本文是對 Amazon CEO Andy Jassy 2022 年致股東信的中文翻譯和深入解讀。
在這份意義重大的年度通信中,Jassy 不僅回顧了過去一年面臨的諸多挑戰和取得的卓越成就,還詳細闡述了公司的未來發展戰略和願景。
這封信為我們提供了一個難得的機會,深入了解這家全球科技巨頭的內部運作和長遠規劃。
Jassy 的這封致股東信涵蓋了以下幾個關鍵方面:
這封致股東信不僅展現了 Amazon 面對各種挑戰時的靈活應對策略和創新思維,更體現了公司對長期可持續發展的堅定信心和承諾。通過深入剖析公司的運營策略、創新文化和未來規劃,這封信為投資者、行業分析師和所有關注 Amazon 發展的人士提供了一個全面、深入的視角,有助於他們更好地理解這家全球科技巨頭的發展軌跡和未來前景。
Dear shareholders:
親愛的股東們:
As I sit down to write my second annual shareholder letter as CEO, I find myself optimistic and energized by what lies ahead for Amazon. Despite 2022 being one of the harder macroeconomic years in recent memory, and with some of our own operating challenges to boot, we still found a way to grow demand (on top of the unprecedented growth we experienced in the first half of the pandemic). We innovated in our largest businesses to meaningfully improve customer experience short and long term. And, we made important adjustments in our investment decisions and the way in which we'll invent moving forward, while still preserving the long-term investments that we believe can change the future of Amazon for customers, shareholders, and employees.
當我作為首席執行官坐下來撰寫第二份年度股東信時,我對 Amazon 的未來感到樂觀和充滿活力。儘管 2022 年是近年來宏觀經濟最艱難的一年之一,加上我們自身的一些運營挑戰,我們仍然找到了增長需求的方法(在疫情前半段經歷了前所未有的增長之後)。我們在最大的業務中進行創新,以顯著改善短期和長期的客戶體驗。此外,我們對投資決策和未來的創新方式做出了重要調整,同時仍保留了我們認為能改變 Amazon 對客戶、股東和員工未來的長期投資。
While there were an unusual number of simultaneous challenges this past year, the reality is that if you operate in large, dynamic, global market segments with many capable and well-funded competitors (the conditions in which Amazon operates all of its businesses), conditions rarely stay stagnant for long.
儘管去年同時面臨著異常數量的挑戰,但現實是,如果你在擁有許多有能力且資金充足的競爭對手的大型、動態、全球市場領域中運營(這正是 Amazon 所有業務運營的環境),情況很少會長期保持不變。
In the 25 years I've been at Amazon, there has been constant change, much of which we've initiated ourselves. When I joined Amazon in 1997, we had booked $15M in revenue in 1996, were a books-only retailer, did not have a third-party marketplace, and only shipped to addresses in the US. Today, Amazon sells nearly every physical and digital retail item you can imagine, with a vibrant third-party seller ecosystem that accounts for 60% of our unit sales, and reaches customers in virtually every country around the world. Similarly, building a business around a set of technology infrastructure services in the cloud was not obvious in 2003 when we started pursuing AWS, and still wasn't when we launched our first services in 2006. Having virtually every book at your fingertips in 60 seconds, and then being able to store and retrieve them on a lightweight digital reader was not "a thing" yet when we launched Kindle in 2007, nor was a voice-driven personal assistant like Alexa (launched in 2014) that you could use to access entertainment, control your smart home, shop, and retrieve all sorts of information.
在我在 Amazon 的 25 年中,變化一直是常態,而且其中許多變化是我們自己發起的。1997 年我加入 Amazon 時,公司 1996 年的營收僅為 1500 萬美元,只是一家銷售書籍的零售商,沒有第三方市場,且僅向美國地址發貨。如今,Amazon 銷售幾乎所有你能想像到的實體和數位零售商品,擁有一個蓬勃發展的第三方賣家生態系統(佔我們銷售量的 60%),並觸及全球幾乎每個國家的客戶。同樣,2003 年我們開始推行 AWS 時,圍繞雲端技術基礎設施服務建立業務的前景並不明朗,2006 年推出首項服務時亦是如此。2007 年推出 Kindle 時,60 秒內觸手可及任何一本書,並能在輕量級數位閱讀器上存取它們,還不是「顯而易見的事」。2014 年推出的 Alexa——一個用於獲取娛樂、控制智能家居、購物和檢索各種信息的語音驅動個人助理——也是如此。
There have also been times when macroeconomic conditions or operating inefficiencies have presented us with new challenges. For instance, in the 2001 dot-com crash, we had to secure letters of credit to buy inventory for the holidays, streamline costs to deliver better profitability for the business, yet still prioritized the long-term customer experience and business we were trying to build (if you remember, we actually lowered prices in most of our categories during that tenuous 2001 period). You saw this sort of balancing again in 2008-2009 as we endured the recession provoked by the mortgage-backed securities financial crisis. We took several actions to manage the cost structure and efficiency of our Stores business, but we also balanced this streamlining with investment in customer experiences that we believed could be substantial future businesses with strong returns for shareholders. In 2008, AWS was still a fairly small, fledgling business. We knew we were on to something, but it still required substantial capital investment. There were voices inside and outside of the company questioning why Amazon (known mostly as an online retailer then) would be investing so much in cloud computing. But, we knew we were inventing something special that could create a lot of value for customers and Amazon in the future. We had a head start on potential competitors; and if anything, we wanted to accelerate our pace of innovation. We made the long-term decision to continue investing in AWS. Fifteen years later, AWS is now an $85B annual revenue run rate business, with strong profitability, that has transformed how customers from start-ups to multinational companies to public sector organizations manage their technology infrastructure. Amazon would be a different company if we'd slowed investment in AWS during that 2008-2009 period.
