Amazon Passes Walmart

A new report shows that Amazon is now the second-biggest player in consumer-electronics sales, leaving Walmart in the tech dust. And while BestBuy retains No. 1 ranking, and in fact slowed its market-share loss to the lowest level in years, it may be next.

Writing about the new industry ranking from This Week in Consumer Electronics (TWICE), Deutsche Bank analyst Mike Baker notes that the category’s big gains overall — total sales increased 4.3% in 2015, its best year since the 5.2% increase it scored back in 2011 — are almost entirely created by Amazon. “Amazon contributed $5.1 billion of the $5.6 billion increase,” he writes, “representing 90% of total industry growth.”

Those gains gave Amazon its largest market-share growth in the 12 years Deutsche has been tracking it, while Best Buy’s share loss slowed, “and is now almost flat with last year.” In dollar spending, the Minneapolis-based BestBuy made gains that are “almost identical to RadioShack’s dollar loss, so it appears this was the major source of dollar growth.”