As of June 2022, Amazon accounted for 37.8 percent of the U.S. e-commerce market, making it the country’s leading online retailer by a considerable margin. Second place was occupied by the e-commerce site of the retail chain Walmart, with a 6.3 percent market share, followed in third place by Apple, with 3.9 percent.

Amazon’s continued success

Amazon has long dominated the e-commerce market as the world’s favorite online marketplace. In 2022, company hit over half a trillion U.S. dollars in net sales. The United States is by far Amazon’s most profitable market, as the U.S. branch generated over 356 billion U.S. dollars in sales in 2022. Germany ranked second, with 33 billion dollars, followed closely by the United Kingdom with 30 billion dollars.

Online shopping on the rise

Online shopping has grown significantly over the past decade, with more people turning to the internet for their shopping needs. The proof is in the numbers: the U.S. e-commerce industry was worth almost a trillion dollars in 2023. By 2027, forecasts show that the online market will grow to more than 50 percent. U.S. online shoppers purchase fashion and food and beverages the most via the internet.

WooCommerce was the worldwide leading e-commerce software platform in 2024, with a market share of 39 percent. Squarespace Online Stores and Woo Themes ranked second and third, with shares of 14.75 and 13.96 percent, respectively. E-commerce software E-commerce software is the technology that manages the online store processes, from managing inventory, to adding or removing products, to calculating taxes and fulfilling orders. The e-commerce software application market had an estimated value of around 5.1 U.S. dollars in 2018 and is forecast to grow to approximately 7.4 billion U.S. dollars by 2023. Given the fast growth of e-commerce sales – global retail e-commerce sales are forecast to reach 7.4 trillion U.S. dollars by 2025 – it is hardly surprising that the e-commerce software market is also expanding. Online shopping Smartphone is the device that consumers use the most when shopping online: 71 percent of retail website traffic comes from the mobile device. China and South Korea are the countries with the highest online shopping penetration rate: in both countries, 83 percent of the consumers are used to shopping online. Given the size of the Chinese consumer market, it is no surprise that Chinese companies are the leading e-retailers worldwide – Alibaba, ranked first with a market share of 24 percent in 2021. With 13 percent market share, the American e-retailer giant Amazon came as a second.

Alibaba was the top company worldwide in terms of gross merchandise volume (GMV) share across the web. The Chinese e-retail giant which provides consumers business-to-business (B2B), consumer-to-consumer (C2C), and business-to-consmer (B2C) e-commerce accounted for a total 23 percent of the overall online GMV in 2022. Amazon ranked second, accounting for 12 percent of overall online GMV.

In 2023, global retail e-commerce sales reached an estimated 5.8 trillion U.S. dollars. Projections indicate a 39 percent growth in this figure over the coming years, with expectations to surpass eight trillion dollars by 2027.

World players Among the key players on the world stage, the Chinese retail giant Alibaba holds the title of the largest e-commerce retailer globally, accounting for a 23 percent market share. Nevertheless, forecasts suggest that by 2027, Seattle-based e-commerce powerhouse Amazon will surpass Alibaba in estimated sales, reaching a staggering 1.2 trillion U.S. dollars in online sales.

Leading e-tailing countries The Chinese e-commerce market was the biggest worldwide in 2023, as internet sales constituted almost half of the country's retail transactions. Indonesia ranked second with the highest share of retail sales online (32 percent), closely trailed by the United Kingdom and South Korea, exceeding the 30 percent mark. That year, the up-and-coming e-commerce markets centered around Asia. The Philippines and India stood out as the swiftest-growing e-commerce markets based on online sales, anticipating a growth rate surpassing 20 percent.

Internet sales have played an increasingly significant role in retailing. In 2024, e-commerce accounted for over 17 percent of retail sales worldwide. Forecasts indicate that by 2029, the online segment will make up close to over 21 percent of total global retail sales. Retail e-commerce Online shopping has grown steadily in popularity in recent years. In 2024, global e-commerce sales amounted to over seven trillion U.S. dollars, a figure expected to exceed 10.4 trillion U.S. dollars by 2028. Digital development in Latin America boomed during the COVID-19 pandemic, generating unprecedented e-commerce growth in various economies across the region. So much so that Brazil and Argentina appear to lead the world's fastest-growing online retail markets. This trend correlates strongly with the constantly improving online access, especially in "mobile-first" online communities, which have long struggled with traditioe-comernal fixed broadband connections due to financial or infrastructure constraints but enjoy the advantages of cheap mobile broadband connections. M-commerce on the rise The average order value of online shopping via smartphones and tablets still lags traditional e-commerce via desktop computers. However, e-retailers around the world have caught up in mobile e-commerce sales. Online shopping via smartphones is particularly prominent in Asia. By the end of 2021, Malaysia was the top digital market based on the percentage of the population that had purchased something by phone, with nearly 45 percent having made a weekly mobile purchase. South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines completed the top of the ranking.

