Amazon is every online retailer's forbidding nightmare. Last year, it dominated 44 percent of the US eCommerce market and about 4 percent of all domestic retail sales. One Click Retail, an eCommerce analysis provider, explains its dominance with the fact that millennials, Amazon's core demographic, are getting older and starting to spend more. Moreover, advanced marketing capabilities for sellers, developments in Alexa, and pioneering in applications of the hottest technologies make it impossibly hard for smaller competitors to actually… well, compete. Amazon is not only a simple and familiar platform selling everything you can think of -- it's also one of the most innovative players on the market.

Smart homes, smart TVs, smart speakers, tablets, and more: you can get them all cheaper today, at Amazon's now-iconic Prime Day. Interestingly however, 15 of the top 16 products Amazon is pushing for the company's invented shopping holiday ... are from Amazon. A Toshiba TV with Alexa built in. It's pretty clear why Amazon is doing this. People who buy Amazon smart speakers like the Echo tend to buy 29% more from Amazon, according to a massive recent study.

This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter. When readers choose to buy Wirecutter's independently chosen editorial picks, Wirecutter and Engadget may earn affiliate commissions. Read Wirecutter's continuously updated list of Prime Day deals here. This is just slightly above the lowest price we've seen on this TV, though only by a couple of dollars. The TCL Roku TV (32-inch) is the top pick in our guide to the best 32-Inch TV.

Amazon workers across Europe are leaving their jobs in the middle of Prime Day. The event – this year held from 16-17 July – has been promoted by Amazon and quickly become an important part of the company's year. The site offers a range of deals and sales, and the offers have made the event bigger than Black Friday. But this year workers across Europe will take part in a strike to demand better work conditions. Workers in Germany, Spain and Poland have all committed to leave their jobs over the period.

Amazon Prime Day 2018 is here, with the 36 hour extravaganza of online deals expected to be the biggest shopping event in the retail giant's history. But consumer group Which? has warned that not all of the offers for TVs, laptops, cameras and other electronics represent the value they claim to. On Monday 16 July, discounts on a range of goods will appear on Amazon's website, however some of the items may actually be cheaper outside the promotion period. Last year, Amazon Prime Day became the retailers biggest ever event, with more purchases than Black Friday and Cyber Monday. At its peak, Amazon customers reportedly ordered 398 items per second.

Amazon may be facing new competition from Microsoft on its cashierless, automated store technology, according to a new report from Reuters out this morning. The report claims Microsoft is in the process of developing its own systems for tracking what people place in their shopping carts, but doesn't offer the details of how Microsoft's technology operates, or how it may differ from others on the market. Presumably, it would be similar to existing systems, like Amazon's. The Amazon Go convenience stores utilize a complex network of sensors on shelves, cameras, and A.I. to track what people pick up and place in their bag. Other startups are working on their own machine vision-powered checkout systems, as well, like Standard Cognition, AiFi, and AVA Retail, for example.

Amazon's Prime Day is July 16. Chinese tech IPOs are the talk of the town this week following Xiaomi's listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. In spite of its less-than-ideal debut, analysts expect a flood of Chinese tech firms--including Jack Ma-backed Ant Financial and online food delivery service Meituan-Dianping--to go public this year. A month ago, another Chinese tech company with grand ambitions had already made the jump: Ecovacs Robotics, whose line of robot vacuum cleaners dominate its native Chinese market and on Amazon.com. Headquarted in Suzhou, Ecovacs raised 803 million yuan ($121 million) when it listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange on May 28, making its founder, Qian Dongqi, a billionaire.

With a record 7,000 store closings and 662 bankruptcy filings last year, and 3,800 closings (and counting) so far in 2018, the fate of retail continues to look uncertain. Take a look at Amazon to see how ecommerce has changed the retail landscape as we know it, leaving no industry undisrupted. With just a click of a mouse, customers can purchase whatever they want, whenever they want it -- and have it shipped directly to their door. Related: Here Are 6 Weird Ways You're Being Tracked in the Real World While ecommerce offers unprecedented convenience, this is not the end of the road for brick-and-mortar. Customers still value in-store experiences.

Amazon Prime Day is almost upon us and, inevitably, there are plenty of deals available on Amazon's excellent range of smart home devices with Alexa built in, especially the Echo Show which has dropped in price by $100 from $229 to $129. You can read all about the best Amazon Prime Day deals in Gordon Kelly's excellent guides here and here - and there are more to come. But what if it's Google's virtual assistant who floats your boat? Well, there are plenty of discounts on Google smart home gadgets - here are some of the best. The deals highlighted within this post were independently selected by the contributor and do not contain affiliate links.

Imagine a world where smart pantries sense when you are running out of your favourite food and order more of it, without you lifting a finger. Where intelligent robots roam your supermarket, ever at your service. Where dynamic food pricing changes minute-to-minute depending on the weather outside, or what the store down the road is offering. Amazon workers'refuse' to build tech for US immigration It may sound like a seismic shift in our food retail world, but these technological frontiers are real and the food sector is gearing up in a big way. What is less certain is what impact such changes will have on our health.