US sales of consumer electronics increased by $5.6 billion last year, almost none of which would have happened without Amazon $AMZN.
The online retailer founded by Jeff Bezos accounted for a staggering 90% of consumer electronics sales growth in 2015, according to an analyst note sent by Deutsche Bank on Tuesday (June 21). Amazon has already displaced Walmart $WMT as the second-largest retailer of consumer electronics, and is now fast on its way to stealing the top spot. Best Buy $BBY, the longtime leader, has continued to lose market share.
The trend goes back several years, but has been more pronounced recently. In 2015, Amazon’s consumer electronics sales grew 28% over the previous year, while comparable sales grew 4.3% at Apple $AAPL and just 3.8% at Best Buy. (Admittedly, this was better than Best Buy’s four preceding years, during which sales consistently fell.)
Within the consumer tech space, the fastest-growing devices are portable wireless speakers, fitness wearables, wireless headphones, and smart TVs, according to the Consumer Technology Association. The top-owned device is a television, of which there are an estimated 320 million installed in the US, followed by DVD and Blu-ray players.
Consumer electronics is just one sector in which traditional retailers are struggling to compete against internet giants—online sales make up just 10.6% of Best Buy’s US revenue. In what seemed like an admission of its fate, Best Buy described its flat same-store sales in the most recent quarter as “better than expected.”
