XPO Logistics as a shipping partner for that reason. As it increasingly moves delivery operations in-house, Amazon will need to streamline its processes to get packages out the door.
Amazon has opened its shipping network to third parties. The company has begun to slowly open its shipping capacity to third parties via a service aptlyAmazon Shipping. To attract customers, Amazon has undercut UPS and FedEx on price by eliminating surcharges, such as the ones for residential home deliveries.
If Amazon can step up its delivery speeds, its services will become more appetizing to merchants that value fast shipping over cheap shipping.Amazon could be preparing to start selling or licensing its warehouse robots to third-party retailers and logistics firms, and adding Canvas robots would be a boon to those efforts. In the past, Amazon has built up new technologies for its own internal purposes and then eventually opened them up to third parties in the form of a new product or service.
Notably, the company built up a vast network of data centers to store information for its e-commerce business, which it eventually opened up to third parties via Amazon Web Services — today's leading public cloud platform in the US. The firm appears to be taking a similar approach to its physical warehouse and delivery network, which is just now being opened to third parties via Amazon Shipping. It could also do the same with its warehouse robotics, perfecting the technology internally before it offers it to other companies via sales or licensing agreements. If that's indeed Amazon's plan, it would spell trouble for other warehouse robotics vendors, the lion's share of which are1.