I’ve always been curious about the limitations of Amazon’s breadth of items, so I’m going to challenge you to do an exercise. I’ll give you three minutes to check if there is an object you can think of that is not available for purchase on Amazon. Here are the ones I checked out: anvil, laxatives, ballet tutu, canvas painting of three dogs, quinoa chocolate (which I didn’t know existed), surgeon tool kit, and Elizabeth Warren bobblehead. To no surprise, they were all available and ready with Amazon’s 2-day Prime delivery. It seems that Amazon has everything, and, as the company grows, so do its many items and businesses.
It’s difficult for me to remember how tech-giant Amazon became the international phenomenon it is today. It’s also hard to imagine a future in which Amazon is not the leader in consumer goods. Currently, Amazon is leading in E-commerce with its online marketplace, AI speech-recognition technology, live-streaming technology, and cloud technologies. It seems that almost every business Amazon involves itself in is a large success. Throwing it back to pre-historic SAT analogies, I think this one sums up Amazon’s business strategy quite well: Disney is to media as Amazon is to consumer goods.
With the launch of Amazon Care in 2019, it’s evident that Amazon has sought to increase its telehealth footprint. The purpose of Amazon Care is to provide immediate healthcare access for employees of any company and eliminate the long wait times in the healthcare industry. The platform allows two different types of care: virtual and in-person care. The virtual care option provides instantaneous connections from patients to doctors and nurses with video and text whereas the in-person option dispatches healthcare providers to a patient’s home.
Amazon first released this service to Seattle residents in 2019, and then later expanded their services to residents of Washington in 2020. By the summer of this year, Amazon plans to provide this service to all 50 states. This addition may revolutionize the course of this pandemic, potentially allowing greater and easier access to COVID-19 tests and vaccines. It has also become clear that the higher motive behind Amazon Care is to take a stand against the trillion-dollar healthcare industry and its inefficiencies, exclusions, and high costs. Affordable access to healthcare is not the only thing that Amazon has planned for the future; they plan to get involved with portable and wearable health devices and diagnostic labs.
With these large changes in Amazon’s business, what does this mean for the technology industry? In the past few years, Amazon has repeatedly rewritten the definition of a large tech company. The most unique aspect is that its business model is all-encompassing. As Amazon continues to diversify itself, other tech companies will follow suit. In a few decades, I envision the technology industry becoming obsolete as most companies will jump on trending industries to expand their businesses.
So what’s next for Amazon? As it increases its presence in the healthcare industry, it’s possible that Amazon will become the world’s next pharma giant. Amazon has already ventured out into the pharmaceutical business by launching Amazon Pharmacy, which provides easier access to medication. Perhaps, as its research sector increases, Amazon may be the next company to produce effective vaccines for infectious diseases or the leading company with the most effective pain killer. It will be interesting to see if, and how, this transition from a highly technical industry potentially shifts to scientific research and production.
Technically Speaking is an Opinion culture column used to discuss topics relating to technology, such as pop culture, trends, social media, or other relevant subject matter.
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