U.S. retailers dominate list of top global online merchants

Nineteen of the world’s 30 top online retailers are based in the U.S., with Amazon.com ranking No. 1, according to German research firm yStats.com GmbH & Co.

No. 2 on the list is Otto Group, a German cataloger that now owns 123 companies and has been selling online since the mid-1990s. Among Otto Group’s holdings is U.S. home furnishings retailer Crate and Barrel, No. 55 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.

All 11 of the non-U.S. retailers on the list are European, with five based in the United Kingdom, three in Germany, two in France and one in the Netherlands.

Based in Hamburg, yStats compiles its reports largely from secondary sources, and draws on the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide for several of its estimates of U.S. retailers' sales. In some cases, yStats contacts companies directly for information, says founder and CEO Yücel Yelken.

Yelken says yStats ranked retailers based on 2007 web sales because 2008 data was not available for all of the companies. Here are the top 10 global online retailers, according to yStats, with their country of origin and 2008 and 2007 web sales in euros (1 euro equals 1.41 U.S. dollars):

• Amazon.com, U.S., 13,096, 10,842
• Otto Group, Germany, 5,500, 4,889
• Staples, U.S., 5,262, 4,093
• Office Depot, U.S., 3,280, 3,581
• Dell, U.S., 3,280, 3,069
• Arcandor, Germany, 3,500, 3,000
• Hewlett-Packard, U.S., N/A, 2,485
• Tesco, U.K., 2,393, 2,339
• OfficeMax, U.S., 2,119, 2,339
• Apple, U.S., 2,460, 1,973

While yStats does not provide a 2008 revenue figure for Hewlett-Packard, the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide estimates U.S. sales for the HP Home & Home Office Store at nearly US$1.5 billion in 2008.

Amazon.com is No. 1 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, Staples No. 2, Dell No. 3, Office Depot No. 4, Apple No. 5, OfficeMax No. 6 and H-P No. 16.