons dans tant de domaines différents. “C’est le Jour 1. C’est le tout début. C’est le stade Kittyhawk du commerce électronique.”
La première extension comprenait les CD, les vidéos et les logiciels, qui étaient alors vendus sur support physique. Elle s’est rapidement élargie à d’autres catégories de produits, devenant progressivement un centre commercial hyper‑dimensionné où l’on pouvait trouver chaque article que l’on pouvait souhaiter acheter, pour atteindre l’éventail extrêmement vaste de biens d’aujourd’hui.
Magasins physiques
Si presque tout peut être vendu en ligne par Amazon, certains produits se vendent encore mieux dans les magasins physiques, comme, par exemple, les produits d'épicerie. Amazon l’a reconnu en acquérant Whole Foods pour 13,7 milliards de dollars en 2017, un important détaillant d’aliments biologiques aux États‑Unis.
Elle a également lancé les magasins Amazon Go et Amazon Fresh, ainsi qu'Amazon Books, AmazonFresh Pickup et Amazon Pop‑Up, bouclant paradoxalement la boucle des canaux de vente au détail après avoir été le « destructeur » des magasins physiques pendant deux décennies.
Les magasins physiques offrent des avantages supplémentaires aux abonnés Amazon Prime, créant une expérience d'achat « omnichannel ». Ils explorent des moyens innovants d'améliorer l'expérience client et/ou de réduire les coûts, notamment:
- Vision par ordinateur et apprentissage automatique afin que les clients puissent faire leurs achats et partir sans passer par un processus de paiement traditionnel.
- Achats principalement sans espèces, facturés directement au compte Amazon de l'utilisateur.
- Chariots d'achat intelligents (Dash Carts) pour enregistrer les produits achetés tout en restant dans le magasin.
Source: Amazon
Amazon is looking to also resale these technologies to other physical retailers, reducing the R&D costs of this technology and turning it into a new profit center.
AWS
From its beginnings, Amazon had made a habit of handling its technology in-house, from web development to internal search engines to server hosting. As the company’s e‑commerce activity quickly exploded in size, so did the quality and scale of its hardware and software capacities. Over the years, the company has deconstructed and standardized the IT infrastructure to make it as efficient as possible.
Amazon realized that its expertise and tech stack could be monetized independently from its e‑commerce business as early as 2002. To do so, it launched Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Source: Zoho
The idea was that all the issues Amazon had faced scaling up its IT infrastructure were shared by many other online businesses. So instead of having to reinvent the wheel, they could just buy the solution key‑in‑hand directly from Amazon.
Quickly increasing bandwidth and Internet speed also allowed for the emergence of what is now known as cloud computing.
An extra benefit was that scaling up the company’s IT infrastructure would have 2 side benefits:
- “Unloading” the R&D costs of IT technology onto AWS, making this segment’s clients pay for it instead of the e‑commerce segment.
- Creating economies of scale, reducing IT costs and allowing the e‑commerce segment to become even cheaper, reinforcing its main competitive advantage: low prices.
Today, AWS is the largest profit center for the company, commanding high margins and an activity that even more hardware and software‑focused companies like Microsoft or Google did not manage to fully compete with, as Amazon owns almost as much market share as the both combined.
Source: Statista
Au T3 2024, AWS était responsable de « seulement 17 % » des ventes d'Amazon (27,5 Mds $ sur 158,9 Mds $), mais de 59 % du résultat d'exploitation (1,4 Mds $ sur 17,4 Mds $).
To this day, Amazon is investing massively in AWS, notably with a $10B investment in Ohio.
The company is also signing deals with nuclear Small Modular Reactor (SMR) startups for future low‑carbon energy production powering its AWS servers and AI data centers, a global trend among the largest tech companies initiated by Microsoft.
Prime, streaming & filmmaking
Amazon Prime was launched in 2005 to encourage people to keep all of their online shopping on Amazon for a $79 annual fee. Its main appeal was free two‑day shipping on more than one million items.
It quickly changed how people expect e‑commerce to handle delivery and created a core of very dedicated buyers locked in the Amazon ecosystem to pay back their subscriptions.
Amazon Prime would add an extensive library of movies, music, and TV shows, putting Amazon among the major streaming services. It recently added Apple TV+ to Prime Video’s collection of over 100 add‑on subscription channels in the U.S.
The streaming branch would add in‑house production with series like The Expanse or the recent Lord of the Ring series (more on that below). Amazon also acquired a massive catalog of movie IP with the acquisition of MGM in 2021 (Rocky, James Bond, Stargate, etc.).
In parallel to the Prime subscription, Amazon also acquired Twitch, one of the largest video game streaming and e‑sport websites. In 2025, Twitch has over 240 million monthly active users and 30 million users use Twitch daily.
Streaming Difficulties
While widely popular among Prime subscribers, the company’s series and movie streaming segment has experienced some difficulties.
