Mobile e-commerce meeting held in SW China

Updated: 2012-08-23 14:39

By Li Yu and Peng Chao in Chengdu (chinadaily.com.cn)

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The second Mobile E-Commerce Annual Meeting was held in the Chengdu Shangri-La Hotel on Aug 17 in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province. It is the first high-level annual meeting that focuses on mobile e-commerce in the nation.

Corporate executives, experts, government officials, and venture capitalists from around the country shared insights on the development of mobile e-commerce in China.

China's number of mobile Internet users reached 338 million in 2011 and is predicted to grow at a rate of 148.3 percent in 2012. That growth demonstrates tremendous market potential for mobile e-commerce.

"The mobile e-commerce scale of Taobao reached 11.8 billion yuan ($1.86 billion) in 2011. We expect the number to reach 50 billion yuan this year, making up 8 percent of the company's total," said Zi You, wireless business unit director of Taobao.

According to Zi, Taobao's first quarter transactions in mobile e-commerce increased 563 percent from a year earlier. The second quarter's growth rate was over 600 percent.

Wu Sheng, senior vice president of 360buy, another Chinese e-commerce giant, said 4 percent of their orders are placed through mobile clients.

However, rather than the proportion of orders, what Wu really cares about is how to meet the new requirements of mobile Internet users and win their favor.

"Mobile e-commerce is not an extension of PC e-commerce," said Wu. "It has completely separate system logic, which is never a matter of simply modifying the website."