In 2023, e-commerce comprised over 15.6 percent of total retail sales in the United States. Forecasts suggest that this proportion will continue to rise steadily in the coming years, reaching approximately 20.6 percent by 2027.

Fashion fever

The digital revolution has significantly changed how retail is done, impacting a wide range of product categories. Out of all e-commerce product categories, apparel and accessories are the most purchased online in the United States. As of February 2023, roughly 18 percent of all fashion retail sales took place online. Furniture and home furnishing, as well as computer and consumer electronics, ranked second, with over 15 percent of each product category purchased via the internet. The product categories that are least purchased online are office equipment and supplies (1.4 percent) and books, music, and video (5.1 percent).

Shopping hotspots

Amazon dominates the e-commerce industry in the United States, though other competitors still have significant market share. In December 2023, amazon.com was the most-visited e-commerce and shopping site in the United States. That month, around 45 percent of all visits to e-commerce sites were made to Amazon. Other popular shopping sites include ebay.com, walmart.com, etsy.com, and target.com. The staggering proportion of online retail sales in the country attributed to Amazon is quite remarkable. In 2023, Amazon's website accounted for almost half of all online computer and consumer electronics sales. Similarly, nearly one-third of online fashion purchases in the country were made on Amazon.

Between 2023 and 2024, it is forecast that Amazon's share of total e-commerce sales in the United States will increase across all five featured product categories. Health and personal care will see the greatest growth, rising from 33.2 percent to 34.7 percent. The other categories include electronics, office items, clothing and home furnishings. With a market share projected to hit almost 50 percent in 2024, Amazon dominates the electronics online retail space in the United States.

In 2024, Brazil held approximately 29 percent of the e-commerce market in Latin America and the Caribbean, closely followed by Mexico with over 26 percent. Throughout the year, various economies in the region were poised to increase their market share, with Brazil and Mexico exhibiting the most substantial growth in online sales. The largest market has a foreign leader In 2023, Latin America saw its largest e-commerce economy thrive. That year, online shopping in Brazil generated nearly 186 billion Brazilian reals in revenue. Competition among online retailers for Brazilian shoppers is fierce, but Mercado Libre (Mercado Livre in Brazil), founded in Argentina, remains at the forefront. In February 2024 alone, this marketplace attracted close to 321 million shoppers to its platform, surpassing its closest rival, Amazon Brasil, by 11 percent. Mobile commerce: a game-changer Mobile devices have played a pivotal role in democratizing internet access and online purchasing in Latin America. By the end of 2024, mobile retail e-commerce sales in the region reached approximately 97 billion U.S. dollars, tripling the 2019 figures before the COVID-19 pandemic. Brazil emerged as the regional leader in m-commerce revenue, with sales amounting to about 30 billion in 2022, and showed the highest mobile participation over total online retail sales.

Significant fluctuations are estimated for all segments over the forecast period for the cross-border revenue. Only for the segment Cross-border, a significant increase can be observed over the forecast period. Here, the cross-border revenue exhibits a difference of 0.0900 percent between 2017 and 2025. Find other insights concerning similar markets and segments, such as a comparison of average revenue per user (ARPU) in the United Kingdom and a comparison of average revenue per user (ARPU) in Russia.

As of January 2025, Shopify was the biggest name in the U.S. e-commerce software market, used by roughly 30 percent of websites that use e-commerce technologies. The market’s other major competitors include Wix Stores around 23 percent, WooCommerce Checkout, and Squarespace Add to Cart, each of which boasts a market share of around 15 percent. E-commerce E-commerce is the term used to describe the broad spectrum of products and services which are bought and sold over the internet. It can include everything from the sale of physical good on sites like Amazon, to the online provision of software offered by companies like Google. Often seen as the future of commerce, the market has grown rapidly, especially in the U.S., where it accounts for around 15 percent of overall retail sales in 2021. The retail e-commerce sales in the U.S. is projected to bring in 933 billion U.S. dollars in revenue in 2021. Such booming sales signals strong demand for the software support behind e-commerce platforms, and estimates suggest that the e-commerce software application market alone will be worth over 6.5 billion dollars by the end of 2021. E-commerce companies The undisputed biggest name in e-commerce internationally is Amazon.com. The company brought in more than 197 billion U.S. dollars in revenue from its online stores in 2020. Other major competitors include Chinese brands Alibaba and Jingdong. Alibaba's annual revenue amounted to more than 717 billion yuan in it's 2021 fiscal year, which translates to around 115 billion U.S. dollars. The annual sales of Jingdong (JD.com) reached a record high of 746 billion yuan in 2020, which is the equavalent of 112 billion U.S. dollars.

