Apple and Amazon Have a Problem: People Don’t Want to Buy Stuff Anymore

The failure of the Fire Phone has been widely cited as the reason for Amazon's disastrous quarter, but a darker cloud has settled over the world's biggest online retailer. The core of Amazon's business-its original reason for being: selling books and other media-has grown wobbly. The problem: many people no longer want to buy stuff. They'd rather rent.

Amazon is not alone. This long-predicted shift in consumer priorities-from ownership to access-also seems to be taking a bite out of Apple, another business that depends on convincing people to buy things.