Two of the most dominant and visible technology giants, Amazon and Alibaba are currently skyrocketing their core businesses in fulfilling the demand from the customers worldwide.
With many similarities, the two e-commerce giants are going to increasingly butt heads in international markets.
Seasia putting them side by side comprising their history, profiles and progressing developments for our readers' attention. Keen to know? Here are the top 10 fun facts about them.
AMAZON
1. Amazon is a Fortune 500 e-commerce company based in Seattle, Wash. It has the distinction of being one of the first large companies to sell goods over the Internet. In 1994, Jeff Bezos founded Amazon, which launched the following year.
2. Considered a pioneer in online retailing, Amazon expanded during the late 1990s to offer the "Earth's Biggest Selection" of books, CDs, videos, DVDs, electronics, toys, tools, home furnishings and housewares, apparel, and kitchen gadgets. Through third-party agreements, Amazon also sells products from well-known retailers including Toysrus.com Inc, Target Corporation, Circuit City Stores Inc, the Borders Group, Waterstones, Expedia Inc, Hotwire, National Leisure Group Inc, and Virgin Wines.
3. In just four months of operation, Amazon.com became a very popular site on the Web, making high marks on several Internet rankings.
4. After less than two years of operation, Amazon became a public company in May 1997 with an initial public offering (IPO) of three million shares of common stock. With the proceeds from the IPO, Bezos went to work on improving the already productive website and on bettering the company's distribution capabilities.
5. According to Snap Agency’s post on 7 Reasons Why Amazon Is So Successful, Amazon wasn’t the first online company, but it is one of the most innovative. Although Amazon’s success started with one meagre product category – books, it didn’t stay that way. The introduction of Kindle didn’t beat other e-readers to market, but Amazon’s became the most popular. Others like Amazon Locker (a secure service for New Yorkers, Londoners and Seattleites) and Amazon Flow app (snap pictures of the product and have them automatically added to an Amazon shopping list) makes Amazon great at keeping the connection stays with what consumers want.
6. According to the Temkin Experience Rating respondents, Amazon ranks well above other retailers in service and customer satisfaction. In fact, the company is tied for first with PetSmart for retail top honors, and fourth overall out of 293 for companies in 20 different industries.
7. Starting off as an online bookstore, Amazon now offers everything from soup to nuts. Much of Amazon’s success hinges on the fact that they’re not afraid to sell anything and everything.
8. Amazon’s market capitalisation stock is up to 30 per cent in 2017.
9. Amazon launched its delivery service Amazon Prime, which also offers music and video streaming, in China. Then there’s India, where Amazon competes fiercely with Alibaba-backed Paytm and Snapdeal, and another major player, Flipkart.
10. Bezos started Amazon at a time when the success of the new was uncertain. He was a successful VP at an investment firm but he dumped that role to start his own company. That lack of fear is what drove him to consistently claw his way to the top of the internet. Bezos told Time Magazine, this is called ‘regret minimization framework’.
ALIBABA
1. Alibaba is China’s - and by some measures, the world’s - biggest online commerce company. Its three main sites: Taobao, Tmall and Alibaba.com have hundreds of millions of users, and host millions of merchants and businesses. Alibaba handles more business than any other e-commerce company.
2. Alibaba is the most popular destination for online shopping, in the world's fastest growing e-commerce market. Transactions on its online sites totaled $248 billion last year, more than those of eBay and Amazon.com combined.
3. In terms of market capitalization, Alibaba became one of the most valuable tech companies in the world after raising $25 billion from its U.S. IPO. It is also one of the most valuable Chinese public companies, ranking among some of the country’s state-owned enterprises.
4. After the IPO (According to WSJ, Alibaba’s IPO is the largest in the world), Jack Ma became China’s richest man with a net worth of $25 billion, according to the Hurun Rich List. Ma owns a 7.8% stake in Alibaba and a 46% stake in the Alipay electronic payment affiliate.
5. Alibaba Group beats U.S. online retailer Amazon in the last twelve months. On Wall Street that is. Alibaba shares have gained 75.18% in the past twelve months compared to 26.20% of Amazon.
6. China's 600 million-plus Internet users are migrating to smartphones, setting off a scramble among the country's Internet giants. Alibaba's toughest rival is Tencent, which runs the WeChat mobile messaging application, with 355 million users. The companies are spending billions of dollars to invest in businesses that can help them compete.
7. Alibaba’s business model has been helped by several factors. Like location -- China. With 560 million Internet users spending 20 hours online per week, China is by far the largest Internet market in the world - twice the size of the U.S. market.
8. The newest frontier for Alibaba is financial services. We can use Alibaba's Alipay payments app to buy theater tickets and pay for taxis. You can also use it to invest in a money-market fund. That fund, called Yu'e Bao, has already collected $87 billion in assets. China's banks and regulators are starting to get alarmed.
9. Along with an existing data science research lab in California, Alibaba has opened new data centers in Europe, the U.S., the Middle East, Australia, Japan, India and Indonesia since 2016, in a bid to develop a presence as a provider of Cloud infrastructure services.
10. While Amazon is the standout global leader with a significant lead of £23.5 billion ($31.7 billion) in revenue growth, Chinese e-commerce giants Alibaba and JD.com outperformed Amazon in terms of percentage growth. JD.com was ranked number two in the global list with £8.0bn ($10.8bn) in revenue growth, however, it reported 41% growth, while Alibaba ranked 10th with £2.9bn (3.9bn) and 33% growth.
To summarise, the 'battle' presence of Amazon and Alibaba in the Southeast Asian nations are as per stated in the following details:
Source : Various sources including Forbes, Snap Agency, Wall Street Journal
