Nicolas Carr makes a series of good points…
“Amazon isn’t about to close down its physical warehouses, of course. But its digital warehouses could eventually become the center of its business. That may be good news from a financial perspective. Amazon has invested a great deal of money and ingenuity into fine-tuning its physical logistics operation, and that operation has given it an edge in online retailing, but the cost of storing, handling, and shipping physical goods has always been a drag on its profitability. That cost largely disappears when customers buy products as bits rather than atoms.”
How about another plan? Amazon could spin off the logistics business. Remember, they have non-Amazon clients on their books. Once they reach a critical mass they could spin off the physical business and concentrate on the bits and bytes.
This also raises the possibility that the logistics business could be worth far more to FedEx, UPS and the others than as a seperate company.