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

271–280 of 316 posts

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#271

Post by skc »

manigandham wrote: post #260
echaozh wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, you play by rules, as long as it benefits you. Why does US so strongly advocate banning of Huawei devices, in the whole world? You say Huawei may have backdoors, but who don't? And Huawei may be the cleanest as it just "may", while the other competitors have a history of "do". The slogan "America First" doesn't sound so globalistic. And playing by rules is definitely not before America, which is first.

>> Huawei may have backdoors, but who don't? Apple doesn't. The American company.

If the chinese government demands it, they will.

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#272

Post by lexs »

manigandham wrote: post #267
tsukurimashou wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As opposed to US companies that are certainly not helped in any way by the US government

Sure, but definitely not to that extent, competitors are certainly not suppressed in the same way, and it's irrelevant to the discussion of why Amazon left China.

Bombadier literally was ended by the US government

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#273

Post by manigandham »

lexs wrote: post #272
manigandham wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but definitely not to that extent, competitors are certainly not suppressed in the same way, and it's irrelevant to the discussion of why Amazon left China.

Bombadier literally was ended by the US government

Do you mean Bombardier? The aviation company with $16B in revenue and 65k employees? Looks like there was a tariff imposed on one of their models due to a complaint by Boeing but was overturned 4 months later in Jan 2018.

If this is the company you're talking about, can you describe what you mean by "literally was ended"?

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#274

Post by teknologist »

profalseidol wrote: post #258
stone-monkey wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One should try to find out why the cost of labor is lower than in the US.

Those delivery guys in China are under incredible pressure.

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#275

Post by mguerville »

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'…

Western companies, US and others alike, are helped by their governments too. Telcos are granted monopolies yet they deliver horrendous infrastructure for instance.

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#276

Post by apexalpha »

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.

There are many countries where Amazon is out competed by local companies that simply sprung up earlier.

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#277

Post by ksec »

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'…

It was not suppressed.

> It's a hard sell to say that a trillion-dollar company does not have the resources and talent to do what the people in the next building can.

By that notion no startup will ever win agains the titan. And Apple would not have been the largest market cap company today when they had M$, Blackberry and IBM in its era.

The truth is, even if the full Amazon experience in US were replicated today in China ( Where Amazon had a home ground advantage and had much longer time to refine their infrastructure and strategy ) it will still not be anywhere as good as what Alibaba/ Taobao / JD.com has to offer.

That is on the consumer side of course, in terms of AWS their offering ( knowledge and understanding ) are very much behind.

Amazon failed in execution and strategy in China. And they learned their lesson when they enter India.

Usually I would put a few words on Chinese Companies having the advantage of literally infinite burn rate to increase revenue while competing. These money comes from VC which is funded by the government anyway. But knowing Alibaba its major share holder is Yahoo and Softbank along with a few other outside investors I don't think that is anywhere near true.

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#278

Post by evandijk70 »

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 is not available in the Netherlands. There is already a large party, bol.com, that through deals with the post-office can deliver same-day delivery throughout the Netherlands, provided the order came in before 2pm. Otherwise, they provide next-day delivery.

They were acquired by the largest super market chain (Albert Heijn), so now you can pick up packages at the super market throughout the day and in the evening. I think both of these advantages are difficult to match by amazon, and they were probably the reason that amazon chose not to enter the Dutch market.

Just because Amazon has 'won' in most places, does not mean they can not be beaten by a player who knows the local market and has better connections.

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#279

Post by ksec »

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.

>Literally done nothing at all to compete

You see that is the thing. Actually I was too afraid to type this in my another comment as it might anger man. But that is exactly what I felt.

And I don't even understand why, they didn't even try.

TMall ( Spin off from Taobao offering higher quality products ) was only established in 2014, and that was targeted as slightly premium segment where Amazon could or should have been. So it proves the market did exist, Amazon for what ever reason failed to capture it.

Re: Amazon Quits China Market

#280

Post by sabas123 »

wsc981 wrote: post #243
holoduke wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

AFAIK amazon only sells (e)books in the Netherlands
Post reply on HN