USPS Statistics: USPS Lost 14.4 Million USD Every Day In Oct-Dec 2012

USPS Statistics can surprise you many times. For example, not-so-great numbers in Q4 2012 - the holiday quarter, which is generally very good for the postal service. But the $1.3 billion losses are actually good compared to the huge $3.3 billion loss made in the corresponding quarter last year (Source)

How do we digest this stat? Let us take a technology example and see how we can modify our example to fit this situation. When new technology comes in, the old moves away. We have been tracking quite a few of those recently - PC shipments are down, physical books vs ebooks, cord cutting statistics and more.

But what happens when the service provided by the incumbent is a basic one (communication and package delivery)? Well, the incumbent needs to adapt very fast, or risk its existence, since the market size would be huge and many players will attack different pieces (FedEx, Free Email). Maybe, USPS was a little slow to adapt.

USPS could have taken many paths if it had been more nimble when e-commerce became mainstream. But then that was a huge space - delivery for e-cpmmerce - where the parameters on which you compete, heavily favored the new players who were far more agile and had fewer rules to comply with.