Amazon of course made big news in its Q1 earnings call, when its CFO announced the company was in the process of morphing its currrent free two-day shipping for Prime members to free one-day shipping.

The capability will be rolled out in phases, and will drive an investment of $800 million just in Q2 to support the change, Amazon said.

It turns out RBC Capital Markets had already looked at this issue in March, before the announcement, and found Amazon was already well-positioned in some respecrs to deliver in one day.

The chart below, from RBC and CNBC, shows the geographic areas in the US that RBC estimates would be reachable in one day, based on fulfillment center positioning, and comparing that to Amazon's one-day capabilities in 2014:

"The vast delivery network is the result of significant investments over the past four years, a period during which Amazon built out fulfillment centers across the country, nearly tripling its US. logistics infrastructure," CNBC says.

RBC also found that Amazon is already capable of offering same-day and next-day delivery to 72% of the total US population, including almost all of the households (95% or more) in 16 of the wealthiest and most populated states and Washington, D.C.

Interesting analysis for sure, but the it's missing thing: any notion of inventory positioning. While Amazon may be able to deliver in one day to these locations today,  that only works if the SKU a customer ordered is in that nearby FC.

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