Monday, October 16, 2000		Article

Europe future online marketplace,
 says Amazon’s founder

Amazon.com’s founder, Jeff Bezos, says Europe could overtake the USA as the world’s most important online marketplace as it is regarded as a largely untapped audience by the American firms, according to Net retailer

"The rate of growth for Amazon in Europe is dramatic, much more dramatic than it has been historically in the USA ... people here believe e-commerce is not taking off, but that’s not the maths that I see," he told an industry conference in Stockholm.

Amazon intends to roll out more local language Web sites following the recent launch of its French site, www.amazon.fr. "Long term we would like to have a local presence in every country, but that’s going to take a long time," he said.

Mr Bezos defended his company’s aggressive push into new markets as shares in his company continued to be hit by doubts that it would ever make money. He said that Amazon, which started life five years ago as a bookseller, intended to offer an increasingly wide range of products around the world.

Amazon’s latest deal was last week’s online photo service, launched in conjunction with Ofoto, a digital camera company. The deal prompted a further wave of criticism on Wall Street, where sentiment has become negative regarding the Amazon strategy of providing a "one stop" Net shop.

Critics believe its strategy will lead to continuing losses. While the group’s US books, music and video division made an operating profit in the second quarter, its total losses rose 40 per cent to $ 115 m, largely because of the cost of expansion.

Bill Curry, Amazon’s director of media relations, said: "We plan to keep expanding both products, markets and services. We are committed to a long term vision of being the place people can find everything they want to buy online."

Tim Albright, an analyst at Salomon Smith Barney, the American investment bank, said that Amazon’s strategy would benefit over time because it is still the market leader. "Things may be bad for the leading e-commerce companies," he said, "but they were even worse for their smaller rivals, who are facing closure. If people want to buy something online there are fewer and fewer places to go now."

Mr Bezos said that Christmas would prove some of the doubters wrong. "I think it’s going to be a Web Christmas," he told Reuters news agency.

Wall Street will expect to hear further details of the company’s bid for profitability when it announces its quarterly results, later this month.

— By arrangement with The Guardian