Amazon released their Q2 2008 earnings report last night (here’s the call transcript from Seeking Alpha) and, as expected, it was another smashing quarter. Continuing it’s e-Commerce market share grab (35% vs. 17% in US alone), world-wide revenue overall (excluding FX) grew by 35% to $4.06 billion with an increased full-year forecast / guidance of $19.35 - $20.1 billion.

• International revenue grew 47%, units grew 32%. Overall ASP is going up with non-media outpacing media 2:1 (52% vs. 25%) and now at 38% of all sales (up from 34%). In the US non-media is now at 42% up from 38%. Amazon highlighted here both Consumer Electronics and Toys — if you’re in those categories I’d watch my Order Defect Rate (ODR) very closely to make sure you’ll be able to reap the rewards during the all-mighty Q4.
• Active buyers increased 18% to 81M (same as sellers), that is 81M consumers world-wide have bought at least once on Amazon over the last 12 months. Amazon doesn’t break down regional user counts but I am estimating that there are about 60 million users in the US which is not all that far behind eBay’s active user count (maybe 75 million?).
• Third-Party (3P) sellers world-wide on Amazon grew 18% to approx. 1.4 million, accounting for 29% of all products sold (same as last year). While the growth accelerated (18% vs 11% a year ago), the share of third-party merchants vs. Amazon Retail (sourced and managed by Amazon) has remained essentially flat. The vast majority of seller accounts are in the media category and I am estimating there to be world-wide about 25,000 non-media sellers (anybody have any other insights?).

My favorite quote comes from CFO Thomas Szkutak who basically says “The economy sucks but we’re kicking ***”:

We’re probably not the best bell weather for the economy and certainly one indication of that is just looking at our overall growth rates that you see for Q2. We have growth rates of 35% excluding the impact of the exchange that accelerated from last year where we saw a little bit under 33% excluding exchange and also an acceleration from Q1. So I don’t think I can really help.

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