Yahoo-Kimo Taiwan (
"We are expecting to generate over NT$10 billion in online auction sales this year, while last year the figure was only NT$2 billion," said Charlene Hung (
The company announced yesterday that its June merchandise sales are up 12.5 percent over May, hitting a record-high of NT$900 million.
Hung also boasted that it has attracted more than 1 million users and has over 2 million items on its site.
"Yahoo-Kimo Auction is successful because we have the critical mass that can basically [allow users to] find whatever they need," she said.
One market researcher did admit local acceptance of online shopping is on the rise.
As of the first quarter this year, some 15.2 percent of the nation's 8 million Internet users said they shopped online, up 3 percent over the same period last year, according to AC Nielsen's NetWatch report released in April.
"We saw a significant growth since the beginning of the year," said Desmond Wang (
"[We] expect to see even stronger growth [in this area] in the second and third quarters," he said.
Hung attributed the developments to the impact of the SARS epidemic.
"Many users stayed at home to avoid SARS between April and last month, so we attracted many new users during that period," she said.
Head-to-head competition between Yahoo-Kimo and eBay Taiwan also stimulated awareness.
"A series of TV commercials from these two companies has successfully caught the public's attention," Wang said.
Early last month, eBay Taiwan launched its first TV commercial boasting that users can find whatever they want via eBay's online marketplace where 68.8 million users worldwide exchange items.
"It is a very successful campaign ? we saw a 10-fold user number increase after the TV commercial ran for two weeks," said Angel Cheng (
She refused to disclose detailed figures.
Not to be outdone, Yahoo-Kimo yesterday introduced a TV commercial, stressing "Yahoo-Kimo has many more items listed than eBay Taiwan."
"Currently Yahoo-Kimo posts more than 2 million items [in its auction site], nearly 12-times more than eBay Taiwan's 172,000 items," Yahoo-Kimo's Hung said.
This isn't the first time the two US-based ventures have squared off overseas. EBay entered Japan in 2000 at a time when Yahoo-Japan was dominating that country's e-commerce market. After a two-year battle, eBay in March last year decided to pull out of Japan.
Last week eBay said it was still searching for ways to re-establish itself in Japan -- a market that's important in its plans to increase its business internationally, according to eBay chief executive Meg Whitman.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last