Alibaba sold $25bn worth of products on Singles Day 2017

"Alibaba has set another Single’s Day record after the e-commerce giant sold over $25 billion of product on the Chinese biggest online shopping date.
The full number comes in at 163.8 billion RMB, that’s roughly $25.3 billion, in GMV — that’s “gross merchandise volume” which is used to measure a dollar value for all sales on a platform. In Alibaba’s case, that predominantly means its Taobao marketplace and Tmall brand store although it does offer sales via its international services and it ships worldwide. All told, Alibaba handled 1.48 Billion transactions during the 24-hour period.
That represents an impressive 39 percent increase on last year’s sales total of RMB 120.7 billion ($17.79 billion), and it comes nicely on the heels of another blockbuster quarter in which Alibaba’s revenue surged by 61 percent thanks to its core business in China.
For comparison, Alibaba’s Single’s Day haul puts America’s largest shopping days in the corner. Retailers pulled in a record $3 billion on Black Friday and then $3.45 billion on Cyber Monday, both of which were records."
Source:  Techcrunch, 12th November 2017
Plus - 90% on mobile, up from 82% in 2016 and 69% in 2015

WeChat users send 38bn messages per day

"The chatty users of WeChat have just set a new record, sending 38 billion messages per day. That’s 25 percent more than last year.
[WhatsApp has 55bn per day]
Tencent, maker of WeChat, also revealed a few more stats today in its 2017 WeChat Data Report:
6.1 billion voice messages sent each day
205 million video and voice calls daily
50 million “seniors” – age 55-70 – are active users
3.5 million active “official accounts,” used by brands, media outlets, bloggers, and celebrities
797 million users actively browse through content from official accounts"

Source:  Tech in Asia, 9th November 2017

More in WeChat's 2017 Data Report

Xiaomi is the leading shipper of wearable devices

"The burst of the wearable bubble may have been overstated — on a global scale, at least. The category has been struggling here in the U.S., but internationally, it’s still seeing growth. Wearables are up eight-percent year-over-year, according to new numbers from Canalys — not exactly exponential, but at least things are trending in the right direction.
It’ll come as no surprise to anyone who’s been following the space with any regularity that Xiaomi is leading the way here. Last week Strategy Analytics noted that the Chinese company had taken charge of global shipments for the first time ever, following Fitbit’s middling financial report, and that assessment is reflected in these numbers.
Canalys’s numbers (which are a bit lower than SA’s) put Xiaomi in first place at 3.5 million shipments, just edging Fitbit’s 3.3 million. What’s more notable than the photo finish however, is Fitbit’s on-going struggles, which find the company dropping a full 34-percent year over year.  It’s an almost complete reversal of last year’s 36-percent year over year growth. Apple’s number also dropped in the report, with company’s smartwatch moving to third place at 2.7 million shipments.
Price has been the primary factors driving Xiaomi’s growth in recent years. The company sells trackers for as low as $15 here in the States — something Fitbit and Apple can’t come close to competing with. Fitbit’s lowest priced tacker, the clip-on Zip, retails for $60, and Apple essentially only sells a single product in the category."

Source:  TechCrunch, 10th August 2017

WeChat users sent 46 billion 'Red Envelopes' over Lunar New Year 2017

"Users of WeChat sent around 46 billion electronic red packets - digital versions of traditional envelopes stuffed with cash - via the Chinese mobile social platform over the Lunar New Year period, the official Xinhua new agency reported on Saturday.
China has a long tradition of giving red packets during the Lunar New Year, which fell on Jan. 28 this year.
Internet giants such as Alibaba Group Holding have promoted the use of virtual red packets, also known as "hongbaos", to grow business in the country's booming mobile payment market.
The number of digital red packets sent via WeChat, owned by Alibaba rival Tencent Holdings Ltd, rose 43 percent in the Jan. 27 and Feb. 1 period compared with a year earlier, according to Xinhua.
People in the provinces of Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong and Hebei led the red packets mania, Xinhua said. South Korea saw the most spending using WeChat Pay by Chinese travelers outside of mainland China, a Tencent spokesman told Reuters by email."

Source:  Reuters, 6th February 2017

Alibaba sites now have nearly 500m monthly active users

"Jack Ma’s online shopping empire now has 493 million users who access its China marketplaces every month on mobile devices, up from 393 million at the end of 2015, said Alibaba today in its latest earnings report.
The Taobao and Tmall marketplaces now have 443 million annual active buyers, rising strongly from 407 million 12 months ago. Alibaba makes the equivalent of US$35 in revenue from each shopper.
The new figures come amidst a strong performance for Alibaba in the quarter from October to December 2016 in which it pulled in US$2.5 billion net income from total revenue – up 54 percent in the past year – of US$7.7 billion. The ecommerce behemoth beat analyst expectations with plenty of legroom."

