Amazon.com - Pioneering Click to Download

Having taught the world how to shop online, Amazon.com now finds the world shopping elsewhere on the internet. It is time to become a pioneer again

In his most recent annual report, Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon.com, reprints his letter to shareholders of 1997. "It's all about the long term," he wrote then. The point he is making today is that nothing has changed: the pioneer of online retailing is still having to place big bets on the future, cutting into profit margins and unnerving some investors. Having established the internet as somewhere to buy things, Amazon is again spending heavily on development in anticipation of consumers wanting to download music, video and books instead of having them delivered in the post.

Amazon is highly secretive about its plans, but the online industry expects it soon to launch a service for downloading films and television shows. Amazon's investment in new technology and services helped slash net profit by 58% to $22m in its second quarter, compared with the same period a year earlier. This is despite a 22% increase in sales, which are expected to reach $10.6 billion for 2006 as a whole.

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