宏觀經濟條件或運營效率低下有時也為我們帶來新挑戰。例如,2001年網路泡沫崩潰時,我們不得不獲得信用證購買假期庫存,精簡成本提高盈利能力,但仍優先考慮長期客戶體驗和業務發展(值得一提的是,我們在那個艱難時期反而降低了大多數類別的價格)。2008-2009年抵押貸款危機引發的衰退中,我們再次展現了這種平衡能力。我們採取措施管理Stores業務的成本結構和效率,同時投資於客戶體驗,相信這些投資未來將帶來豐厚回報。
2008年,AWS仍是一個小型、新興業務。我們意識到它的潛力,但仍需大量資本投入。當時,許多人質疑為何以線上零售聞名的Amazon會如此投資雲計算。然而,我們堅信這項創新將為客戶和Amazon創造巨大價值。我們領先競爭對手,並決心加快創新步伐。我們做出了繼續投資AWS的長遠決策。如今,十五年過去,AWS已成為年收入850億美元、盈利強勁的業務,徹底改變了各類組織管理技術基礎設施的方式。若我們在2008-2009年減緩對AWS的投資,今天的Amazon將會大不相同。
Change is always around the corner. Sometimes, you proactively invite it in, and sometimes it just comes a-knocking. But, when you see it's coming, you have to embrace it. And, the companies that do this well over a long period of time usually succeed. I'm optimistic about our future prospects because I like the way our team is responding to the changes we see in front of us.
變革總是悄然而至。有時我們主動迎接,有時它不請自來。無論如何,當變革臨近時,我們必須擁抱它。長期來看,善於擁抱變革的公司往往能夠成功。我對我們的未來充滿信心,因為我欣賞我們團隊應對眼前變化的方式。
Over the last several months, we took a deep look across the company, business by business, invention by invention, and asked ourselves whether we had conviction about each initiative's long-term potential to drive enough revenue, operating income, free cash flow, and return on invested capital. In some cases, it led to us shuttering certain businesses. For instance, we stopped pursuing physical store concepts like our Bookstores and 4 Star stores, closed our Amazon Fabric and Amazon Care efforts, and moved on from some newer devices where we didn't see a path to meaningful returns. In other cases, we looked at some programs that weren't producing the returns we'd hoped (e.g. free shipping for all online grocery orders over $35) and amended them. We also reprioritized where to spend our resources, which ultimately led to the hard decision to eliminate 27,000 corporate roles. There are a number of other changes that we've made over the last several months to streamline our overall costs, and like most leadership teams, we'll continue to evaluate what we're seeing in our business and proceed adaptively.
過去數月,我們深入審視了公司各項業務和創新,評估每項計劃的長期潛力是否能帶來充足的收入、營業利潤、自由現金流和投資回報。這導致我們做出了一些艱難決定。我們關閉了實體書店和4 Star店等實體店業務,終止了Amazon Fabric和Amazon Care項目,並放棄了一些無法帶來可觀回報的新設備。我們還調整了一些未達預期的計劃,如修改了35美元以上線上雜貨訂單的免費配送政策。資源重新分配的過程中,我們不得不裁減27,000個公司職位。此外,我們採取了多項措施以精簡整體成本。如同大多數領導團隊一樣,我們將持續評估業務狀況,並靈活應對。
We also looked hard at how we were working together as a team and asked our corporate employees to come back to the office at least three days a week, beginning in May. During the pandemic, our employees rallied to get work done from home and did everything possible to keep up with the unexpected circumstances that presented themselves. It was impressive and I'm proud of the way our collective team came together to overcome unprecedented challenges for our customers, communities, and business. But, we don't think it's the best long-term approach. We've become convinced that collaborating and inventing is easier and more effective when we're working together and learning from one another in person. The energy and riffing on one another's ideas happen more freely, and many of the best Amazon inventions have had their breakthrough moments from people staying behind after a meeting and working through ideas on a whiteboard, or continuing the conversation on the walk back from a meeting, or just popping by a teammate's office later that day with another thought. Invention is often messy. It wanders and meanders and marinates. Serendipitous interactions help it, and there are more of those in-person than virtually. It's also significantly easier to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture when we're in the office together most of the time and surrounded by our colleagues. Innovation and our unique culture have been incredibly important in our first 29 years as a company, and I expect it will be comparably so in the next 29.
我們仔細評估了團隊合作方式,決定從5月起要求員工每週至少回辦公室工作三天。疫情期間,員工們在家齊心協力完成工作,靈活應對各種突發狀況,令人欽佩。我為團隊如何共克難關,為客戶、社區和業務排憂解難而自豪。然而,我們認為這並非長期之計。我們深信,面對面工作和學習能更有效地促進協作與創新。
親身互動能激發更自由的能量交流和思想碰撞。Amazon許多最佳創意都源於這樣的時刻:會後在白板前深入討論、步行返回辦公室時延續對話、或當天稍晚突然造訪同事分享新想法。發明往往是混沌的過程,需要反覆琢磨、蜿蜒前行。偶然的互動能助其一臂之力,而面對面交流比虛擬互動更容易產生這種效果。
此外,當我們大部分時間都在辦公室共事,被同事環繞時,學習、模仿、實踐和強化公司文化也會變得更加容易。創新和我們獨特的文化在公司的前29年裡舉足輕重,我相信在未來29年裡也將同樣重要。
A critical challenge we've continued to tackle is the rising cost to serve in our Stores fulfillment network (i.e. the cost to get a product from Amazon to a customer)—and we've made several changes that we believe will meaningfully improve our fulfillment costs and speed of delivery.
我們持續面臨的一項關鍵挑戰是 Stores 履行網絡中不斷攀升的服務成本(即將產品從 Amazon 送達客戶手中的成本)。為此,我們已實施了幾項變革,我們相信這些舉措將顯著優化我們的履行成本並加快配送速度。
During the early part of the pandemic, with many physical stores shut down, our consumer business grew at an extraordinary clip, with annual revenue increasing from $245B in 2019 to $434B in 2022. This meant that we had to double the fulfillment center footprint that we'd built over the prior 25 years and substantially accelerate building a last-mile transportation network that's now the size of UPS (along with a new sortation center network to assist with efficiency and speed when items needed to traverse long distances)—all in the span of about two years. This was no easy feat, and hundreds of thousands of Amazonians worked very hard to make this happen. However, not surprisingly, with that rate and scale of change, there was a lot of optimization needed to yield the intended productivity. Over the last several months, we've scrutinized every process path in our fulfillment centers and transportation network and redesigned scores of processes and mechanisms, resulting in steady productivity gains and cost reductions over the last few quarters. There's more work to do, but we're pleased with our trajectory and the meaningful upside in front of us.
