Alibaba Sells $9.3 Billion in 24-Hour Period

Posted by on Nov 13th, 2014

Alibaba passed its one-day sales record reaching $9.3 billion this year, as analysts expected only $8.17 billion. Last year’s sales were $5.8 billion in a 24-hour period. Single’s Day on November 11 is a shopping event that first started in 2009. In this event, prices are brought down for shoppers unleashing an online buying frenzy.

Investors would like to see share prices of the company go up because Alibaba is now part of the NYSE. Having a successful mobile commerce strategy is necessary for China, because Internet users are changing to platforms that are mobile.

An Internet research company has stated that China has the largest Internet user population with around 527 million. Since the mobile industry is growing rapidly Alibaba cannot compete with those who have a more mobile friendly interface.

Many critics think that Alibaba does not have a strong foundation in their mobile platform. Alibaba’s strategy is not as bad as believed by the market and saying that Alibaba has low mobile income is not very accurate. Alibaba dominates through its Tmall and Taobao apps, the commerce sector in China.

Mobile shopping this year made up 26.8% of all online shopping payments. iResearch states that Alibaba makes up 86.1% of all mobile retail done in China, having an income of $71 billion for the quarter that ended on June 30.

Tmall and Taobao are the most used shopping apps with 14 million and 132 million respectively in all of China. Alibaba’s biggest competitor is Tencent who invested $210 million with Jingdong. It is seen as a big competitor because it is the creator of China’s biggest mobile chat application.

After Jingdong made its investment, it wanted to recover financially. To succeed in recuperating its investment, Jingdong is going to focus on all of its chat members and try to convert them to clients and shoppers.

Throughout the whole year, Tencent has been trying to convert their mobile users into shoppers and have not been that successful. Jingdong has a small mobile commerce market share of only 5.3% and Taobao has one 84.2%.

It is very evident who is “winning” in this mobile platform competition but time and money can change it all.