Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon Quits China Market

pandaily.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 316 posts

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#241

Post by sk5t »

contingencies wrote: post #26
ConfusedDog wrote: post #12

As a person have actually used TaoBao, JD, and Amazon.cn, I can tell Amazon.cn was far behind them on both execution and product variety. I only have a vague impression of China's rules imposed on business, if they did, for sure Amazon was screwed so badly it didn't move a single inch over the past few years. Literally done nothing at all to compete. I'm not surprised they gave up.

Never used z.cn but saw a few neighbours ordering from them in Shenzhen. Probably recent tech books in English I guess. I did try AWS in China and it was absolutely shocking . Clearly they never prioritized China and the inevitable happened. I run a business in China, it's not easy but it's interesting.

AWS in China is, like, doing the best job that the government in China allows them to do. It's not very good. Almost everything that might provide an inconvenient security barrier to inspection is absent.

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#242

Post by wsc981 »

product50 wrote: post #32

Amazon has literally won everywhere else in the world. But in China they were slow at execution? Does this read right to you? Or maybe there is a regulatory angle which no one is talking about because...China.

I don't believe Amazon is really well known in Thailand either. I live in Thailand and from what I've seen people tend to buy stuff online at shops like Alibaba, Central [0], Lazada [1], Shoppee [2], perhaps some others as well. I think Amazon is virtually unheard of here, except by expats.

---

[0]: https://www.central.co.th/en/

[1]: https://www.lazada.co.th

[2]: https://shopee.co.th

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#243

Post by wsc981 »

holoduke wrote: post #68
product50 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude do some research. They are winning or close to winning in India, South East Asia, Western Europe, Australia, US, Dubai etc.

Not here in the Netherlands. Nobody is using Amazon here.

I am originally from The Netherlands and used Amazon a lot over the last 15 years or so, mainly to buy books. Especially when regarding books, their biggest Dutch competitor (Bol.com) offers much more limited choice.

But I did notice at my last job in The Netherlands that people would often order technical gadgets and the like from Alibaba.

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#244

Post by stone-monkey »

thetechlead wrote: post #228
seemuch wrote: post #220

The discussion in this thread shows how blind people are about China's development. They are pointing fingers to the Chinese government partly because they simply cannot imagine how much better the China competitors are. The US do have some advantages in the IT industry, but that advantage is getting slimmer and slimmer. In fact, in so many ways, people in China are enjoying much better services from the internet com…

Not just in e-commerce, the convenience living in China has far passed America, such as in mobile payment, food delivery, bike sharing, WeChat with its tremendously useful ecosystem, the subway system, high-speed rails, etc. Having lived in both China and America, I have to say the living standard in Chinese cities has passed America's in many ways and, more importantly, the speed of China building new facilities is…

Food delivery and bike sharing work well in China because of the scale of the cities and lower cost of living. When you have millions of people densely packed together, dumping a ton of bikes everywhere may be feasible. Even then, there's known issues, like how currently the biggest bike vendors are struggling for profitability. Food delivery is occasionally cheaper than buying at the store, due to VC style subsidies and lower cost of human labor. Delivery logistics are incredibly cool to me though. Real time location tracking for food/package deliveries is impressive. It'd be amazing to see something similar in the US.

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#245

Post by product50 »

hopler wrote: post #214
product50 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah - and Jeff seems to be the type of guy who is like, you are right CFO. We are here for the short term - let us do what you are saying?! China is the biggest eComm market in the world! If there was an opportunity for Amazon to penetrate (regulations being the biggest challenge), Amazon would have totally gone for it. This is a company why, 5 yrs back, committed $5B to India when eComm there was/still is totally b…

5 yrs ago was 7 yrs after Flipkart cloned Amazon in India by former Amazon employees.

And 5yrs ago was 2yrs after Amazon launched in India. Anyways, Amazon is dominating eComm in India and it seems like the early lead which Flipkart had didn't count for much.

