Thread by @LT3000Lyall

I think ppl are far too confident in AMZN's future all-encompassing dominance.
*WMT and TGT having significant success with omni, & more profitably than AMZN.
*Shopify providing e-com access for smaller merchants outside AMZN; + social commerce.
*AWS falling behind GOOG & MSFT.

AMZN is a great company with a great future, but people are getting carried away & ignoring the risks. The biggest risk for AMZN is a lack of focus. More focused players are already starting to chip away at edges of many of their businesses. AMZN is also way behind outside US.

AMZN is up against focused players in all areas of its business. Eg. companies like Ocado which can scale and offer specialised outsourced e-com fulfillment capabilities to traditional groceries stores for eg. Other companies partner; AMZN tries to go it alone and dominate.

If AMZN tries to do too much at the same time & loses focus, and tries to dominate everything instead of partner, there is a good chance they will struggle to compete long term with focused players working in partnership with one another. History is not on their side.

Amazon Video is losing to focused players like Netflix & Disney. AWS is getting chipped away by focused & integrated players like GOOG and MSFT, who can add AI & other software capabilities to stack. Kroger, TGT & WMT are all competing successfully in e-com & grocery delivery.

Successful specialty retailers are all building out proprietary omni-capabilities and are succeeding. Profitable stores double as fulfillment networks and points of service & returns. The costs structures are lower and their 1P e-com operations are much more profitable than AMZN.

Trends towards social commerce, and the enabling back-end e-com capabilities for small merchants provided by Shopify, mean e-com store fronts proliferate and AMZN's dominance in first port of call product search may also erode as people discover products by other means (social).

One area where AMZN will remain undeniably dominant is in book, e-book & audiobook retailing. That is a fabulous business, and their position here is virtually unassailable. AWS is also a great biz but it's market share & profitability will likely decline substantially over time.

AMZN's other businesses look much more mediocre to me. I think they will continue to struggle to make money in 1P e-com. I think margins will probably go down rather than up over time as competitive intensity from focused omni-retailers rises. They are late internationally also.

Even AMZN's move to 3P advertising model has risks. It degrades the customer experience as rankings are not based on best value for customer, but who pays up most for rankings. Omni players selling 1P don't have that conflict and creates opportunity for better product matching.