Alibaba breaks last year’s Singles Day record in half the time (UPDATED)

UPDATE: As of 9 pm local time, Alibaba was at RMB 80 billion (US$12.5 billion) in total sales. Original story follows:

Alibaba’s strong sales day continues. At 11:50 am local time, just before the halfway point in the 24-hour day of discounts, Alibaba announced that its sales have passed RMB 57.1 billion (US$8.9 billion). By noon, the company says it broke RMB 57.6 billion (more than US$9 billion).

That’s a major milestone because RMB 57.1 billion is the record Alibaba set last year for the full day of sales. Now, not even at the halfway point in this year’s holiday, the company has already surpassed it. Sort of. Thanks to a devaluation in the yuan, Alibaba hadn’t quite broken last years sales record in US dollars yet when the clock struck noon, but it has already blown past the RMB figure. And by the time you’re reading this it almost certainly will have broken the USD record, too.

Perhaps not surprisingly given its recent financial results – the company just posted its strongest mobile quarter ever – a huge percentage of this year’s Singles Day sales have been mobile, too. As of noon, Alibaba pegs it at 71.5 percent, meaning that most people are doing their Singles Day shopping from a mobile device.

If the company can continue this rate of orders, it will finish the day with around US$18 billion in sales: double 2014’s record. But since the first hour of sales tends to be pretty front-loaded by people who’ve had items in their carts for ages waiting for discounts to kick in when the clock strikes midnight, it’s likely the pace will slow. Still, at this rate I’ll be surprised if Alibaba finishes the day with less than US$15 billion in sales.

Do you think Alibaba can double its previous Singles Day record?