A fundamental shift in Amazon's business

Direct retail sales are poised to represent less than half of Amazon's business for the first time in its history — a fundamental shift that reflects the e-commerce giant's expansion beyond its roots as an online store.

Revenue from Amazon Web Services, Amazon Prime, third-party seller services, online advertising and other services added up to 49.3% of Amazon's business in the second quarter. It was a new high, almost matching the company's revenue from online and physical stores, and on a trajectory to surpass them in the future.

That's one of several takeaways from Amazon's second-quarter earnings report, released Thursday afternoon. On this episode of Day 2, GeekWire's Podcast about everything Amazon, we nerd out over Amazon's numbers.

Joining GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop for the discussion are two online retail industry veterans who pay close attention to Amazon's business:

• Our podcast collaborator, Jason Boyce, former Top 200 third-party seller, founder of Avenue7Media and co-author of The Amazon Jungle.
• Andrea Leigh, vice president of strategy and insights at Ideoclick, a Seattle-based e-commerce technology and services firm that works with vendors to Amazon’s first-party retail sales, and third-party sellers. Leigh was an Amazon general manager and retail category leader for nearly 10 years.

Coverage of Amazon earnings:

• Amazon sales of $113B disappoint Wall Street but profits of $7.8B exceed expectations
• Amazon’s advertising business is surging amid industry-wide ad sales boom for tech giants
• Amazon boosting wages and hiring incentives to keep up in competitive labor market

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