Source:  Tech in Asia, 24th January 2017

WeChat has 768m daily users; 50% use if for more than 90 minutes a day

Source:  Blog post from WeChat, 29th December 2016

Chinese brands account for more than half of smartphone sales in India

"Chinese mobile phone brands are booming in India, for the first time ever making up more than half – 51 percent – of new devices in the world’s second largest smartphone market.
Meanwhile, Indian brands dropped below 20 percent market share of shipments in November, according to Counterpoint Research, plummeting from 40 percent in early 2016.
Local brands have been facing increasingly stiff competition from Chinese brands that are affordable.
Counterpoint research analyst Karn Chauhan says most Chinese brands are in the US$75-200 price segment. As per market share data for the September quarter, Xiaomi has pushed out local players and now dominates this segment, along with Samsung. Those budget phones have seen a growth of over 45 percent in the past year.
The biggest gainers were China’s Vivo and Gionee, making mid-range – US$250-450 – phones, a segment that soared by over 150 percent."

Source:  Tech in Asia, 4th January 2017

14,500 Western brands have stores on Alibaba's Tmall

"The demand for overseas goods continues to drive cross-border e-commerce in China and, as a result, further growth for Tmall Global.
The B2C shopping site, which provides Chinese consumers with a direct sales channel to overseas retailers, saw the total number of international brands on the platform skyrocket 169 percent to 14,500 in 2016 from 5,400 last year. The number of product categories soared 85 percent to 3,700 from 2,000 over the same period."

Source:  Alizila, 13th January 2017

Singles Day 2016 generated $17.8bn for Alibaba sites

"That’s another blockbuster in the books. The 2016 11.11 Global Shopping Festival just ended. Final GMV tally: RMB 120.7 billion ($17.8 billion). Not that anyone was counting. Alizila will publish highlights of the sale in an upcoming wrap-up story, so stay tuned."

Source:  Alizila, 10th November 2016
Plus - $5bn spent in the first hour
Plus - Infographic
Plus - 100,000 cars were sold

Alibaba has 423m annual active buyers

"Alibaba is shaping and guiding Chinese consumer behavior and trends. We are also helping consumers enjoy greater convenience and a wider range of options in the ongoing consumption upgrade. We are popular among millennials, who view us as an inseparable part of their lives. More than 75% of our users are 35 years old or younger.
During fiscal year 2016, our China retail marketplaces reached a historical milestone when annual gross merchandise value transaction surpassed RMB 3 trillion, making Alibaba Group the largest retail ecosystem in the world. Our annual active buyers continued to grow, reaching 423 million as of March 31, 2016. Our extraordinary year-over-year growth in mobile transactions, which reached 73% for the quarter ended March 31, 2016, showcased the success of our transformation into mobile-first. Through the acquisition of Youku Tudou and brisk growth in Alitrip and Koubei, we have expanded our offerings beyond physical goods to include digital content and local services, which we believe will be the next wave of growth."
Source:  Letter to shareholders from Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang. 13th October 2016

"Over the last two years, the Alibaba team has produced outstanding results. In fiscal year 2016, we continued to build out the world’s largest retail ecosystem. Gross merchandise volume transacted on our China retail platforms surpassed an unprecedented RMB 3 trillion. In the fiscal year prior to our IPO, mobile revenue accounted for a single-digit percentage of total revenue from our China retail marketplaces; in our most recent quarter, mobile contributed more than 75% of total revenue. Our mobile monetization rate now exceeds that of the desktop, making Alibaba Group the largest mobile commerce company in the world. We have more than 430 million annual active buyers, which means one out of every three individuals in China has made a purchase on our retail marketplaces. Additionally, our cloud computing business, digital media and entertainment businesses, and the strategic bets we have made on innovative, emerging technologies are demonstrating strong growth that we believe will be sustainable for years to come."

Source:  Letter to shareholders from Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma. 13th October 2016

Digital in APAC in 2016

Digital in APAC 2016 from We Are Social Singapore

China now delivers the highest iOS gaming revenue

Source:  Data from AppAnnie, reported by Games Industry Biz, 19th July 2016

Over 400m people are using mobile ad blocking browsers

"We explored the numbers of app downloads from over 100 Google and Apple app stores across the globe in partnership with Priori Data, and drew data from StatCounter’s network of over 3 million Web sites.
Here are the key findings of our research:
At least 419 million people (22% of the world’s 1.9 billion smartphone users) are blocking ads on the mobile web.
Both mobile web and in-app ads can now be blocked.
As of March 2016 an estimated 408 million people are actively using mobile adblocking browsers (i.e., a mobile browser that blocks ads by default).
As of March 2016 there are 159 million users of mobile adblocking browsers in China, 122 million in India, and 38 million in Indonesia.
As of March 2016 in Europe and North America, there were 14 million monthly active users of mobile adblocking browsers.
A further 4.9 million content blocking and in-app adblocking apps were downloaded from the app stores in Europe and North America since September 2014.
20% of the world’s smartphone users are using mobile adblocking browsers, which are mobile browsers that block ads by default. This is an order of magnitude greater than many had believed."

