The Chinese market share of US e-commerce giant eBay plunged to
a record low last year as local rival Taobao.com gained further
ground, according to an industry report.
China IntelliConsulting Corp, founded by Internet industry
analyst Lu Bowang, said yesterday that eBay's share in the Chinese
consumer-to-consumer e-commerce market in 2006 was 15.4
percent.
That was in sharp contrast to its 29.1-percent market share in
2005, according to another survey conducted by Lu a year ago. This
year's survey was done in the first three months and involved 4,000
online traders in five cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou,
Chengdu and Wuhan.
Local rival Taobao, a subsidiary of Chinese e-commerce firm
Alibaba, partly owned by Yahoo!, rose from 67.3 percent to 82
percent in the period.
The situation is a reversal of that three years ago when the US
giant held an overwhelming majority of market share in China.
Paipai.com, the online trading arm of the largest Chinese
instant messaging firm Tencent, was third with just 2.7 percent of
the market share.
"Even I didn't expect the market shares of eBay and Paipai to be
so low," said Lu, who has been researching Chinese dotcoms since
2001.
Chinese joint venture Tom Eachnet, which was formed in December
and is expected to run eBay's trading business, declined to
comment, but said the new trading platform will start operation in
the middle of 2007 and will launch localized and richer
services.
And 24 percent of sellers in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou
said in the survey that they planned to open new online stores on
Taobao in the next six months, while only 8 percent chose eBay
China and 10 percent Paipai.
Up to 26 percent of sellers said they would close their shops on
eBay China's website, compared to 7 percent on Taobao and 12
percent on Paipai.
(China Daily April 17, 2007)