A major one is that the billion‑dollar worth of production for the Lord of the Rings series has failed to convince the fans, with only 37% of people who started the show actually ending up finishing it.
The Rings Of Power failed on all fronts, and the majority of viewers appear to feel the same way. I have little faith that Season 2 will be anything but more of the same.
Amazon should cut its losses and start over with a new project helmed by people who know not only how to make a decent TV show, but how to respect Tolkien’s lore while doing it.
The series also ended up at the center of the anti‑woke cultural war (together with the Netflix Witcher series), while many others simply criticized a very poor writing and some surprising weaknesses considering the massive budget, like bad‑looking costumes.
Combined with not many new productions from the massive IP catalog from MGM, 4 years later, it seems that Amazon’s excellence in distributing content has so far failed to materialize in entertainment production. But of course, this could change over time and provide a new growth engine for the company.
The company is also reported to be exploring the creation of a news program.
Ads & Services
As a prime location on the Internet where people are looking to buy products and entertainment, Amazon has built a massive $50B ad business.
This ad business is now expanding even to other online stores, somewhat mimicking the move of expanding AWS offers to other websites.
Overall, this has been a very profitable segment for the company, as it sells ad space on Amazon e‑commerce and other platforms that would otherwise be used anyway by organic search results.
The ad business recently expanded, somewhat controversially, to Amazon Prime unless you pay an extra $2.99 a month. It was not liked by many Prime subscribers, seeing it as a return to cable TV and overall decreasing the user experience.
Prime Video is totally fine with inserting ads in the most chaotic way possible. I’m talking ads in the middle of dialogue, or at the height of a dramatic moment.
Rather than take the same strategy as the majority of its streaming rivals, including Netflix and Disney Plus, and launching a cheaper ad‑supported tier, Prime Video is instead punishing its pre‑existing subscribers with a stealth price hike dressed up as an optional charge.
Logistics & Robots
Where Amazon is leading is in logistics. The early focus of the company on a large catalog and fast delivery, reinforced by Prime, has given it one of the world’s most extensive logistical networks of warehouses, trucks, planes, and delivery vans. And the company is now looking to improve it further with new technologies.
Amazon is actively looking to replace some of its warehouse workers with robots, especially for the most difficult or health‑damaging tasks like lifting heavy goods.
This started in 2012 with the acquisition of robotic company Kiva Systems. Since then, Amazon has deployed 750,000 robots across its operations network, with 8 different types of robotic systems, from automatic sorting systems to palette movers, packing automation, and even humanoid robots.
Drones
Amazon drone deliveries, or “Prime Air” is exiting its testing stage, after approval by the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) in mai 2024. Prime Air received additional permissions that allow us to operate our drones beyond visual line of sight, a must for actual drone deliveries.
“To obtain this permission, we developed strategy including an onboard detect‑and‑avoid technology. We’ve spent years developing, testing, and refining our onboard detect‑and‑avoid system to ensure our drones can detect and avoid obstacles in the air.
We flew in the presence of real planes, helicopters, and a hot air balloon to demonstrate how the drone safely navigated away from each of them.”
This would bring delivery to yet another speed level, notably for goods like medicine.
Ultra‑fast drone deliveries are also expanding in the UK and Italy, as well as a growing number of locations in the US (3 states so far). Especially thanks to a new drone design specifically created for deliveries.
The MK30 is quieter and will be able to fly in more diverse weather conditions—meaning customers can get super speedy deliveries even in situations like light rain, and hotter and colder temperatures.
Our drones have a unique package delivery system, where packages are held inside drones during transit to protect their contents.
IoT
Amazon robots might not stay confined to warehouses for long. The company has also been working intensely on multiple connected devices, contributing greatly to the realization of the IoT (Internet of Things) vision.
In consumer goods, this manifested first with Alexa, the voice‑controlled smart home assistant. It works very well in synergy with the rest of Amazon’s services and online subscriptions, from online music or radio (Spotify and others) to FireTV, an AI and voice‑driven smart TV system and smart speakers & display Echo.
Source: Alexa
This is now combined with Amazon Astro, a robot for home monitoring, which interacts with Ring as well.
Source: Amazon
Ring is a company doing smart doorbells, alarms, and security cameras. It was acquired by Amazon in 2018 for $1B. Ring systems can connect to smart cars as well. Meanwhile, Ring Sidewalk Bridge Pro is a shared network helping users to stay connected including in parks or campuses.
Source: Ring
Among other IoT systems, Amazon also owns smart security systems Blink similar to Ring’s offer, since 2017, WiFi systems Eero, and cloud gaming service Luna.
Constellation Internet
For now, something mostly discussed by space enthusiasts, this is the latest project of Amazon, to connect to Jeff Bezos’s personal project of Blue Origin, a competitor to Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Amazon Project Kuiper will be a constellation of more than 3,000 satellites in low Earth orbit, delivering broadband Internet everywhere on Earth.