疫情初期,實體店紛紛關閉,我們的消費者業務呈爆發式增長,年收入從 2019 年的 2450 億美元飆升至 2022 年的 4340 億美元。這迫使我們在短短兩年內完成了驚人的擴張:將過去 25 年建立的配送中心規模翻倍,大幅加速建設最後一英里運輸網絡(現已與 UPS 比肩),同時建立新的分揀中心網絡以提高長距離運輸效率。這項艱巨任務得以完成,全賴數十萬 Amazon 員工的不懈努力。
然而,如此快速且大規模的變革需要大量優化才能達到預期效能。近幾個月來,我們深入審視了配送中心和運輸網絡的每一個流程,重新設計了眾多機制,使得生產力在過去幾個季度穩步提升,成本持續下降。儘管前方還有挑戰,但我們對當前的發展軌跡和未來的巨大潛力充滿信心。
We also took this occasion to make larger structural changes that set us up better to deliver lower costs and faster speed for many years to come. A good example was reevaluating how our US fulfillment network was organized. Until recently, Amazon operated one national US fulfillment network that distributed inventory from fulfillment centers spread across the entire country. If a local fulfillment center didn't have the product a customer ordered, we'd end up shipping it from other parts of the country, costing us more and increasing delivery times. This challenge became more pronounced as our fulfillment network expanded to hundreds of additional nodes over the last few years, distributing inventory across more locations and increasing the complexity of connecting the fulfillment center and delivery station nodes efficiently. Last year, we started rearchitecting our inventory placement strategy and leveraging our larger fulfillment center footprint to move from a national fulfillment network to a regionalized network model. We made significant internal changes (e.g. placement and logistics software, processes, physical operations) to create eight interconnected regions in smaller geographic areas. Each of these regions has broad, relevant selection to operate in a largely self-sufficient way, while still being able to ship nationally when necessary. Some of the most meaningful and hard work came from optimizing the connections between this large amount of infrastructure. We also continue to improve our advanced machine learning algorithms to better predict what customers in various parts of the country will need so that we have the right inventory in the right regions at the right time. We've recently completed this regional roll out and like the early results. Shorter travel distances mean lower cost to serve, less impact on the environment, and customers getting their orders faster. On the latter, we're excited about seeing more next day and same-day deliveries, and we're on track to have our fastest Prime delivery speeds ever in 2023. Overall, we remain confident about our plans to lower costs, reduce delivery times, and build a meaningfully larger retail business with healthy operating margins.
我們也藉此機會進行了更大規模的結構性變革,為未來多年降低成本和提高速度奠定基礎。一個典型例子是重新評估美國配送網絡的組織方式。直到最近,Amazon 還在運營一個全國性的美國配送網絡,從分佈全國的配送中心分配庫存。若當地配送中心缺貨,我們就得從其他地方發貨,增加成本並延長配送時間。隨著配送網絡在近年擴展至數百個額外節點,這個挑戰更加突出,因庫存分散各地,使高效連接配送中心和配送站變得複雜。
去年,我們著手重新設計庫存放置策略,利用擴大的配送中心佈局,將全國性網絡轉向區域化模型。我們進行了重大內部變革(如調整放置和物流軟體、流程、實體運營),在較小的地理區域內創建了八個相互連接的區域。每個區域都有豐富、相關的選擇,能基本自給自足運營,同時必要時仍可進行全國配送。最具挑戰性的工作之一是優化這些龐大基礎設施間的連接。
我們持續改進先進的機器學習算法,更準確預測全國各地客戶需求,確保適時將合適庫存放在恰當區域。我們最近完成了這個區域化推廣,初步結果令人滿意。較短的運輸距離意味著更低的服務成本,減少環境影響,客戶也能更快收到訂單。我們欣喜地看到更多次日和當日送達訂單,有望在 2023 年實現 Prime 史上最快的配送速度。
總的來說,我們對降低成本、縮短配送時間,以及建立一個規模更大、具健康營運利潤的零售業務的計劃充滿信心。
AWS has an $85B annualized revenue run rate, is still early in its adoption curve, but at a juncture where it's critical to stay focused on what matters most to customers over the long-haul. Despite growing 29% year-over-year ("YoY") in 2022 on a $62B revenue base, AWS faces short-term headwinds right now as companies are being more cautious in spending given the challenging, current macroeconomic conditions. While some companies might obsess over how they could extract as much money from customers as possible in these tight times, it's neither what customers want nor best for customers in the long term, so we're taking a different tack. One of the many advantages of AWS and cloud computing is that when your business grows, you can seamlessly scale up; and conversely, if your business contracts, you can choose to give us back that capacity and cease paying for it. This elasticity is unique to the cloud, and doesn't exist when you've already made expensive capital investments in your own on-premises datacenters, servers, and networking gear. In AWS, like all our businesses, we're not trying to optimize for any one quarter or year. We're trying to build customer relationships (and a business) that outlast all of us; and as a result, our AWS sales and support teams are spending much of their time helping customers optimize their AWS spend so they can better weather this uncertain economy. Many of these AWS customers tell us that they're not cost-cutting as much as cost-optimizing so they can take their resources and apply them to emerging and inventive new customer experiences they're planning. Customers have appreciated this customer-focused, long-term approach, and we think it'll bode well for both customers and AWS.
AWS 的年化收入已達 850 億美元,仍處於採用曲線的早期階段,但現在正處於關鍵時刻,需要專注於長期對客戶最重要的事項。儘管 AWS 在 2022 年基於 620 億美元的收入基礎上實現了 29% 的同比增長,但由於當前充滿挑戰的宏觀經濟環境,企業在支出方面更加謹慎,AWS 目前面臨短期阻力。有些公司可能會在這個緊張時期執著於如何從客戶那裡榨取最多利益,但這既不是客戶所期望的,從長遠來看也不利於客戶,所以我們採取了不同的策略。AWS 和雲計算的一大優勢是,當您的業務增長時,您可以無縫擴展;反之,如果業務收縮,您可以選擇將容量歸還給我們並停止付費。這種彈性是雲計算所獨有的,在您已經為自己的本地數據中心、伺服器和網絡設備進行了高額資本投資時是不存在的。在 AWS,如同我們所有的業務一樣,我們不追求任何單一季度或年度的優化。我們致力於建立能夠超越我們所有人的客戶關係(和業務);因此,我們的 AWS 銷售和支持團隊投入大量時間幫助客戶優化他們的 AWS 支出,以便他們能夠更好地度過這個不確定的經濟時期。許多 AWS 客戶告訴我們,他們並非在削減成本,而是在優化成本,這樣他們就可以將資源用於規劃中的新興和創新客戶體驗。客戶讚賞這種以客戶為中心的長期方法,我們相信這將對客戶和 AWS 都有利。
While these short-term headwinds soften our growth rate, we like a lot of the fundamentals that we're seeing in AWS. Our new customer pipeline is robust, as are our active migrations. Many companies use discontinuous periods like this to step back and determine what they strategically want to change, and we find an increasing number of enterprises opting out of managing their own infrastructure, and preferring to move to AWS to enjoy the agility, innovation, cost-efficiency, and security benefits. And most importantly for customers, AWS continues to deliver new capabilities rapidly (over 3,300 new features and services launched in 2022), and invest in long-term inventions that change what's possible.
