PChome Online Inc (網路家庭), the nation’s leading online retailer, yesterday announced a collaboration with online streaming platform LiveMe in a bid to boost sales during the upcoming Double 11 e-commerce shopping event on Nov. 1.
The company said it would promote products through 25 live streamers on LiveMe, which boasts 2 million active users in Taiwan and 30 million visits per month.
About 31.3 percent of Taiwanese Internet users watch online streamers, and of those, 14.3 percent have purchased products recommended by streamers, a study by the Market Intelligence and Consulting Institute (產業情報研究所) showed.
While the company used to mainly target male customers, as it focuses on consumer electronics, it has expanded its selection of non-consumer electronics products over the past few months in an attempt to attract female shoppers, PChome said.
Female customers accounted for more than 60 percent of overall purchases on the shopping platform last month, it said.
PChome last week posted record revenue of NT$3.02 billion (US$98.63 million) for last month, up 11.44 percent year-on-year thanks to booming sales of Apple Inc’s iPhone 11 series.
The new iPhones brought in hundreds of millions in sales within the first 30 minutes of their launch on the shopping platform, PChome said, adding that pre-orders for Sony Corp’s Xperia 5 and Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp’s (歐珀) Reno 2 also boosted sales last month.
The online retailer also attributed its sales growth to high consumption of food products, which increased by a double-digit percentage annually thanks to the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Cumulative revenue in the first nine months totaled NT$27.48 billion, up 13.3 percent annually, it said.
Rival Momo.com Inc (富邦媒體) reported a 26.12 percent increase in revenue to NT$4.06 billion last month, buoyed by sales of the new Apple devices and Double 9 shopping day promotions, while sales of consumer electronics and home appliances surged 41 percent year-on-year.
The company said it would continue to promote its selection of fresh produce following a collaboration last month with Mamabear Taiwan (熊媽媽買菜網) to provide about 2,300 products.
Cumulative revenue in the first nine months totaled NT$35.92 billion, up 21.26 percent year-on-year, it said.
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],”
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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