Walmart’s aggressive push to expand and upgrade their own online marketplace, coupled with their purchase of Jet.com, has made it look like we may see a solid contender rising up.

People have been speculating about the decline of Amazon.com has the largest ecommerce giant in America for years, much like they expect it to be as epic as the fall of Rome. Amazon enthusiasts vehemently deny any such cataclysm on the horizon while detractors say not only will the ecom giant lose market share but will crumble altogether.

Reality may fall somewhere in between, but the evidence of that is still hard to see. Whenever Jet.com entered the scene many were hopeful that online buyers would have another avenue to stockpile great products while online sellers could diversify their income. However, so far the newbie platform has not performed anywhere near well enough to be a real threat to the digital behemoth that is Amazon.

Walmart’s aggressive push to expand and upgrade their own online marketplace, coupled with their purchase of Jet.com, has made it look like we may see a solid contender rising up. However, many others don’t believe Walmart to be innovative enough, or have the infrastructure in place to stay competitive.

General consensus aside, let’s look at the evidence.

The Case for Walmart

Upgraded logistics alone may seem like the most logical way to take Amazon’s market share, however Walmart (and Jet) have bigger plans.

One of the biggest advantages that Amazon has had over all other competitors is their extremely comprehensive, fast and affordable shipping. Amazon logistics is quite the finely tuned machine, and their extension of shipping convenience to Prime members has made the platform what it is today.

In order to compete, other marketplaces would need to be overly aggressive, and that is precisely what Walmart is trying to do. In an article on Bloomberg Tech, it has been reported that Walmart will soon be offering free same-day delivery in New York. This comes on the heels of Amazon testing the same ultra-fast shipping options in major cities around the US as well.

This is after both Walmart and Jet started to offer free two-day shipping on orders exceeding $35 to directly undercut Amazon’s Prime program.

Upgraded logistics alone may seem like the most logical way to take Amazon’s market share, however Walmart (and Jet) have bigger plans.

According to a Market Watch article published in September, Jet.com will soon introduce its own private label grocery brand. It appears that Walmart is taking aim at Amazon’s very public infatuation with the future of foods by being a fellow early adopter of ecommerce growth in the space. And this may be an area where Walmart has an upper hand in competition, since Great Value and Sam’s Choice have been private label brands the grocery chain has offered for years.

While Walmart is looking to leverage a new private label grocery brand to appeal to Jet.com’s younger demographic, they are making great strides to continue to serve that market. According to Cnet, Walmart has decided to enter the voice shopping space through an arrangement with Google. Leveraging Google’s Express shopping site and app, the pair are incentivizing shoppers to purchase and utilize voice shopping on the Google Home and Google Home Mini devices. This is a direct shot at Amazon’s Echo/Dot/Alexa innovations.

Does This Mean Amazon is In Danger?

It doesn’t look like Amazon has too much to worry about by the numbers. Just judging from the amount of unique monthly visitors Amazon.com has enjoyed an overwhelming majority of the market. As of March 2017 Amazon has had an average of 183 million visitors per month, compared to Ebay, in the number two spot, at only 96 million and Walmart at 87 million.

Be that as it may, we may want to look to history for examples of how this could play out. There was a period in the 90’s where Microsoft owned the tech space. The computer software company became synonymous with technology and quality.

In fact, in 1999 Microsoft’s market cap was valued at $620 billion while Apple was literally near bankruptcy.  However, due to not innovating fast enough, not leading the market on trends, and likely many other reasons, today Apple’s market cap is twice that of Microsoft’s.

The point of that story isn’t to say that all giants fall one day or anything poetic like that. It is to say that all it takes is one solid innovation (the iPhone in the case of Apple) to completely disrupt the space and shift power from one company to another.

This isn’t any kind of cautionary tale for you and your business either. If anything it illustrates that the opportunities are increasing for online sellers. As you grow, you’ll likely wish to diversify and expand. When doing so, pay attention to the innovators, not just in marketplaces but also in SAAS’s (like SixLeaf) and other tools and services designed to serve the ecommerce industry. Growth is explosive in this space, and for the aware entrepreneur, unimaginable profit awaits.