Source:  Data from PageFair, in INMA, 20th June 2016

Note - Page Fair sell services that combat ad blocking, so while I'm not disputing these numbers, it's in their interests to say that ad blocking is on the rise

Smartphone ownership around the world

Source:  Pew Research Centre, 22nd February 2016
(So many stats in the full report!)

An average of 12,000 new companies were registered each day in China in 2015

"2015 was a big year for startups in China. Everyone knows that. VC money was coming fast and easy – so easy that VCs were literally trying to convince people with jobs at China’s top tech companies to quit and do startups. And until the cracks started showing with the summer stock market crash, China’s economy was growing like a weed, too. It was a good time to found a startup, especially a tech startup. So just how startup crazy did China go?
According to state media, an average of 12,000 new companies were registered each day in China last year. Of course, not all of those were new tech startups, but the tech and internet sectors were among the hottest in a year that saw more than 4 million new companies hit the books in China."

Source:  Tech in Asia, 26th February 2016

Huawei sold 108m smartphones in 2015

"Chinese mobile phone giant Huawei disclosed on Wednesday that it shipped 108 million smartphones in 2015. That number is up 44 percent year-on-year, the company said, primarily due to strong sales in China and Europe.
Huawei has had a banner 2015 despite broader trends that saw global smartphone growth slowing over the course of the year. It still has a ways to go before catching Apple, which sold well over 200 million iPhones this year. But it has overtaken domestic competitor Xiaomi, which won the Chinese market in 2014 but apparently had such a disappointing 2015 that the company stopped sharing its sales numbers."

Source:  Tech In Asia, 6th January 2016
Update - Xaoimi only sold 70m

Didi Kuaidi completed 1.43bn rides in 2015

"Chinese ridesharing and taxi app Didi Kuaidi announced a pretty startling statistic today: the company completed 1.43 billion rides in 2015. That includes 200 million rides completed in December alone. Didi says that its user base now exceeds 250 million, making it “the world’s largest mobile-based transportation platform.”
What about Uber, you might say? Well, Uber just completed its one billionth ride ever. So Uber did a billion trips between 2010 and now. Didi Kuaidi did nearly 1.5 billion in a single year.
Granted, it’s not an entirely fair comparison, as Didi’s 2015 number includes taxi rides booked through the app and bookings of all of its other services, some of which Uber doesn’t offer. But even in private-car ridesharing, data suggests Didi has 83 percent of the Chinese market, giving it a crushing lead over Uber. And since China is now the world’s biggest ridesharing market, maybe it’s no surprise that Didi is posting domestic stats that seem to outstrip Uber’s global stats."

Source;  Tech In Asia, 11th January 2016

Alibaba set 9 Guinness world Records on Singles Day 2015

"How big can Alibaba’s annual Single’s Day shopping fest get? Guinness World Records big. This year the Chinese e-commerce giant set nine new records, to be exact, for facilitating the online sale of everything from mobile handsets and TVs to nuts, milk and honey."
Inc most handsets sold, most nuts, sold, most cars sold...

Source:  Alizila, 27th December 2015

WeChat makes an average of $7 a year from each of its users

"The major players in Asia — WeChat, LINE, and KakaoTalk — have already begun driving revenue by launching apps and services on top of their messaging platforms. Almost everything a smartphone user would do inside a native app can now be done inside a messaging app: gaming, ordering taxis, sending and receiving money, listening to music, watching TV, buying goods online, and so on.
Average revenue per user is very high for messengers that offer these platform layers: $7.00 for WeChat, $4.24 for KakaoTalk, and $3.16 for LINE. The main drivers of revenue are games and, for KakaoTalk, e-commerce. By comparison, WhatsApp makes $0.06 per user, and this money comes exclusively from subscriber fees. The upside of introducing platform layers is quantified, and now that Facebook Messenger has launched a nascent app store and virtual assistant ‘M’ inside its service, the messaging landscape seems to have found its revenue roadmap."

Source:  Stephanie Newman on Medium, 23rd November 2015

Digital, Social & Mobile in Southeast Asia 2015

Digital, Social & Mobile in Southeast Asia in 2015 from We Are Social Singapore