NEW YORK—When Amazon starts a new business, it usually causes a wave of concern among competitors, who have been known to scrap business plans and revise their strategies. To get a closer look at where Amazon is heading, eMarketer recently examined 19 of Amazon’s divisions to “help parse how the company fuels its flywheel to keep driving the virtuous cycle.”

Among the findings: Amazon joined the $1 trillion market cap club in early 2020 and has the first-mover advantage for several businesses, most notably as a commerce platform and a marketing powerhouse. It also created a loyalty program that other businesses now try to emulate.

The research firm now forecasts that Amazon’s share of U.S. e-commerce sales in 2021 will be 41.4 percent, which leads the No. 2 player Walmart with its 7.2 percent market share.

According to CNBC, Amazon’s revenues per minute were about $837,000  in the first quarter of 2021, while Apple was second  with $691,000 per minute.

The global pandemic accelerated several digital trends where Amazon excels, including ecommerce, delivery services, cloud computing, digital payments, home security, streaming entertainment, and online advertising.

As a result, eMarketer said it now forecasts that well over half (63.4 percent) of all U.S. households will use Amazon Prime this year. For perspective, eMarketer noted that in 2016, just 35.6 percent of U.S. households subscribed to the Prime service.

The firm has forecast that the number of U.S. Amazon Prime households will reach 81.4 million in 2021, up 4.8 percent year over year.

To read eMarketer’s full report on Amazon, visit the firm’s site here.