In an unexpected move, Tencent opens e-store on Alibaba’s Tmall

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em? That might be the case for Tencent when it comes to ecommerce. Despite a long-standing rivalry with Alibaba, the company has set up shop on Tmall, Alibaba’s online department store.

As Techweb reports, the store contains a selection of Tencent or QQ-branded hardware, including a glucometer, a wifi dongle, a robot that can “chat” and play music, a bluetooth speaker set for kids, and a pairable projector and remote-control pen (all of those links contain video demos). The latter three items fit under the Qrobot brand, which Tencent developed in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Tencent and Alibaba have a tense relationship. While they each grew big in different industries (Alibaba in ecommerce, Tencent in gaming and social), they currently fight to dominate the amorphous future of mobile commerce, online-to-offline payments, and entertainment. Often, Alibaba and Tencent will prevent their users from double dipping – for example, Alibaba cracked down on Sina Weibo users who promoted their WeChat accounts, and Tencent prevented Alipay users from gifting money to each other on WeChat.

This sort of petty boxing-out has been going on for years, which makes Tencent’s arrival on Tmall all the more unusual. As Techweb astutely points out, Tencent has increasingly moved its web-based ecommerce operations into the hands of others. After purchasing a 15 percent stake in Alibaba rival JD, Tencent gave its partner control of three of its ecommerce properties. Still, Tencent has ambitions for ecommerce on WeChat, as evidenced by its aggressive promotions for its third-party payment service.

Tencent’s arrival on Tmall comes just days after Amazon set up a shop of its own there. The US-based ecommerce firm first entered China in 2004 when it acquired Joyo.com (which was founded by Lei Jun, creator of Xiaomi) and for years operated as a standalone website. Many interpreted its arrival on Tmall as a sign of its sluggish growth in China.

(Source: Techweb)