Dangdang Unblocks Etao Product Search Engine, Ready to Play Nice
It’s time for soldiers to kiss flag-waving young women on the streets and for doves to be released into the cloud-parting skies. Or something. Because two of China’s biggest e-commerce rivals seem to have called a truce, with Dangdang (NYSE:DANG) unblocking and rescinding its opposition to Alibaba’s product search engine Etao.Last October, Dangdang and a number of other leading B2C e-tailers opted to block Etao from indexing its products, fearing that by cooperating with the service they’d be playing into the hands of Alibaba, which runs the market leader in ...
Tmall to Challenge 360Buy by Subsidizing Electronics Sales
Following in the wake of Suning's shot across the bow of online B2C retailers, Alibaba's Tmall is launching an offensive that looks to challenge relative newcomer 360Buy. Tmall will offer major savings in consumer electronics by subsidizing 200 million RMB ($31 million) in sales.Tmall's Tan Biao expects the move to succeed -- you're shocked, I'm sure -- and told Sina Tech that he expected Tmall's volume of business to nearly double from Q1 to Q2 of this year. He also spoke of the move as a strike against traditional ...
Alibaba.com Shareholders Urged to Vote ‘Yes’ as Privatization Plan Advances
Alibaba.com, the B2B e-commerce site that’s the only part of the Alibaba Group to have publicly listed, is a step closer today to going back to being privately-held. An Independent Board Committee (IBC) of Alibaba.com (HKG:1688), as well as an independent financial advisor (Somerley) appointed by the board, have both evaluated the privatization proposal that was put forward last February and decided that it is “fair and reasonable” as a deal for shareholders.The proposal is that the company will pay HK$13.50 in cash per share, which is a premium of ...
China’s Biggest B2C E-Commerce Site, Tmall, Finally Gets an iPhone App
China’s leading B2C e-commerce site, Tmall, now has a brand-new iPhone app, which launched earlier today. If the app’s arrival seems surprisingly late, it’s likely because the e-tailer used to be covered by the Taobao app, which was the overarching name for all of Alibaba’s online shopping efforts until quite recently. But since Tmall struck out as an independent company last summer, then got itself a Chinese name change and a new feline icon earlier this year, it’s now time for its standalone app as well.The new Tmall for iPhone ...
360Buy Has 40 Million Users, Processes 400,000 Orders Per Month
Although Alibaba (Taobao, Tmall, etc.) is still the 800 pound gorilla in the world of Chinese e-commerce, 360Buy has been building up some momentum. At a press conference earlier today, 360Buy CMO Lan Ye shared the company's latest (and most impressive) numbers.Specifically, he said the site now has over forty million registered users, and that over the past two months they've been processing around 400,000 orders per month. He also said sales income was increasing at a rate of about 200 percent per year. That sounds pretty impressive, but it's ...
Taobao Launches Pinterest Clone Wantu
Everybody in China seems to be getting into the Pinterest clone business these days, so perhaps it was only a matter of time. This morning, Taobao launched its own social photo-sharing platform. Unsurprisingly, it looks and acts a lot like Pinterest:The site, which you can find at wantu.taobao.com, is called Wantu, or roughly: "Mischievous Rabbit." I'm not sure what makes the rabbit so mischievous -- perhaps it's his apparent penchant for copying other people's websites? -- but the name does follow in what appears to now be the official Alibaba ...
China’s E-Commerce Giant Launches its Taobao Browser
China’s e-commerce king, Taobao, now has a PC web browser of its own that’s aimed at - surprise, surprise - web shoppers and providing security when making online payments. In addition, it boasts mouse gestures, certain forms of ad-blocking, and a “dual-core” rendering engine that uses either WebKit or Trident - as used by Internet Explorer (IE) - depending on the task at hand.Taobao Browser came out a few weeks ago, and today got bumped up to v1.0.14. Its focus on enabling shopping means that the parent company’s product search ...
Tmall Unveils New Logo
Yesterday, Alibaba's Tmall unveiled a new logo, pictured on the right. As you can see, it's a cat in the shape of the Chinese character 天 ("sky") and the english letter T. That's not as random as it sounds; although the name has remained "Tmall" in English, a couple months ago the Chinese name of the website was changed to (roughly) Sky Cat. (The name sometimes also means "lynx", but we're assuming that's not what they meant since the logo doesn't look much like one).Cats aside, the new logo is ...
Rumor: Railway Ministry Looking for Contractors Like Alibaba and Baidu to Help With Online Ticket Sales
After watching the unmitigated disaster that was China's Railway Ministry's attempts to run online ticket sales during Spring Festival this year, I must admit I was skeptical that it would do any better when it promised it would improve things next year. But if rumors currently circulating on the Chinese net are true, the Ministry may be turning to internet companies for help.Supposedly, the Ministry is soliciting bids from private contractors to help run 12306, its online ticket sales platform. Listed firms apparently include Alibaba's Alipay as well as offerings ...
Alipay To Invest $79 Million To Create ‘Square-like Payment Devices’
Update: We have included the Alipay COD device pictures below.We received news from Alipay about its plans to invest RMB500 million (US$79 million) to upgrade China’s cash-on-delivery (COD) payment infrastructure. That sounds like a hefty task but it becomes clearer after the details are explained a little.In short, Alipay is working on a portable Square-like payment device. Yes, those awesome little devices which allow you to pay on the spot right after you receive your goods. But it doesn’t look like Square. An Alipay representative told me that the the ...
Alibaba Targets Female Shoppers With Pinterest-Like Social Commerce Site
Alibaba’s product search engine, eTao, now has a Pinterest-like site of its own that’s designed to help with the shopping process. Called ‘Discover’ - at like.etao.com - it has just launched in beta, and has the usual array of images, options to ‘like’ and share, and all the other ephemera of a social pinboard site.But eTao Discover also has a buy button on every page (pictured below), indicating that this is putting the ‘commerce’ into social commerce. Focusing on women’s clothing and accessories, it’s clearly aimed at driving even ...
China’s Biggest Pinterest Clone Hints at Tie-Up With Alibaba’s eTao
Among the swarm of Pinterest clones in China in recent months, the largest independent/startup one is Mogujie with six million registered users. Its CEO and founder, Chen Qi, has hinted at a big development for his site in a recent tweet on his Weibo account. He says that Mogujie will tie-up with eTao, the product search engine run by e-commerce giant Alibaba, for what promises to be an interesting social commerce venture.Chen’s teaser (pictured below) says, in my rough translation:Excitedly, I can reveal a new product that’s ...
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