I mean I'm not in the shipping industry, but I'd guess it'd be a long while before Amazon becomes very focused/involved in the particulars of the container shipping industry, where Flexport is focused. Amazon has a lot of other stuff on their plate to tackle. If Amazon ever becomes such a large percentage of global trade that they can actually make use of a whole fleet of container ships then maybe.
But for now, just to put things in perspective, Amazon only a year ago started up a cargo plane operation with ~20 planes. Depending on the kind of plane, that's around 1000-1500 cubic meters, 400-500 metric tons for their whole fleet of cargo planes.
For comparison, a single cargo ship (not even the biggest ones) caries >50,000 cubic meters and >150,000 tons. So we're talking orders and orders of magnitude difference when you account for a whole fleet.
I'd wait to see whether or not amazon expands their air freight more after using it to capacity before guessing that they'd get into the container industry.
But again, outsider perspective, so I could be way off, would welcome some info from someone more knowledgeable.
>If Amazon ever becomes such a large percentage of global trade that they can actually make use of a whole fleet of container ships then maybe.
By the time Amazon becomes a large percentage of global trade, Alibaba will already be in double digits.
And remember who has more shipping data to run algos on. In addition, Alibaba already owns an own 3PL operation, and an "Order a container shipment in 1 minute" from 1688
Oh yea, I'm certainly not questioning whether it made sense for Amazon to buy up some planes, because they definitely ship enough volume (even just domestically) to experiment with that.
Though I would argue ships have advantage in both mass and volume, but are significantly lacking in latency.
In case I wasn't clear, it isn't just the latency, it is the number of loads that can be made in a given amount of time.
Just like a restaurant that is always full makes more money if their clients eat quickly and leave, freeing up space for more customers to do the same.
From my own supply chain experience, by volume air freight is only slightly more expensive than sea, but by mass the difference is an order of magnitude.
I don't know of any part of Amazon that lets you just ship a container full of copper bars to your loading dock. They are more competing with other bulk shippers than what Amazon would be trying to provide.
What's Flexport's advantage in that case ?