China's online market has rocketed by 25%, comprising almost 50% of retail sales
Alibaba HQ Image: Alibaba Group |
According to a report from China's Ministry of Commerce, e-commerce markets generated 13tn yuan ($2tn) in transactions in 2014, with leading companies like JD and Alibaba taking the lion's share of the market.
Total retail figures stood at 26.2tn yuan ($4.2tn meaning almost half of all retail transactions in China are taking place online.
Foreign rivals like Amazon and Rakuten, a Japanese e-commerce concern, are making headway but are still lagging behind domestic companies. Recently, Thai conglomerate Charoen Pokphand and Japanese trader C. Itoh partnered to consolidate their offerings and focus on upmarket Japanese goods.
Growth was fuelled by mobile commerce, or m-commerce, as a result of an increase in the range of commercial apps and the ubuiqity of smartphones. One survey, by digital agency We Are Social, found China had 565m mobile internet users - equivalent to 41% of the population. Some 27% of Chinese adults said they had bought something using their mobile phone in the previous month. PwC found that one in seven people in China shop online every day and 60% every week.
In a bid to grab more mobile share, Alibaba, which broke records with its $25bn IPO in New York last year, has invested $590m in little-known domestic smartphone maker Meizu. The move is also in line with the e-commerce giant's strategy to compete with online rival Tencent for China's rapidly growing mobile consumer market.