Amazon Drops As Walmart’s Prime Rival Gears Up for a July Start

By Christiana Sciaudone
- Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)shares dropped Tuesday as the e-commerce giant braces for Walmart’s rival Prime service to start operations this month.
Walmart (NYSE:WMT) is up 4% to $123.65, trading close to the record $132.33 that it hit in April. Amazon closed at a record $3,057.04 Monday, up from $1,898 at the start of the year. Amazon was down 0.3% in midday trading on Tuesday.
Walmart+ will cost $98 a year and include same-day grocery delivery, fuel discounts and other benefits, Vox reported, citing Recode. Amazon Prime, created in 2005, charges an annual fee of $119.
The membership program was to have begun earlier this year but was delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Amazon is the biggest e-commerce retailer with a 38.7% share of the U.S. market, compared to Walmart, in second place with 5.3%, according to eMarketer. The Statista website reports that Amazon Prime has 112 million members in the U.S.
Prime includes entertainment like video and music streaming, and Walmart plans to add video capacity at some point to its membership program.
On July 1, Walmart announced a virtual summer camp and drive-in movie theaters in its parking lots.