Taiwanese companies are advised to seek e-commerce opportunities overseas as the domestic market saturates, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA, 外貿協會) said last week.
“We would like to encourage more Taiwanese products and brands to enter the Southeast Asian and European markets.” TAITRA president and chief executive Walter Yeh (葉明水) said at a seminar on global e-commerce in Taipei on Tuesday.
Southeast Asia is home to some of the fastest-growing e-commerce markets, Yeh said.
Citing a report published by Google and Temasek Holdings Pte late last year, he said that the e-commerce market in Southeast Asia reached US$23 billion last year, up from US$5 billion in 2015, and is forecast to reach US$102 billion by 2025.
E-commerce showed a compound annual growth rate of 62 percent from 2015 to last year, with a predicted annual compound rate of 34 percent through 2025, the report showed.
Chilindo.com, an e-commerce platform based in Thailand, is one of the fastest-growing players in the industry, with 250,000 unique visitors and 12,000 customers per day, Yeh said.
“European e-commerce markets are more mature, providing a sturdier platform for e-commerce giants” he said.
According to an article published last year by Ecommerce Europe, e-commerce in the region was worth 534 billion euros (US$600.6 billion at the current exchange rate) in 2017 and was estimated at 602 billion euros last year.
Rakuten-France, which is part of Japan-based Rakuten Inc, reported revenue of up to US$8.4 billion in 2017. It now boasts 20 million members and more than 900,000 sales units per month.
Although western Europe still dominates in the region, eastern European nations are slowly catching up, with the biggest Romanian e-commerce platform, eMag.ro, recently starting services in neighboring countries, TAITRA said.
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