儘管這些短期阻力減緩了我們的增長速度,但 AWS 的許多基本面仍令我們感到樂觀。我們的新客戶管道和活躍遷移都保持強勁。在這個動盪時期,許多公司選擇後退一步,重新評估其戰略方向。我們發現越來越多的企業放棄自主管理基礎設施,轉而選擇 AWS,以獲得更高的敏捷性、創新能力、成本效益和安全性。最重要的是,AWS 持續為客戶快速推出新功能(2022 年推出超過 3,300 項新功能和服務),並投資於能改變未來可能性的長期創新。
Chip development is a good example. In last year's letter, I mentioned the investment we were making in our general-purpose CPU processors named Graviton. Graviton2-based compute instances deliver up to 40% better price-performance than the comparable latest generation x86-based instances; and in 2022, we delivered our Graviton3 chips, providing 25% better performance than the Graviton2 processors. Further, as machine learning adoption has continued to accelerate, customers have yearned for lower-cost GPUs (the chips most commonly used for machine learning). AWS started investing years ago in these specialized chips for machine learning training and inference (inferences are the predictions or answers that a machine learning model provides). We delivered our first training chip in 2022 ("Trainium"); and for the most common machine learning models, Trainium-based instances are up to 140% faster than GPU-based instances at up to 70% lower cost. Most companies are still in the training stage, but as they develop models that graduate to large-scale production, they'll find that most of the cost is in inference because models are trained periodically whereas inferences are happening all the time as their associated application is being exercised. We launched our first inference chips ("Inferentia") in 2019, and they have saved companies like Amazon over a hundred million dollars in capital expense already. Our Inferentia2 chip, which just launched, offers up to four times higher throughput and ten times lower latency than our first Inferentia processor. With the enormous upcoming growth in machine learning, customers will be able to get a lot more done with AWS's training and inference chips at a significantly lower cost. We're not close to being done innovating here, and this long-term investment should prove fruitful for both customers and AWS. AWS is still in the early stages of its evolution, and has a chance for unusual growth in the next decade.
芯片開發就是一個絕佳例子。去年的信中,我提到了我們對名為 Graviton 的通用 CPU 處理器的投資。基於 Graviton2 的計算實例比同類最新一代 x86 實例提供高達 40% 的性價比提升;2022 年,我們推出的 Graviton3 芯片比 Graviton2 處理器性能再提升 25%。
隨著機器學習應用加速普及,客戶渴求更經濟的 GPU(機器學習最常用的芯片)。AWS 早在多年前就開始投資這些專用於機器學習訓練和推理的芯片(推理即機器學習模型提供的預測或答案)。2022 年,我們推出首款訓練芯片「Trainium」;對最常見的機器學習模型,Trainium 實例比 GPU 實例速度快 140%,成本低 70%。
大多數公司仍處於訓練階段,但隨著模型邁向大規模生產,他們會發現大部分成本來自推理。這是因為模型只需定期訓練,而推理則在應用運行時持續進行。我們於 2019 年推出首款推理芯片「Inferentia」,已為亞馬遜等公司節省逾億美元資本支出。最新推出的 Inferentia2 芯片較首代產品吞吐量提高四倍,延遲降低十倍。
隨著機器學習即將迎來爆發性增長,客戶將能以大幅降低的成本,透過 AWS 的訓練和推理芯片完成更多工作。我們在此領域的創新尚未止步,這項長期投資必將為客戶和 AWS 帶來豐碩成果。AWS 仍處於發展早期,未來十年有望實現非凡增長。
Similarly high potential, Amazon's Advertising business is uniquely effective for brands, which is part of why it continues to grow at a brisk clip. Akin to physical retailers' advertising businesses selling shelf space, end-caps, and placement in their circulars, our sponsored products and brands offerings have been an integral part of the Amazon shopping experience for more than a decade. However, unlike physical retailers, Amazon can tailor these sponsored products to be relevant to what customers are searching for given what we know about shopping behaviors and our very deep investment in machine learning algorithms. This leads to advertising that's more useful for customers; and as a result, performs better for brands. This is part of why our Advertising revenue has continued to grow rapidly (23% YoY in Q4 2022, 25% YoY overall for 2022 on a $31B revenue base), even as most large advertising-focused businesses' growth have slowed over the last several quarters.
同樣具有高潛力的是,Amazon的廣告業務對品牌商而言獨具效果,這也是它持續快速增長的主因之一。類似於實體零售商銷售貨架空間、端架和傳單版面的廣告業務,我們的贊助產品和品牌服務已超過十年,成為Amazon購物體驗中不可或缺的一部分。然而,Amazon與實體零售商不同之處在於,我們能夠根據對購物行為的深入了解和在機器學習算法上的大量投資,將這些贊助產品量身定制為與客戶搜索高度相關的內容。這不僅使廣告對客戶更有價值,也為品牌帶來更佳效果。正是這種優勢推動了我們廣告收入的持續快速增長(2022年第四季度同比增長23%,全年同比增長25%,基於310億美元的收入基礎)——即使在過去幾個季度中,大多數大型廣告業務的增長已經放緩。
We strive to be the best place for advertisers to build their brands. We have near and long-term opportunities that will help us achieve that mission. We're continuing to make large investments in machine learning to keep honing our advertising selection algorithms. For the past couple of years, we've invested in building comprehensive, flexible, and durable planning and measurement solutions, giving marketers greater insight into advertising effectiveness. An example is Amazon Marketing Cloud ("AMC"). AMC is a "clean room" (i.e. secure digital environment) in which advertisers can run custom audience and campaign analytics across a range of first and third-party inputs, in a privacy-safe manner, to generate advertising and business insights to inform their broader marketing and sales strategies. The Advertising and AWS teams have collaborated to enable companies to store their data in AWS, operate securely in AMC with Amazon and other third-party data sources, perform analytics in AWS, and have the option to activate advertising on Amazon or third-party publishers through the Amazon Demand-Side Platform. Customers really like this concerted capability. We also see future opportunity to thoughtfully integrate advertising into our video, live sports, audio, and grocery products. We'll continue to work hard to help brands uniquely engage with the right audience, and grow this part of our business.
