Tag: china mobile commerce

Koubei has won the interest of two of China’s largest companies

Chinese e-commerce mammoth Alibaba and Ant Financial, another prominent company in China, have each invested $483 million into Koubei, a joint venture in the mobile commerce space. Koubei is designed to provide consumers with the ability to order and pay for products from local services operating in China. Doing so can be accomplished over a smartphone, and the initial launch of this service will focus on food and beverage delivery.

Koubei aims to give consumers and merchants a new way to interact with one another

Those using Koubei will be able to use the Alipay Wallet to make mobile purchases. They may also be able to use the Taobao mobile application, which is controlled by Alibaba. Though the initial launch of the service will focus on the food and beverage segment, Koubei will expand to include local merchants, providing consumers with a way to purchase products from stores in their area. Koubkei may also provide merchants with promising marketing opportunities, giving them a platform from which to launch promotion campaigns and reach new mobile consumers.

Mobile commerce platform will serve as a boost for Alibaba and Ant Financial

Koubei intends to build a local services ecosystem that will be a benefit to merchants and consumers alike. This is something that Alibaba has shown significant interest in, as the company has its own food ordering and delivery business in the Tao Diandian brand. Ant Financial also has an interest in the mobile commerce ventures of Koubei, as the company has been involved in the mobile space for some time, managing Alibaba’s Alipay platform and making it possible for a wide range of consumers to purchase products from their mobile devices.

Mobile commerce continues to thrives in China

China has become one of the most robust mobile markets in the world. Smartphone penetration is high, and consumers have shown a great deal of interest in being able to shop for and purchase products with their mobile devices through a variety of platforms. Koubei will be one of the latest mobile commerce platforms to launch in China, and the support it has received from Alibaba and Ant Financial will give it a competitive edge.

This massive market is still seeing smartphone based shopping growth at an exponential rate.

The m-commerce market in China has seen a tremendous growth throughout the first quarter of this year, according to the figures that have been released in a report by a company called iResearch, which is based in Beijing.

The report indicated that in Q1 of this year, there was an increase in mobile shopping by 168 percent.

This brought the Chinese m-commerce market up to an estimated $59 billion. The growth rate in that market was tremendously greater than the overall mobile shopping increase seen globally, which was a very healthy 45 percent. The iResearch figures were based on measurements of the gross merchandise volumes (GMV). The prediction that was made based on the data is that there will have been a continued rapid growth throughout Q2 2015.

M-commerce purchases made up almost half of all online shopping that occurred in China during Q1.

The amount of online shopping that occurred over mobile devices more than doubled from what it had been during the same quarter last year, when it had been a much lower 22 percent. The data from last year’s fourth quarter showed that the GMV was peaking at $61.25 billion, after which, the figures dropped by 4.7 percent in the following quarter.

It was pointed out by iResearch that online shoppers in China have been increasingly embracing researching products and making purchases over their smartphones and tablets, and that growth of traffic over PCs has started slowing down.

The largest contributor to mobile GMV was Taobao Wireless (which is owned by Alibaba), but even that share fell from having been 87.4 percent in the first quarter of 2014 to be 84.5 percent in the same quarter, this year. The reason is that competitors are starting to gain some meaningful share. These include companies such as Vip and JD.com. Vip is now up to 2.8 percent while JD.com has increased to 5.2 percent (after it was at 3.3 percent, last year)

According to iResearch, this m-commerce competition has become increasingly intense, as each of the major participants battle to be able to grab hold of a greater share through new efforts and initiatives.