Amazon Business Comes to Britain; 3 New Data Centres Opened in Sweden

Amazon.com on Tuesday launched its business marketplace in Britain, selling products like office supplies, power tools, cleaning materials and lab equipment targeting an online sector worth $120.44 billion a year.

Amazon started its business marketplace in the United States in April 2015, achieving $1 billion of sales in its first year, before launching in Germany four months ago.

It said Amazon Business would serve enterprises ranging in size from sole traders to multinationals, as well as universities, hospitals and charities.

The business-to-business online market in Britain was worth GBP 96.5 billion in 2015, according to Office for National statistics data.

Separately, Amazon on Tuesday said it would build three data centres across Sweden, the first in the Nordic region, bringing the number of its "cloud" storage facilities in Europe to ten.

The company said in a statement that Amazon Web Services (AWS) would establish the centres in three towns, Katrineholm, Vasteras and Eskilstuna, located west of Stockholm.

"For over a decade, we've had a large number of Nordic customers building their businesses on AWS," the head of AWS, Andy Jassy, said in the statement.

Jassy said the Nordic region's most successful startups including game developers, King - the creator of Candy Crush Saga - and Mojang, "depend on AWS to run their businesses, enabling them to be more agile and responsive to their customers."

In Europe, Amazon already has three data centres in Ireland, two in Great Britain and two in Germany, according to its website.

The group announced in September that it planned to open three more in France this year.

Amazon is the world's leading provider of cloud services, adding more sophisticated services such as database management, analysis or design assistance to mobile applications.

Written with agency inputs