我們致力成為廣告商建立品牌的首選平台。為實現這一使命,我們正把握近期和長期的機遇。我們持續在機器學習領域進行大規模投資,不斷優化廣告選擇算法。近年來,我們投資開發了全面、靈活且可持續的規劃和測量解決方案,為營銷人員提供更深入的廣告效果洞察。
Amazon Marketing Cloud(簡稱「AMC」)就是一個典型例子。AMC是一個「淨室」(即安全的數字環境),廣告商可在其中以保護隱私的方式,跨多種第一方和第三方數據源進行自定義受眾和活動分析。這些分析可生成廣告和業務洞察,為更廣泛的營銷和銷售策略提供依據。
我們的廣告團隊與AWS團隊通力合作,使客戶能夠將數據存儲在AWS中,在AMC中安全地與Amazon和其他第三方數據源協同運作,在AWS中執行分析,並可選擇通過Amazon Demand-Side Platform在Amazon或第三方平台上投放廣告。客戶對這種整合式功能反響熱烈。
展望未來,我們看到了將廣告巧妙融入視頻、直播體育、音頻和雜貨產品的機會。我們將繼續努力,幫助品牌與目標受眾建立獨特的互動,並推動這一業務領域的增長。
While it's tempting in turbulent times only to focus on your existing large businesses, to build a sustainable, long-lasting, growing company that helps customers across a large number of dimensions, you can't stop inventing and working on long-term customer experiences that can meaningfully impact customers and your company.
雖然在動盪時期只專注於現有的大型業務很誘人,但要建立一個可持續、長久、不斷成長的公司,幫助客戶在多個維度上獲得幫助,你就不能停止創新和致力於能夠對客戶和公司產生重大影響的長期客戶體驗。
When we look at new investment opportunities, we ask ourselves a few questions:
當我們審視新的投資機會時,會問自己以下幾個問題:
If we like the answers to those questions, then we'll invest. This process has led to some expansions that seem straightforward, and others that some folks might not have initially guessed.
若我們對這些問題的回答感到滿意,我們就會進行投資。這個決策過程不僅帶來了一些顯而易見的業務擴張,也促成了一些起初令人意想不到的發展方向。
The earliest example is when we chose to expand from just selling Books, to adding categories like Music, Video, Electronics, and Toys. Back then (1998-1999), it wasn't universally applauded, but in retrospect, it seems fairly obvious.
最早的例子是我們決定從單一的圖書銷售擴展到音樂、視頻、電子產品和玩具等多元類別。這一決策在當時(1998-1999年)並未受到普遍認可,然而,回顧過去,這一舉措的明智性已不言而喻。
The same could be said for our international Stores expansion. In 2022, our international consumer segment drove $118B of revenue. In our larger, established international consumer businesses, we're big enough to be impacted by the slowing macroeconomic conditions; however, the growth in 2019-2021 on a large base was remarkable—30% compound annual growth rate ("CAGR") in the UK, 26% in Germany, and 21% in Japan (excluding the impact of FX). Over the past several years, we've invested in new international geographies, including India, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, various European countries, the Middle East, and parts of Africa. These new countries take a certain amount of fixed investment to get started and to scale, but we like the trajectory they're on, and their growth patterns resemble what we've seen in North America and our established international geographies. Emerging countries sometimes lack some of the infrastructure and services that our business relies on (e.g. payment methods, transportation services, and internet/telecom infrastructure). To solve these challenges, we continue to work with various partners to deliver solutions for customers. Ultimately, we believe that this investment in serving a broader geographical footprint will allow us to help more customers across the world, as well as build a larger free cash flow-generating consumer business.
我們的國際商店擴張同樣印證了這一點。2022年,我們的國際消費者業務部門創造了1180億美元的收入。在規模較大、已成熟的國際消費者業務中,我們已大到足以受到宏觀經濟放緩的影響。然而,2019-2021年在龐大基數上的增長仍然令人矚目——英國的複合年增長率(「CAGR」)達30%,德國26%,日本21%(不計匯率影響)。
近年來,我們投資了多個新的國際市場,包括印度、巴西、墨西哥、澳大利亞、多個歐洲國家、中東和部分非洲地區。這些新市場需要一定的固定投資來啟動和擴大規模,但我們對它們的發展軌跡充滿信心,它們的增長模式與我們在北美和其他成熟國際市場所見相似。
新興國家有時缺乏我們業務所依賴的基礎設施和服務(如支付方式、運輸服務和互聯網/電信基礎設施)。為應對這些挑戰,我們持續與各類合作夥伴協作,為客戶提供解決方案。
最終,我們相信,這項擴大地理覆蓋範圍的投資將使我們能夠服務全球更多客戶,並建立一個更大規模、能夠產生自由現金流的消費者業務。
Beyond geographic expansion, we've been working to expand our customer offerings across some large, unique product retail market segments. Grocery is an $800B market segment in the US alone, with the average household shopping three to four times per week. Amazon has built a somewhat unusual, but significant grocery business over nearly 20 years. Similar to how other mass merchants entered the grocery space in the 1980s, we began by adding products typically found in supermarket aisles that don't require temperature control such as paper products, canned and boxed food, candy and snacks, pet care, health and personal care, and beauty. However, we offer more than three million items compared to a typical supermarket's 30K for the same categories. To date, we've also focused on larger pack sizes, given the current cost to serve online delivery. While we're pleased with the size and growth of our grocery business, we aspire to serve more of our customers' grocery needs than we do today. To do so, we need a broader physical store footprint given that most of the grocery shopping still happens in physical venues. Whole Foods Market pioneered the natural and organic specialty grocery store concept 40 years ago. Today, it's a large and growing business that continues to raise the bar for healthy and sustainable food. Over the past year, we've continued to invest in the business while also making changes to drive better profitability. Whole Foods is on an encouraging path, but to have a larger impact on physical grocery, we must find a mass grocery format that we believe is worth expanding broadly. Amazon Fresh is the brand we've been experimenting with for a few years, and we're working hard to identify and build the right mass grocery format for Amazon scale. Grocery is a big growth opportunity for Amazon.