Asia leads globally in e-commerce, exceeding 3.7 trillion U.S. dollars in volume in 2024. The United States ranked second with over one trillion U.S. dollars in market volume, and Europe came next, with a market volume of 682 billion U.S. dollars in the same year. U.S. e-commerce: A growing slice of the retail pie While the United States maintains a strong position in the global e-retail market, there's still considerable room for expansion. E-commerce sales in the U.S. reached a record high of over 291 billion dollars in the second quarter of 2024, accounting for 16 percent of total retail sales. This represents a steady increase from previous years, yet indicates that traditional brick-and-mortar retail still dominates the American market. Latin America: An emerging e-commerce frontier Latin America is rapidly emerging as a key player in the global e-retail landscape, with a projected market volume of 319 billion U.S. dollars by 2024. Brazil and Mexico lead the region, accounting for 29 percent and 26 percent of the Latin American e-commerce market, respectively. The region is also seeing a gradual increase in cross-border online sales, expected to reach 17 percent of total e-commerce by 2025. Mobile commerce is proving to be a game-changer in Latin America, with m-commerce sales tripling since 2019 to reach approximately 97 billion U.S. dollars by the end of 2024.

The revenue in the e-commerce market in the United States was forecast to continuously increase between 2024 and 2029 by in total 657.8 billion U.S. dollars (+53.79 percent). After the tenth consecutive increasing year, the indicator is estimated to reach 1.9 trillion U.S. dollars and therefore a new peak in 2029. Notably, the revenue of the e-commerce market was continuously increasing over the past years.Find other key market indicators concerning the average revenue per user (ARPU) and number of users. The Statista Market Insights cover a broad range of additional markets.

In 2023, Alibaba ranked first among China's comprehensive e-commerce retailers, with a market share of 46 percent. JD.com ranked second with a GMV share of 27.2 percent. E-commerce retail in ChinaChina has become one of the world’s largest e-commerce markets. As a major driver of the country’s retail economy, e-commerce sales share experienced a considerable rise from 10.6 percent of the total retail sales in 2014, to about 27.6 percent in 2023. The e-commerce retail sales value was estimated to reach 3.99 trillion U.S. dollars by 2026. Alibaba: the e-commerce giantEstablished in 1999, Alibaba.com was founded by Jack Ma, who stepped down as chairman in September 2019. Initially, Alibaba was a traditional e-commerce company but has now transformed into a conglomerate. It has a wide range of business including services such as financial, logistics, digital media, and cloud computing. In fiscal year 2023, the revenue of Alibaba amounted to around 868.7 billion yuan. The number of active consumers across Alibaba's online shopping properties reached 903 million in the first quarter of 2022. Alibaba Group launched the Singles’ Day marketing plan in 2008, focusing on offering numerous discounts, red packet coupons, and promotions to improve sales on November 11 (or 11.11). This date was chosen to represent single people among Chinese youth from the early 1990s. In 2021, Alibaba's gross merchandise volume on Singles' Day skyrocketed to 84.54 billion U.S. dollars. This represented an astonishing growth from 0.82 billion U.S. dollars just a decade earlier.

Apparel and accessories was the e-commerce category with the highest share in total retail sales in the United States as of February 2023. 18.3 percent of all retail sales in the fashion segment were generated online. The category with the second-highest percentage of retail sales in the U.S. was furniture, at 15.7 percent. At the other end of the spectrum, office equipment and supplies had the lowest share of retail sales, below two percent.

The continuous rise of e-commerce

Online shopping is on the rise in the United States. The share of all retail sales in the U.S. stemming from online shopping has increased from 4.2 percent in the first quarter of 2010 to a record-breaking 15.6 percent in the third quarter of 2023. Consequently, the sales of retail e-commerce have surged from 39 million U.S. dollars in the first quarter of 2010 to more than 280 billion U.S. dollars in the third quarter of 2023. This boom is forecast to continue over the next few years, with the estimated revenue from online sales, including digital services, reaching 1.72 trillion U.S. dollars by 2027.