Project Kuiper has secured 80 launches from Arianespace, Blue Origin, SpaceX, and United Launch Alliance, and has options for additional launches with Blue Origin.
As Blue Origin is looking to soon launch New Glenn, its first heavy reusable rocket, this could be a new segment for Amazon, with entry into the telecom markets.
IA
AI has been a part of Amazon’s business for more than a decade, including smarter search algorithms, Alexa voice recognition, etc.
Of course, the recent progress made by AI technology has changed how Amazon is using it. In the company’s latest investor letter, Amazon mentions a series of AI‑related news and releases:
- Rufus, a generative AI expert shopping assistant, becoming available in Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Spain, and the UK.
- AI Shopping Guides, which simplifies product research by using generative AI to pair information about a product category with Amazon’s product selection.
- Project Amelia, an AI assistant for sellers that offers tailored business insights to boost productivity and drive seller growth.
- Video generation and live image capabilities for advertisers to easily create short, animated campaign images.
- Bedrock: Amazon’s generative AI service leveraging many AI services, including:
- la famille Jamba 1.5 d'AI21 Labs
- Claude 3.5 Sonnet amélioré d'Anthropic
- Llama 3.2 de Meta
- Mistral Large 2
- plusieurs modèles de Stability AI.
- SageMaker: Amazon’s fully managed machine learning (ML) service integrated into AWS systems.
- AWS’s latest generation Graviton4 processor delivers 75% more memory bandwidth and 30% better computing performance than the previous generation Graviton chips.
These new AIs come in addition to other AI‑based offers from Amazon and AWS, like advanced analytics, marketing tools, coding tools, text‑to‑speech tools, etc.
Source: Veritis
Taxis autonomes: Zoox
This is the autonomous vehicle project from Amazon, declared as “ready-to-launch” in the summer of 2024, after being capable of smoothly traversing a 5‑mile stretch just off the Vegas strip.
The robotaxi has no steering wheel, no pedals, and four inward‑facing seats.
Source: Zoox
Overall, Zoox seems to lag a little behind in term of autonomy and regulatory approval compare to Google’s Waymo. But it is likely that its marketing firepower and combination with Prime subscriptions could give Amazon an edge in catching up with the other big tech companies in this field.
Conclusion
It is a little jarring to try to grasp the entire scope of Amazon, as it is increasingly less an e‑commerce company, or even “just” a tech company, and more of a massive conglomerate integrating logistics, cloud computing, drones, robotics, ads, AI, streaming, movie production, telecom, security service, IoT, etc.
Overall, the company seems for now to still be extremely efficient despite its size, and lean, with new innovations and new markets entered every year.
A likely factor in this success is that each department is relatively autonomous and expected to stand on its own, even if its has many synergies with the other segments of Amazon’s activities.
Nouvelles activités
This extreme level of activity can be hard to assess for investors. Some of Amazon’s ventures are likely to be more important than others in the future. Among the potentially most impactful segments can be highlighted:
Zoox: les robotaxis se préparent clairement à être déployés à grande échelle, de l'expansion rapide de Waymo de Google aux robotaxis et robovan art déco de Tesla.
Source: Yahoo Finance
IA: en proposant de nombreux services d'IA en un seul endroit et en les intégrant aux données natives d'AWS, Amazon pourrait profiter du déploiement de l'IA sans devoir concurrencer directement le domaine très disputé de l'IA générative.
Project Kuiper: loin d'être simplement un projet personnel de Jeff Bezos, le succès de Starlink de SpaceX a prouvé que les services Internet basés dans l'espace pourraient être très demandés et lucratifs. Project Kuiper pourrait se combiner avec le streaming Prime d'Amazon, Twitch, AWS et Ring Sidewalk Bridge Pro pour offrir une excellente couverture Internet, partout, à tout moment.
Robotique: inspirée par la méthode AWS, le déploiement interne par Amazon d'approximativement 1 million de ses propres robots pourrait constituer la base d'une offre « robot‑as‑a‑service » (ou peut‑être d'entrepôts robotisés clé en main) où elle disposerait d'une échelle et d'une expertise inégalées pour le déploiement à grande échelle de robots pour la logistique et les usages industriels.
Enfin, il faut reconnaître qu'un conglomérat d'une telle ampleur ne gagnera probablement pas toujours. La mauvaise réception des publicités sur le streaming Prime, ou la série Ring of Power, en sont des exemples. Cependant, ils ne sont guère le signe d'une mauvaise gestion, mais plutôt celui d'une entreprise qui fait beaucoup de choses à la fois, prête à tenter de nombreuses initiatives, même au risque d'échecs temporaires.
Dernières nouvelles sur Amazon