除了地理擴張外,我們還致力於在一些大型、獨特的產品零售市場細分中擴大客戶服務範圍。以雜貨為例,僅美國就是一個價值8000億美元的市場,平均每個家庭每週購物3至4次。近20年來,Amazon建立了一個獨特而重要的雜貨業務。
我們借鑒了1980年代其他大型商家進入雜貨領域的方式,首先添加了超市常見的常溫產品,如紙製品、罐頭和盒裝食品、糖果零食、寵物用品、健康和個人護理以及美容產品。與典型超市同類別3萬種商品相比,我們提供超過300萬種選擇。考慮到當前的在線配送成本,我們還專注於提供更大包裝尺寸。
儘管我們對雜貨業務的規模和增長感到滿意,但我們希望能更好地滿足客戶需求。為此,我們需要擴大實體店網絡,因為大多數雜貨購物仍在實體店進行。
Whole Foods Market於40年前開創了自然和有機專業雜貨店的概念。如今,它已發展成為一個規模龐大且持續增長的業務,不斷提高健康和可持續食品的標準。過去一年,我們持續投資並進行改革以提高盈利能力。Whole Foods 發展勢頭良好,但要在實體雜貨領域產生更大影響,我們必須找到一種值得廣泛推廣的大眾雜貨模式。
Amazon Fresh是我們多年來一直在試驗的品牌,我們正努力確定並建立適合Amazon規模的大眾雜貨模式。毫無疑問,雜貨業務是Amazon的一個巨大增長機會。
Amazon Business is another example of an investment where our ecommerce and logistics capabilities position us well to pursue this large market segment. Amazon Business allows businesses, municipalities, and organizations to procure products like office supplies and other bulk items easily and at great savings. While some areas of the economy have struggled over the past few years, Amazon Business has thrived. Why? Because the team has translated what it means to deliver selection, value, and convenience into a business procurement setting, constantly listening to and learning from customers, and innovating on their behalf. Some people have never heard of Amazon Business, but, our business customers love it. Amazon Business launched in 2015 and today drives roughly $35B in annualized gross sales. More than six million active customers, including 96 of the global Fortune 100 companies, are enjoying Amazon Business' one-stop shopping, real-time analytics, and broad selection on hundreds of millions of business supplies. We believe that we've only scratched the surface of what's possible to date, and plan to keep building the features our business customers tell us they need and want.
Amazon Business是我們另一個重要投資案例,充分利用了我們在電子商務和物流方面的優勢,讓我們能夠有效地開拓這個龐大的市場細分。Amazon Business 為企業、市政機構和組織提供了一個平台,讓他們能以極具競爭力的價格輕鬆採購辦公用品和其他大宗商品。儘管近年來經濟的某些領域面臨挑戰,Amazon Business 卻逆勢增長。這是為什麼呢?因為我們的團隊成功地將選擇、價值和便利這些核心理念融入了商業採購環境,持續傾聽並學習客戶需求,不斷為他們創新。
雖然 Amazon Business 對某些人來說可能還很陌生,但我們的商業客戶卻對它讚不絕口。自2015年推出以來,Amazon Business 已發展成為一個年銷售額約350億美元的業務。目前,超過600萬活躍客戶——其中包括全球財富100強中的96家公司——正在享受我們提供的一站式購物體驗、實時分析功能,以及數億種商業用品的廣泛選擇。
我們深信,這僅僅是開始。我們計劃繼續開發和完善功能,以滿足商業客戶不斷變化的需求和期望。Amazon Business 的未來充滿無限可能,我們將繼續努力,為客戶創造更多價值。
While many brands and merchants successfully sell their products on Amazon's marketplace, there are also a large number of brands and sellers who have launched their own direct-to-consumer websites. One of the challenges for these merchants is driving conversion from views to purchases. We invented Buy with Prime to help with this challenge. Buy with Prime allows third-party brands and sellers to offer their products on their own websites to our large Amazon Prime membership, and offer those customers fast, free Prime shipping and seamless checkout with their Amazon account. Buy with Prime provides merchants several additional benefits, including Amazon handling the product storage, picking, packing, delivery, payment, and any returns, all through Amazon Pay and Fulfillment by Amazon. Buy with Prime has recently been made available to all US merchants; and so far, Buy with Prime has increased shopper conversion on third-party shopping sites by 25% on average. Merchants are excited about converting more sales and fulfilling these shipments more easily, Prime members love that they can use their Prime benefits on more destinations, and Buy with Prime allows us to improve the shopping experience across more of the web.
雖然許多品牌和商家在 Amazon 平台上成功銷售產品,但也有大量品牌和賣家推出了自己的直接面向消費者的網站。這些商家面臨的主要挑戰是如何提高瀏覽到購買的轉化率。為此,我們開發了 Buy with Prime。這項服務允許第三方品牌和賣家在自己的網站上為我們龐大的 Amazon Prime 會員群提供產品,並為這些客戶提供快速、免費的 Prime 配送和使用 Amazon 帳戶的無縫結帳體驗。Buy with Prime 為商家帶來諸多額外優勢,包括由 Amazon 負責產品存儲、揀選、包裝、配送、支付和退貨處理,這些都通過 Amazon Pay 和 Fulfillment by Amazon 完成。最近,Buy with Prime 已向所有美國商家開放。迄今為止,該服務平均將第三方購物網站的購物者轉化率提高了 25%。商家對於能更輕鬆地提高銷售額和完成訂單感到振奮,Prime 會員則樂於在更多平台使用他們的 Prime 權益,而 Buy with Prime 則使我們能夠改善整個網絡的購物體驗。
Expanding internationally, pursuing large retail market segments that are still nascent for Amazon, and using our unique assets to help merchants sell more effectively on their own websites are somewhat natural extensions for us. There are also a few investments we're making that are further from our core businesses, but where we see unique opportunity. In 2003, AWS would have been a classic example. In 2023, Amazon Healthcare and Kuiper are potential analogues.
