Eyeing Taiwan's e-commerce potential, California-based online market place eBay Inc bought local e-commerce venture NeoCom Technology Co (力傳資訊) yesterday for US$9.5 million in cash.
"We're excited about the tremendous e-commerce growth potential in Taiwan, with its rapidly increasing Internet and broadband penetration," said Stephanie Tilenius, Vice President, eBay International.
Taiwan is the third largest e-commerce market in Asia, and the ninth in the world, with more than 6.5 million people online, she said.
"Since the online-auction market is still in its initial stage in Taiwan, the sector has a lot of room to grow," Tilenius said.
Taiwan's e-commerce market will enjoy a 65 percent year-on-year growth between this year and 2005, and sales of the sector will hit US$14 billion in 2005, she said.
Based on the agreement signed on Feb. 9 and announced yesterday, eBay will acquire a 100 percent stake of NeoCom for US$9.5 million in cash.
NeoCom, entered the e-commerce sector in 1998, and currently operates two shopping Web sites -- ubid.com.tw (買賣王) and bid.com.tw (拍賣王). With NT$400 million in sales last year, NeoCom is now capitalized at NT$104 million, Kung said.
EBay's Taiwan Web site won't be immediately accessible.
"We will use the current brands [ubid.com.tw and bid.com.tw] for a while, as we slowly introduce eBay to local users," Tilenius said.
In the long-term, the eBay brand will be used as the main brand for all services, he said.
When all migration is done, Taiwan eBay users will be able to trade products globally.
"In addition to regional eBay sites, consumers who are interested in auctioning goods overseas can connect to the global trading platform on our main site [ebay.com]," said Jeff Noles, senior manager of eBay's Asia Pacific Operations.
All of NeoCom's 53 staff members will be retained and its CEO will leave in two months.
"I personally prefer to be a entrepreneur, starting a company from scratch," said Kein Lin (林啟東), CEO at NeoCom. "For the short term, I will stay here to help these two firms converge. After that I plan to work for another company."
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