Mobile commerce drives online sales growth in China.
Powering e-commerce Image: sbfh0607 |
According to data from the China E-Commerce Research Centre, online sales surged 30.4% in the first half of 2015 to 7.63tn yuan ($1.2tn) despite an overall economic slowdown.
The sector is also driving employment with over 18 million people working directly or indirectly in the sector.
While B2C and C2C sales rose 48.7% year-on-year to 1.61tn yuan ($253bn B2B sales still dominated the market at 5.8tn yuan ($912bn).
Although cross-border e-commerce is slow, China will still account for around 40% of global e-commerce sales in 2015, according to a separate report from eMarketer.
Mobile commerce, or m-commerce, will make up some 50% of online retail this year, compared to 22% and 33% in the US and UK respectively. Close to 100% of internet users also have mobile access, suggesting a high saturation in the mobile sector.
Chinese consumers downloaded an extraordinary 185 billion apps in 2014, accounting for 59% of global downloads in 2015. There are now well over half a billion smart phone users in China.