對我們來說,擴展國際業務、追求對 Amazon 來說仍處於萌芽階段的大型零售市場細分,以及利用我們獨特的資產幫助商家在自己的網站上更有效地銷售,這些都是相當自然的擴展。我們還進行了一些與核心業務關聯較小但我們看到獨特機會的投資。2003 年的 AWS 就是一個經典例子。到了 2023 年,Amazon Healthcare 和 Kuiper 可能成為類似的案例。
Our initial efforts in Healthcare began with pharmacy, which felt less like a major departure from ecommerce. For years, Amazon customers had asked us when we'd offer them an online pharmacy as their frustrations mounted with current providers. Launched in 2020, Amazon Pharmacy is a full-service, online pharmacy that offers transparent pricing, easy refills, and savings for Prime members. The business is growing quickly, and continues to innovate. An example is Amazon Pharmacy's recent launch of RxPass, which for a $5 per month flat fee, enables Prime members to get as many of the eligible prescription medications as they need for dozens of common conditions, like high blood pressure, acid reflux, and anxiety. However, our customers have continued to express a strong desire for Amazon to provide a better alternative to the inefficient and unsatisfying broader healthcare experience. We decided to start with primary care as it's a prevalent first stop in the patient journey. We evaluated and studied the existing landscape extensively, including some early Amazon experiments like Amazon Care. During this process, we identified One Medical's patient-focused experience as an excellent foundation upon which to build our future business; and in July 2022, we announced our acquisition of One Medical. There are several elements that customers love about One Medical. It has a fantastic digital app that makes it easy for patients to discuss issues with a medical practitioner via chat or video conference. If a physical visit is required, One Medical has offices in cities across the US where patients can book same or next day appointments. One Medical has relationships with specialty physicians in each of its cities and works closely with local hospital systems to make seeing specialists easy, so One Medical members can quickly access these resources when needed. Going forward, we strongly believe that One Medical and Amazon will continue to innovate together to change what primary care will look like for customers.
我們在醫療保健領域的初步努力始於藥房,這與電子商務並沒有太大偏離。多年來,Amazon 客戶因對現有供應商日益不滿,一直詢問我們何時會提供線上藥房服務。2020 年推出的 Amazon Pharmacy 是一個全方位的線上藥房,為客戶提供透明定價、便捷續藥和 Prime 會員優惠。這項業務正快速增長並持續創新。例如,Amazon Pharmacy 最近推出的 RxPass,讓 Prime 會員每月只需 5 美元,就能獲得治療高血壓、胃酸倒流和焦慮等數十種常見疾病所需的所有符合條件的處方藥。
然而,我們的客戶強烈希望 Amazon 能提供更好的替代方案,以改善低效且不令人滿意的整體醫療保健體驗。我們決定從初級保健入手,因為這通常是病患就醫過程的第一站。我們廣泛評估和研究了現有格局,包括一些早期的 Amazon 實驗,如 Amazon Care。在此過程中,我們發現 One Medical 以患者為中心的體驗是建立我們未來業務的絕佳基礎,因此於 2022 年 7 月宣布收購 One Medical。
客戶喜愛 One Medical 的幾個特點:它擁有一個出色的數位應用程式,讓患者能輕鬆地通過聊天或視訊會議與醫療從業者討論問題;如需面診,One Medical 在美國各城市都設有診所,患者可預約當天或次日就診;One Medical 在各城市都與專科醫生建立了關係,並與當地醫院系統密切合作,方便患者就診專科醫生,使 One Medical 會員能在需要時快速獲得這些資源。
展望未來,我們堅信 One Medical 和 Amazon 將繼續攜手創新,重塑客戶眼中的初級保健模式。
Kuiper is another example of Amazon innovating for customers over the long term in an area where there's high customer need. Our vision for Kuiper is to create a low-Earth orbit satellite system to deliver high-quality broadband internet service to places around the world that don't currently have it. There are hundreds of millions of households and businesses who don't have reliable access to the internet. Imagine what they'll be able to do with reliable connectivity, from people taking online education courses, using financial services, starting their own businesses, doing their shopping, enjoying entertainment, to businesses and governments improving their coverage, efficiency, and operations. Kuiper will deliver not only accessibility, but affordability. Our teams have developed low-cost antennas (i.e. customer terminals) that will lower the barriers to access. We recently unveiled the new terminals that will communicate with the satellites passing overhead, and we expect to be able to produce our standard residential version for less than $400 each. They're small: 11 inches square, 1 inch thick, and weigh less than 5 pounds without their mounting bracket, but they deliver speeds up to 400 megabits per second. And they're powered by Amazon-designed baseband chips. We're preparing to launch two prototype satellites to test the entire end-to-end communications network this year, and plan to be in beta with commercial customers in 2024. The customer reaction to what we've shared thus far about Kuiper has been very positive, and we believe Kuiper represents a very large potential opportunity for Amazon. It also shares several similarities to AWS in that it's capital intensive at the start, but has a large prospective consumer, enterprise, and government customer base, significant revenue and operating profit potential, and relatively few companies with the technical and inventive aptitude, as well as the investment hypothesis to go after it.
