China to become Amazon's second-largest market

China could be the second-largest market for Amazon.com Inc after the North America in the future, a company executive said.

However, achieving that goal will be a "marathon" as it will take time for the company to further expand in China, said Wang Hanhua, president of the e-commerce giant's Amazon China, on Sept 12.

The US now accounts for more than half of Amazon's total revenues, Wang said, without elaborating on the performance of the Chinese market.

Part of the company's effort to expand in China is attracting more vendors to open stores on the Amazon platform in the following years to diversify the product portfolio, Wang said.

This was the approach taken by Alibaba Group's Tmall.com, which generates revenues from charging commissions from online vendors rather than selling products on its own. Beijing Jingdong Century Trading Co, known as Jingdong Mall, has also adopted this approach besides selling on its own.

In some categories,  third-party sellers' transaction volumes have surpassed Amazon's own, such as in sports products, Wang said, without elaborating.

The company, which entered the Chinese market by acquiring local competitor Joyo.com in 2004, lags behind rivals such as Tmall.com and Jingdong Mall.

Tmall.com took 41.5 percent of the market among all business-to-consumer websites in the second quarter, followed by Jingdong Mall's 15.5 percent, according to domestic researcher Analysys International. Amazon.com ranked a distant fifth at 2.3 percent.

On the introduction of Amazon.com's global businesses, including e-book and cloud computing services, to China, Wang said Amazon China is "considering" it, but the company doesn't have a timetable.

A number of Chinese competitors have released their own e-readers, including US-listed E-Commerce China Dangdang Inc.