The Extraordinary Size of Amazon in One Chart

Published

7 years ago

December 30, 2016

Jeff Desjardins

The Extraordinary Size of Amazon in One Chart

It’s bigger than most brick and mortar retailers together

The Chart of the Week is a weekly Visual Capitalist feature on Fridays.

What has more value: all major publicly traded department stores in the United States, or Amazon?

Amazon takes the cake, and its no contest.

Add together the market caps of Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Nordstrom, Kohl’s, JCPenney, Sears, and Macy’s, and they amount to a significant $297.8 billion:

Brick & Mortar Store	2016 Value ($B)
Sears	$1.1
JCPenney	$2.6
Nordstrom	$8.3
Kohl's	$8.8
Macy's	$11.0
Best Buy	$13.2
Target	$40.6
Walmart	$212.4
Total	$297.8

However, it’s not enough to beat the Amazon machine.

The online retailer alone is worth $356 billion, making it one of the largest companies by market capitalization in the world.

The Death of Traditional Retail

Ten years ago, the future of brick and mortar retail sill looked bright. The aforementioned retailers were worth a collective $400 billion, and Amazon was only valued at $17.5 billion.

But disruption often comes without warning. Or if there were warning signs, they went unheeded by retailers.

Big box and department store sales plummeted, as consumers increasingly went online to do their shopping. This year, it is estimated that revenues are equal to just 62% of their totals in 2006:

Big Box and Department Store Sales ($ Billion)
Big Box and Retail Store Sales

Retailers without the right strategy saw their market caps plummet.

Sears went from being worth $27.8 billion to $1.1 billion (a 96% decrease), while JCPenney went from $18.1 billion to $2.6 billion (a 86% decrease).

Here’s the full damage over the last 10 years to brick and mortar stores:

Store	2006 Value ($B)	2016 Value ($B)	% Change
Sears	$27.8	$1.1	-96%
JCPenney	$18.1	$2.6	-86%
Nordstrom	$12.4	$8.3	-33%
Kohl's	$24.2	$8.8	-64%
Macy's	$24.2	$11.0	-55%
Best Buy	$28.4	$13.2	-54%
Target	$51.3	$40.6	-21%
Walmart	$214.0	$212.4	-1%
Total	$400.4	$297.8	-26%

Amazon, on the other hand, did okay for itself.

The online retailer gained 1,934% in value over the same timeframe, making it one of the most valuable companies in the world, and a key piece of Jeff Bezos’ business empire.

Related Topics:amazon jeff bezos walmart retail brick and mortar macy's sears

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Visualizing AI Patents by Country

See which countries have been granted the most AI patents each year, from 2012 to 2022.

Published

2 days ago

April 24, 2024

Marcus Lu

Visualizing AI Patents by Country

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

This infographic shows the number of AI-related patents granted each year from 2010 to 2022 (latest data available). These figures come from the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), accessed via Stanford University’s 2024 AI Index Report.

From this data, we can see that China first overtook the U.S. in 2013. Since then, the country has seen enormous growth in the number of AI patents granted each year.

Year	China	EU and UK	U.S.	RoW	Global Total
2010	307	137	984	571	1,999
2011	516	129	980	581	2,206
2012	926	112	950	660	2,648
2013	1,035	91	970	627	2,723
2014	1,278	97	1,078	667	3,120
2015	1,721	110	1,135	539	3,505
2016	1,621	128	1,298	714	3,761
2017	2,428	144	1,489	1,075	5,136
2018	4,741	155	1,674	1,574	8,144
2019	9,530	322	3,211	2,720	15,783
2020	13,071	406	5,441	4,455	23,373
2021	21,907	623	8,219	7,519	38,268
2022	35,315	1,173	12,077	13,699	62,264

In 2022, China was granted more patents than every other country combined.

While this suggests that the country is very active in researching the field of artificial intelligence, it doesn’t necessarily mean that China is the farthest in terms of capability.

Key Facts About AI Patents

According to CSET, AI patents relate to mathematical relationships and algorithms, which are considered abstract ideas under patent law. They can also have different meaning, depending on where they are filed.

In the U.S., AI patenting is concentrated amongst large companies including IBM, Microsoft, and Google. On the other hand, AI patenting in China is more distributed across government organizations, universities, and tech firms (e.g. Tencent).

In terms of focus area, China’s patents are typically related to computer vision, a field of AI that enables computers and systems to interpret visual data and inputs. Meanwhile America’s efforts are more evenly distributed across research fields.

Learn More About AI From Visual Capitalist

If you want to see more data visualizations on artificial intelligence, check out this graphic that shows which job departments will be impacted by AI the most.