Amazon Faces Powerful Competition

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Dec 17, 8:15AM EST

Quick Read

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) faces the first real competitor it may have ever had.
Temu is a “super discount” e-commerce site with a massive number of items for sale.

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Amazon Faces Powerful Competition — © Povozniuk / iStock via Getty Images

So far this year, the top downloaded app for Apple’s iOS is Temu’s. The Chinese company may be the first real competitor Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction) has and may have had at any time.

CNBC had this to say about Temu’s success:

Temu, the popular e-commerce app owned by China’s PDD Holdings, topped Apple’s list of the most downloaded free apps on its U.S. iOS store for the second year running, highlighting the massive success that Chinese apps are enjoying in the world’s largest consumer market.

TikTok is just behind it on the Apple download list. China’s ByteDance owns it. TikTok is in a fight to stay in the United States. After Congress voted to ban it, ByteDance is working through the U.S. court system to see if the decision can be reversed.

Temu is a “super discount” e-commerce site. A huge percentage of the items on the site are available for under $30. Some are as low as $2. Its massive number of items makes it a real competitor to Amazon.

Temu’s position could disappear as quickly as it appeared. Lawmakers are worried about its sales to millions of Americans, and for the same reasons they were concerned about TikTok. Temu may be a way for the Chinese to steal data about U.S. consumers. Also, the Biden administration has considered tariffs on the items Temu sells. Those tariffs could be much higher under a Trump administration. The new administration has proposed tariffs as high as 100% on Chinese goods. This could push Temu out of the U.S. market entirely.

Temu represents a problem for Amazon. The government may make that go away.

Amazon Stock (AMZN) Price Prediction and Forecast 2025-2030

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.