Amazon Inc. is an American company offering a range of products, including online retail. The company also manufactures and sells electronic devices. The company was founded on July 5, 1994, by Jeff Bezos.
Amazon’s headquarters are in Bellevue, Washington State. Amazon trades on the NASDAQ exchange under the AMZN ticker. The company first went public on May 15, 1997.
Amazon operates through three main segments: North America, International, and Amazon Web Services (AWS). The AWS segment includes products like analytics, Amazon Athena, CloudSearch, EMR, Elasticsearch Service, Kinesis, Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka, Amazon Redshift, QuickSight, AWS Data Pipeline, AWS Glue, and AWS Lake Formation.
AWS solutions include machine learning, analytics, data lakes, Internet of Things, serverless computing, containers, enterprise applications, and storage. Amazon also offers advertising services. Through Amazon Prime, the company offers streaming services for various digital content.
Amazon’s main competitors
- Alibaba
- eBay
- Taobao
- Otto
- JD
Key Amazon Milestones
For the first time in the company’s history, Amazon’s market capitalization surpassed the $1 trillion mark in January 2020. This is after the company recorded high revenues during Q4 2019. The company joined other tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, and Alphabet.
In December 2016, Amazon facilitated its first customer delivery by drone in England. The drone journey lasted about 13 minutes, carrying popcorn and a Fire TV video streaming device.
On January 22, 2018, the company launched the Amazon Go, a store that deploys cameras and sensors to detect items that a shopper grabs off shelves. The technology then automatically charges a shopper’s Amazon account. The first store was opened to the general public in Seattle.
In 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic, Amazon was among the primary beneficiaries of the crisis as the company played a vital role in delivering essential goods during the lockdown. Amazon shares consequently soared by more than 60%. The market cap also grew by over $500 billion.
Amazon Frequently Asked Questions
Does Amazon (AMZN) pay dividends?
Since going public, Amazon has never paid any dividends. The company channels its profits to other production operations. This is despite the company hitting new levels of profitability.
Why is Amazon successful?
Amazon’s success is tied to its high-end customer support, innovations, diversifications of products, unique user experience, and execution.
How many times has Amazon split its stock?
Since going public, Amazon has split its shares four times. In June 1998 at 2-for-1, January 1999 at 3-for-1, 2-for-1 in September 1999 and 20-for-1 in June 2022.
