US auction site eBay announced a partnership yesterday with China Post and the US Postal Service in a new bid to re-establish itself in China, where the market is dominated by homegrown rival Taobao.com (淘寶網).
Under the plan, eBay hopes to woo Chinese merchants by developing shipping programs that make it easier for them to sell to US consumers, eBay officials said at a signing ceremony in Shanghai.
“The collaboration will make the most of the advantages of the three while helping expand profits,” Jeff Liao (廖光宇), eBay’s Greater China chief executive and head of Asia-Pacific cross-border trade, told reporters.
The partnership centers on an express delivery service to the US that will be run by China Postal Express and Logistics Corp (中國郵政速遞物流), part of China Post, and which will include online tracking systems, eBay said.
Liao said China’s e-commerce market was growing very quickly and was worth more than 4 trillion yuan (US$586 billion) last year.
He did not, however, say what eBay’s share of that market was, saying only that its Chinese transaction volumes grew “between 50 and 100 percent in 2009 and so far this year” and provided no specific figures.
The US auction site largely withdrew from China years ago after being overtaken by Taobao, part of China’s largest e-commerce firm, the Alibaba Group (阿里巴巴), which also operates business-to-business marketplace Alibaba.com.
The US firm shut down its Chinese consumer Web site in late 2006 and folded its China operations into Eachnet, a joint venture run by Hong Kong’s Tom Online Group, after Taobao won the lion’s share of the Chinese market.
Unlike eBay, Taobao charges no commission to list items for sale and the site’s revenue comes from advertising.
Starting as a consumer-to-consumer auction Web site, Taobao has grown into an online retailer that also features a growing number online shops run by big brands such as US computer maker Dell.
However, eBay is fighting to make a comeback in China, a market with more than 400 million Web users, by refocusing on export-oriented Chinese merchants who are keen to reach overseas buyers through international Web sites.
The firm’s current Chinese operations include eBay.cn, a Chinese platform targeting Chinese merchants — mostly small and medium-sized enterprises — by offering online training courses on international trade and listing tips.
In related news, eBay Inc asked the Paris appeals court to overturn a 40 million euro award to Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA (LVMH), the world’s largest luxury-goods maker, for not doing enough to stop the sale of counterfeits.
The Paris commercial court erred in ruling that eBay is a party to the sales that occur on its Web sites and, as such, has a greater obligation to block fakes than it would as a simple host site, Thomas Rouhette, a lawyer for eBay, said yesterday.
Today’s hearings are part of an ongoing dispute between eBay and French brand owners over online sales of their products. While the June 30, 2008, decisions agreed with LVMH arguments that eBay is an online auction broker, eBay has had more success recently in defending its business before French courts.
L’Oreal was ordered into mediation with eBay after a Paris court found the Web site made a “good faith” effort to stop fakes, and two days ago a judge ruled against a French furniture auction group that claimed eBay should be regulated as an auctioneer.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
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