Europe dragging the rapid growth of Amazon International

Amazon is famous for growing rapidly and taking markets by a storm. The biggest market for Amazon remains North America, representing almost 70% of total sales. For a business with more than $300 billion in revenues, 10+% growth rates are outstanding.

The International segment has become an enormous business: $118 billion in 2022.

In fact, among the list of biggest retailers worldwide, Amazon International would probably be close to the top 10.

International has been a significant drag on the company's profitability because of the vast investments in growth. Amazon has been opening new markets but also investing heavily to break through in big emerging markets. After failing in China, Amazon has focused on India.

Europe dragging growth

Despite the rapid growth of the "Rest of the World" segment (38% in 2021 & 10% in 2022), the old and established European markets of Germany and the UK have been surprisingly sluggish.

Revenues in Germany dropped by -10% and in the UK by -5,8%.

Despite the somewhat surprising declines in revenue, Amazon is among the biggest retailers in both countries and the most prominent online retailer.

In Germany, only grocery giants Edeka, Rewe, Schwarz Group and Aldi are bigger than the 31 billion € revenues produced by Amazon. The biggest non-food retailer, Media-Markt, with 12 billion € in revenues, is much smaller than Amazon.

In the UK, like Germany, the grocery giants Tesco, Sainsbury's and Asda are the only retailers bigger than Amazon. Amazon is the biggest non-food retailer. M&S is trailing far behind with £10,9 billion in revenues against the £24,7 billion from Amazon.