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#246

Post by ETHisso2017 »

manigandham wrote: post #235
seemuch wrote: post #220

The discussion in this thread shows how blind people are about China's development. They are pointing fingers to the Chinese government partly because they simply cannot imagine how much better the China competitors are. The US do have some advantages in the IT industry, but that advantage is getting slimmer and slimmer. In fact, in so many ways, people in China are enjoying much better services from the internet com…

The China competitors are better because they are actively helped by the government while foreign companies are not, and in this case actively suppressed. Competition only works when the market is fair. Perhaps Amazon could not make as good of an offering but their marketshare was 15% 10 years ago and China is a large, homogenous, and modernized population like the US which is perfect for Amazon's scale strategy. It'…

Can you pinpoint what happened 10 years ago that resulted in Amazon losing share?

Just because Amazon had money or has money doesn't mean it can't get disrupted. Otherwise, we'd all be buying from Sears and using AT&T for video calling.

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#247

Post by jmknoll »

Cookingboy wrote: post #223
seemuch wrote: post #220

The discussion in this thread shows how blind people are about China's development. They are pointing fingers to the Chinese government partly because they simply cannot imagine how much better the China competitors are. The US do have some advantages in the IT industry, but that advantage is getting slimmer and slimmer. In fact, in so many ways, people in China are enjoying much better services from the internet com…

Seriously, Alibaba's e-commerce side operates at a scale that makes Amazon's entire North America (if not global) operation look like a 7/11 store hosted on Geocities. Last year on Single Day alone, Alibaba handled over $30B in orders with 24 hours, and more impressively those are spread over 1,000,000,000 separate deliveries orders. It means it handled the ordering and payment processing of 11,574 orders per second…

Definitely impressive, but certainly not delivered within 48 hours. I’m based in Shanghai and use Taobao/Tmall on a near-daily basis. There was a noticeable slowdown in order for at least a week or two on either side of the holiday. For regular items, if you order it right before the holiday, you may not get it for a couple of weeks in some cases.

Doesn’t take anything away from what Alibaba is doing. It’s a huge spike over their normal business operations. I would be surprised if it didn’t cause a disruption of some sort.

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#248

Post by helloindia »

paganel wrote: post #45
product50 wrote: post #32

Amazon has literally won everywhere else in the world. But in China they were slow at execution? Does this read right to you? Or maybe there is a regulatory angle which no one is talking about because...China.

> Amazon has literally won everywhere else in the world I've mentioned it in another comment, too, but Amazon is not present in my Eastern European country (Romania), where Alibaba beats them by a large margin (even though they're also not officially launched here). I've just done a quick search and it seems Amazon is not winning it in Russia either, nor in Ukraine, to say nothing of India. As such, to say that they…

As far as India is concerned, Amazon is definitely giving a strong competition to Flipkart(the Indian counterpart). For most people I know, Amazon is the first go-to store for any online purchase.

It's interesting to see, how Amazon will fare in near future, due to recent change to e-commerce law by Indian govt.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/05/amazon-how-india-ecommerce-l...

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#249

Post by intended »

matz1 wrote: post #165
manigandham wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been there, worked with people there, have friends there building businesses for decades. Have you been out there? Companies are allowed to operate and grow, but they are tightly controlled. Apple has strong competition and has already trimmed prices and revenue targets. China just purchased 300 planes from Airbus instead of Boeing. McDonalds sold off 80% of its China operations to a Chinese stated-owned company…

So then what other US company such as KFC, Starbucks, Coach, Tiffany & Co., Estée Lauder and Michael Kors do differently so they allowed to compete and enjoy success in china ?

I have to point out that putting luxury brands in the same space as amazon is not an apples to apples comparison.

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#250

Post by duchenne »

product50 wrote: post #32

Amazon has literally won everywhere else in the world. But in China they were slow at execution? Does this read right to you? Or maybe there is a regulatory angle which no one is talking about because...China.

> Amazon has literally won everywhere else in the world.

FWIW, Amazon is also quite small in South Korea, which is the #1 country in ecommerce spend per capita.

There, the market is fragmented into many players big and small, and the delivery times are much shorter than in the US. For instance, if you order on Martet Curly before 11pm, you get fresh grosseries delivered the next day in the morning.

Post reply on HN