Amazon, the online e-tail colossus, posted another quarter of strong earnings that help reinforce the idea that for the e-commerce sector, things are looking up. That’s on the heels of similarly rosy reports from Google, eBay and Yahoo.
For Amazon, key to its success was the Kindle, the popular e-book reader dominating the nascent market, as well as its sheer scale: Because of its key position in the e-commerce sector as both a retailer and marketplace, Amazon has been able to weather the downturn better than rivals by being able to undercut the competition. That helped get it in good position to take advantage of improvements in the economy — as its first-quarter results suggest.
Ecommerce Guide has the story.
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In the latest signal that the e-commerce sector is bouncing back from the recession, online retailing giant Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) said that its first-quarter profit rose 68 percent, posting earnings and revenue figures that easily topped analysts’ expectations.
Amazon reported net income for the quarter of $299 million, up from $177 million in the same period last year. That translated to earnings of $0.66 per share, five cents higher than analysts’ consensus projection, according to polling by Thomson Reuters.