Kuiper是Amazon長期為客戶創新的另一個絕佳範例,針對的是一個高度需求的領域。我們的願景是建立一個低地球軌道衛星系統,為全球目前缺乏高品質寬頻網路服務的地方提供連接。試想,全球數億家庭和企業終於獲得可靠的網路連接後,將能夠做什麼:從參加線上課程、使用金融服務、創業、購物、享受娛樂,到企業和政府改善覆蓋範圍、效率和運營,可能性無窮。
Kuiper不僅提供可及性,還確保價格親民。我們的團隊開發了低成本天線(即客戶終端),大幅降低使用門檻。最近展示的新終端將與軌道上的衛星通訊,我們預計標準住宅版本的生產成本將低於每個400美元。這些終端小巧精緻:11英寸見方,1英寸厚,不含安裝支架重量不到5磅,卻能提供高達400兆比特每秒的速度,由Amazon自行設計的基帶晶片驅動。
我們計劃今年發射兩顆原型衛星以測試整個端到端通訊網路,並於2024年開始與商業客戶進行beta測試。迄今為止,客戶對Kuiper的反應異常熱烈,我們深信Kuiper代表了Amazon的一個巨大潛在機會。它與AWS有幾個相似之處:初期需要大量資本投入,但擁有龐大的消費者、企業和政府客戶基礎,具有顯著的收入和營運利潤潛力。而且,能夠在技術、創新能力和投資策略上追求這樣的項目的公司寥寥無幾。
One final investment area that I'll mention, that's core to setting Amazon up to invent in every area of our business for many decades to come, and where we're investing heavily is Large Language Models ("LLMs")and Generative AI. Machine learning has been a technology with high promise for several decades, but it's only been the last five to ten years that it's started to be used more pervasively by companies. This shift was driven by several factors, including access to higher volumes of compute capacity at lower prices than was ever available. Amazon has been using machine learning extensively for 25 years, employing it in everything from personalized ecommerce recommendations, to fulfillment center pick paths, to drones for Prime Air, to Alexa, to the many machine learning services AWS offers (where AWS has the broadest machine learning functionality and customer base of any cloud provider). More recently, a newer form of machine learning, called Generative AI, has burst onto the scene and promises to significantly accelerate machine learning adoption. Generative AI is based on very Large Language Models (trained on up to hundreds of billions of parameters, and growing), across expansive datasets, and has radically general and broad recall and learning capabilities. We have been working on our own LLMs for a while now, believe it will transform and improve virtually every customer experience, and will continue to invest substantially in these models across all of our consumer, seller, brand, and creator experiences. Additionally, as we've done for years in AWS, we're democratizing this technology so companies of all sizes can leverage Generative AI. AWS is offering the most price-performant machine learning chips in Trainium and Inferentia so small and large companies can afford to train and run their LLMs in production. We enable companies to choose from various LLMs and build applications with all of the AWS security, privacy and other features that customers are accustomed to using. And, we're delivering applications like AWS's CodeWhisperer, which revolutionizes developer productivity by generating code suggestions in real time. I could write an entire letter on LLMs and Generative AI as I think they will be that transformative, but I'll leave that for a future letter. Let's just say that LLMs and Generative AI are going to be a big deal for customers, our shareholders, and Amazon.
我要提到的最後一個投資領域,是 Amazon 未來幾十年內在各個業務領域進行創新的核心——我們正大力投資的大型語言模型(「LLMs」)和生成式 AI。機器學習技術已有數十年的發展前景,但直到最近五到十年才開始被公司廣泛採用。這種轉變主要由幾個因素推動,包括以更低成本獲得更強大的計算能力。
Amazon 在過去 25 年中廣泛應用機器學習,從個性化電商推薦、倉儲中心揀貨路徑優化,到 Prime Air 無人機、Alexa,再到 AWS 提供的眾多機器學習服務(AWS 在雲端供應商中擁有最全面的機器學習功能和最廣泛的客戶群)。最近,一種名為生成式 AI 的新型機器學習技術迅速崛起,有望顯著加速機器學習的普及。生成式 AI 建立在超大規模語言模型之上(訓練參數高達數千億且持續增長),橫跨廣泛的數據集,具備極其通用和廣泛的記憶與學習能力。
我們已經開發自己的 LLMs 一段時間了,並堅信它將徹底改變和提升幾乎所有的客戶體驗。我們將持續在消費者、賣家、品牌和創作者的所有體驗中大量投資這些模型。此外,延續我們在 AWS 多年來的做法,我們正在將這項技術民主化,讓各種規模的公司都能利用生成式 AI。AWS 提供最具性價比的機器學習晶片 Trainium 和 Inferentia,使大小公司都能負擔得起在生產環境中訓練和運行 LLMs。我們讓公司能夠從各種 LLMs 中選擇並構建應用,同時享有客戶熟悉的所有 AWS 安全、隱私和其他功能。我們還推出了像 AWS CodeWhisperer 這樣的應用,通過實時生成代碼建議來革新開發人員的生產力。
LLMs 和生成式 AI 的變革性如此之大,我可以寫一整封信來討論它們,但我會把這留給未來的信。讓我們簡單地說,LLMs 和生成式 AI 對我們的客戶、股東和 Amazon 來說,將會是一件改變遊戲規則的大事。
So, in closing, I'm optimistic that we'll emerge from this challenging macroeconomic time in a stronger position than when we entered it. There are several reasons for it and I've mentioned many of them above. But, there are two relatively simple statistics that underline our immense future opportunity. While we have a consumer business that's $434B in 2022, the vast majority of total market segment share in global retail still resides in physical stores (roughly 80%). And, it's a similar story for Global IT spending, where we have AWS revenue of $80B in 2022, with about 90% of Global IT spending still on-premises and yet to migrate to the cloud. As these equations steadily flip—as we're already seeing happen—we believe our leading customer experiences, relentless invention, customer focus, and hard work will result in significant growth in the coming years. And, of course, this doesn't include the other businesses and experiences we're pursuing at Amazon, all of which are still in their early days.
總結來說,我對我們能從這個充滿挑戰的宏觀經濟時期中脫穎而出,並以更強勢的地位重新崛起感到樂觀。我已經在上文中提到了許多原因,但有兩個簡單的統計數據特別突顯了我們巨大的未來機遇。儘管我們在 2022 年的消費者業務達到 4,340 億美元,全球零售市場份額的絕大部分(約 80%)仍然存在於實體店。全球 IT 支出的情況也相似,我們 2022 年的 AWS 收入為 800 億美元,但約 90% 的全球 IT 支出仍在本地進行,尚未遷移到雲端。
隨著這些比例逐步翻轉——我們已經看到這種趨勢正在發生——我們深信,憑藉領先的客戶體驗、持續不懈的創新、以客戶為中心的專注和辛勤工作,我們將在未來幾年實現顯著增長。當然,這還不包括我們在 Amazon 正在開拓的其他業務和體驗,這些都還處於早期階段。
I strongly believe that our best days are in front of us, and I look forward to working with my teammates at Amazon to make it so.
我堅信我們最好的日子還在前面,我期待與 Amazon 的團隊一起努力實現這一目標。
Sincerely,
Andy Jassy
President and Chief Executive Officer
Amazon.com, Inc.
誠摯地,
Andy Jassy
總裁兼CEO
Amazon.com, Inc.