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Amazon launched in the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday, replacing Souq.com - the largest e-commerce platform in the Arab world it acquired for $580 million in 2017 - with Amazon.ae. According to Marketplace Pulse research, Amazon UAE launched with more than 10,000 sellers.

In the latest quarter, Amazon online sales accounted for less than 50% of the company's total revenue. For the first time since the company was founded in 1994, Amazon generated more revenue from AWS cloud hosting, Prime memberships, the third-party marketplace, and advertising, than it did from selling products online.

Amazon waited for the competition to catch up and is now playing both defense and offense by flipping the switch to enable free one-day shipping.

eBay reported $21.5 billion in GMV in Q1, down -4% year-over-year from $22.5 billion on an as-reported basis and -1% on a foreign exchange (FX) neutral basis. Further, for the last four quarters, sold-item growth was 0% – zero percent.

The anecdote answer to the question “How do you feel about the data you’re getting from Amazon?” is “What data?” Brands and merchants often critique Amazon for the lack of data available. However, the limited data it does provide is enough to reverse engineer the supply and demand matrix.

After a decade of trying Amazon is giving up on the one market it failed to grow. However, while Amazon struggled to grow, not only has China e-commerce exploded in growth, so has the number of successful businesses from China selling through Amazon.

The biggest challenge for Amazon for decades to come is making the marketplace customer-obsessed. Today, in some categories even increasingly, it is abuse-obsessed.

$160 billion is how much third-party sellers sold on Amazon in 2018. An estimated $30 billion more than they did in 2017. Amazon's first-party sales amounted to $117 billion. For a total of $277 billion in gross merchandise volume.

It is comically easy to find counterfeit or otherwise infringing goods on Amazon. Luxury products from brands like Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga, or Gucci are not for sale on Amazon, but many shoppers are looking for them. Instead they find look-alike copies.

While only 8.8% of the total advertising budgets were spent on Amazon last year, 18% of retail advertising was spent on Amazon. Amazon's market share of retail advertising is estimated to grow to 23% in 2019. It will surpass Facebook then.