The king of e-commerce

In the United States, the number of online shoppers continues to grow. In 2023, there were more than a quarter of a million online shoppers, and the number is forecast to reach over 300 million by 2028. The most popular online shopping destination in the U.S., Amazon, sees a surge of shoppers during certain shopping occasions, which feature appealing bargains that encourage extravagant spending. In 2023, the biggest increase in sales occurred on Black Friday, with an increase of nearly 35 percent. Amazon's deal event for Prime members, Prime Day, saw 17 percent more sales. As for Cyber Monday, sales went up by 13 percent.

Over the forecast period until 2029, the revenue is forecast to exhibit fluctuations among the 13 segments. Overall, the indicator appears to follow a positive trend, as there are more increasing values than decreasing values expected in the individual segments until 2029. Among them, the segment Food achieves the relatively highest value throughout the entire period, reaching 1.23 trillion U.S. dollars.The Statista Market Insights cover a broad range of additional markets.

Owing to the increasing internet user base and favorable market conditions, India has a lot of potential in the e-commerce industry. Growing at an exponential rate, the market value of the e-commerce industry in India was 123 billion U.S dollars in 2024. This number was estimated to reach 300 billion U.S. dollars by 2030.

E-commerce platforms

The competition in the e-commerce business in India is fierce. The market is filled with many local and foreign companies trying to hold the maximum market share. Flipkart and Amazon were the leading ecommerce retailers in the country. Moreover, electronics and apparel are the most popular shopping categories among Indian consumers.

Growing trend of e-commerce

Increasing growth in the e-commerce industry is attributed to a number of reasons. Digitizing the economy and provision of affordable internet are a few of many reasons that boosted the growth of digital sales in India. In 2024, the e-commerce sales across India were estimated to increase by over 19 percent. Consequently, the revenue-generating potential has also increased. The average retail e-commerce revenue collected per user was more than 85 U.S dollars.

In the first quarter of 2024, Shopee represented the largest market share among e-commerce platforms in Vietnam, at 67.9 percent. The platform also had the highest number of sellers, exceeding 262,000. Meanwhile, TikTok Shop has been expanding fast, accounting for 23.2 percent of the e-commerce market in the country during that quarter.

From the selected regions, the ranking by revenue in the e-commerce market is led by China with 1.47 trillion U.S. dollars and is followed by the United States (1.22 trillion U.S. dollars). The ranking is trailed by India, with nearly 59 billion U.S. dollars.Find other insights concerning similar markets and segments, such as a ranking by country regarding revenue in the toys, hobby & DIY segment of the e-commerce market and a ranking by country regarding revenue in the electronics segment of the e-commerce market.The Statista Market Insights cover a broad range of additional markets.

Social commerce has become increasingly significant in the e-commerce sector. In 2025, sales through social networks accounted for an estimated 17.11 percent of total online sales. This figure is expected to continue growing in the coming years. Who has grown a liking for this channel? The term "social commerce" is gaining traction worldwide. In 2024, global revenues generated through social media platforms were forecast to reach nearly 700 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of roughly 23 percent compared to the previous year. However, some countries have embraced this sales channel more vigorously than others. Leading the way in social shopping are Thailand, Colombia, and China. In 2023, approximately nine out of ten internet users in these countries made purchases through social networks. The future of shopping is live Live commerce has grown in popularity in recent years. Its prevalence is only expected to increase as companies utilize livestreaming technologies more and more for promotional and marketing purposes. Digital shoppers benefit from live commerce because it offers attractive discounts as well as inspiration and ideas. In 2022, Facebook was the leading social network platform where internet users purchased products during live streaming events. As with social commerce, Asian countries have paved the way for this highly interactive shopping experience. In 2023, over seven in ten consumers engaged in live shopping in China, India, Thailand, and United Arab Emirates.

In the second quarter 2024, the share of e-commerce in total U.S. retail sales stood at 16 percent, up from the previous quarter. From April to June 2024, retail e-commerce sales in the United States hit over 291 billion U.S. dollars, the highest quarterly revenue in history. How e-commerce measures up in total U.S. retail In 2023, the reported total value of retail e-commerce sales in the United States amounted to over one trillion U.S. dollars—impressive, but the figure pales compared to the total annual retail trade value of seven trillion U.S. dollars. E-commerce still accounts for a mere 15.4 percent of total retail sales in the United States. Rising e-commerce segments Online shopping is popular among all age groups, though digital purchases are most common among Millennial internet users. In 2022, around 55 percent of Millennials purchased items via the internet. Mobile commerce is also growing in popularity, as consumers increasingly rely on their smartphones and mobile apps for shopping activities. In the fourth quarter of 2022, m-commerce spending made up 38 percent of the overall online spending in the United States.