According to a Sunday Times report, the anticipated deal would make Amazon.com the e-commerce supplier for Wal-Mart, which is said to be struggling on-line. Wal-Mart would gain access to Amazon.com’s on-line sales management and home delivery system, reputed to be one of the best in the world.
The range of Amazon.com’s products would substantially increase and it would also get a presence in Wal-Mart’s 4,500 shops, a cash injection, a percentage of off-line sales and the benefit of Wal-Mart’s purchasing power.
Since the report by the Sunday Times the two companies have refused to comment about the possibility of a partnership.
Investors are enthusiastic about the potential synergy in a deal between the leading on-line and off-line retailers. In the past two years, the market capitalisation of loss-making Amazon.com has fallen from $36 billion to around $5 billion. Wal-Mart has a market capitalisation of $216 billion.
Bibliofind.com, a book service owned by Amazon.com that links buyers and sellers of rare books, discovered only last week that an unidentified hacker had penetrated its servers in October last year and continued since then to access site user data.
Customer records, including names, addresses and credit card details, were accessed but the company does not know if or how the data has been used by the hacker.
The company became aware of the attack only when “graffiti” appeared on its site. It shut down its site on Friday and removed the customer data from its servers. The FBI is looking into the matter. Amazon.com’s customer database is not affected; only users of the Bibliofind.com service are at risk, according to a spokesperson.