Black Friday, Cyber Monday: Amazon's on it

Amazon.com continues to increase its grip on U.S. retail sales and take market share away from its two most significant competitors: Walmart and Target. Walmart still brings in the most revenue on an absolute basis, with an average U.S. quarterly revenue of about $80 billion. However more than half of that is from their grocery sales. The big-box retailer just started breaking out revenue numbers by business segment in 2019, so greater historical context couldn't be reported. Excluding grocery sales, Amazon earned an average $14 billion more per quarter than Walmart, including $24 billion more in the fourth quarter of 2018.

Amazon's quarterly year-over-year growth has been 17% or higher since the end of 2016 despite being more volatile. Walmart's revenue growth has shown steady, flat-but-positive growth that should be expected from a mature company, while Target has seemed to have recovered from a rough patch in 2016 and 2017. Amazon's growth has more recently taken a divergent path from its brick-and-mortar counterparts this year.