SAP has expanded its presence in Asia-Pacific (APAC) with the opening of a new data centre in Singapore to support SAP Commerce Cloud deployment.
Category: e-commerce
Sunmi lets consumers pay with their face
Think using the smartphone is a cool way of paying? Well, that’s neat but China-based Sunmi aims to take digital payment a step further with its face-recognition payment solution.
China: Quick adopter, widespread use of technology
By Edward Lim
In the early 2000s, I visited Beijing for the first time and was amazed to see a taxi using a global positioning system (GPS) to get me to my destination. To put things in perspective, this was before the arrival of smartphones and GPS wasn’t even used in Singapore.
Amazon takes on big guns in machine learning
A new player has entered the machine learning arena. While big players such as Google, Intel and NVIDIA have been slugging it out, Amazon has thrown its hat into the ring with its newly-launched Inferentia chip.
Arcadier to raise US$25m for blockchain e-commerce marketplaces
Singapore headquartered Arcadier, has launched Token Generation Event (TGE) Presale to raise US$25 million by Q3 next year for its Project ArcadierX blockchain-enhanced marketplace platform. A private sale has yielded US$1 million in investment.
Online marketplace Honestbee launches brick-and-mortar Habitat
It’s interesting how trends keep evolving. In the past decade or two, many supermarkets have opened up online stores to cater to changing consumer demands. On the other side, new companies set up online stores to challenge these traditional players. Yesterday, one of these, Honestbee, took the reverse route by setting up Habitat, its first brick-and-mortar outlet in Pasir Panjang, Singapore.
Singapore launches unified payment QR code
The number of QR codes for payment is akin to the number of credit card offerings in the market — it keeps growing, making it more of a hassle than convenience for merchants and consumers. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has stepped in to solve this problem with the launch of the Singapore Quick Response (SGQR) Code.
Alibaba founder Jack Ma walks the talk
By Edward Lim
It’s hard to let go when you’re one of the richest man in the world and leading one, if not the biggest, e-commerce company in the world. But, Jack Ma is a man of his word. A man who knows his time and a man who has shown what resilience is all about.
Outage and strike do not faze Amazon on Prime Day
Amazon Prime Day is still going strong and racking up tons of sales despite an outage that prevented some customers in North America from accessing the website and the app, and a strike by workers in Spain.
Suning Tesco opens first UAV logistics route in Wuhan
China e-commerce firm Suning Tesco has opened the first pilot route for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) logistics and transportation in Wuhan, China. Its logistics arm Suning Logistics and Ewatt Aerospace jointly developed two UAVs for this purpose.
JD.com gets US$550m cash injection from Google
China e-commerce giant JD.com has received a US$550 million investment from Google as part of a strategic partnership.
ICT spending in APAC (sans Japan) to hit US$1.5t in 2021
Information and communications technology (ICT) spending in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) will hit US$1.5 trillion in 2021, according to IDC.
Google moves to top of smart speaker market in Q1
Google has ousted Amazon from the perch of the global smart speaker market. According to Canalys, Google shipped 3.2 million units with its Google Home and Google Home mini series , surpassing the 2.5 million units of the Amazon Echo series for the first time in Q1.
Cryptocurrency and Carry
Singapore-headquartered Carry is teaming up with Spoqa of South Korea to bring cryptocurrency payment and blockchain-enhanced loyalty points to brick-and-mortar retailers.
Carousell secures US$85m funding
Singapore-based Carousell has secured US$85 million in Series C funding to grow and expand its e-commerce business across the region.
Alibaba acquires Daraz to extend South Asia reach
Alibaba Group has acquired Daraz, its second purchase for a Rocket Internet company following the earlier deal for Lazada in Southeast Asia.
Singtel and Razer to unite e-payment network
Singtel and Razer have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to connect their respective e-payment systems into an interoperable network to reach out to up to 50 million users in Southeast Asia.
Amazon has more than 100m Prime subscribers
The number is staggering even if the company is Amazon. Jeff Bezos has announced that Amazon Prime has more than 100 million members globally.
VR to impact retail and marketing
Virtual reality (VR) has been tipped to be the next innovative technology to improve and impact retail and marketing.
Tantalising line-up of speakers at NVIDIA AI Conference
More than 1,000 participants attending the NVIDIA AI Conference in Singapore next week are in for a treat as the organisers are bringing in a tantalising line-up of speakers.
The two keynote speakers are Dr David B Kirk, NVIDIA Fellow and inventor of more than 60 patents and patent applications relating to graphics design; and Dr Wanli Min, AI scientist of Alibaba Cloud, who will touch on A Revolutionary Road to Data Intelligence.
Besides these two, there are special guest-of-honour Chng Kai Fong, Managing Director of Singapore’s Economic Development Board, and a panel discussion on AI for the Future of Singapore Economy.
E-commerce to account for a quarter of retail sales by 2025
Greater internet and mobile device accessibility are driving e-commerce growth in Southeast Asia.
According to ABI Research, Smart Retail has gone through revolutionary changes in the past 10 years and will exponentially continue to do so going forward. Brick and mortar stores are no longer the only option for consumers across the globe to make their everyday purchases, due to significant advancements in technology, both in-store and online.
Key players include Senion, who implements some of the world’s largest Indoor Positioning System (IPS) solutions to enhance in-store experiences, and AisleLabs who provides shopper traffic behavior analytics to help retailers optimise store layouts. Leading POS software vendors, Shopkeep and Square are allowing retailers to sell across multi-channels from a single platform. These and other key vendors are paving paths to making the offline and online worlds seamless experiences.
Amazon Prime Now makes first SEA stop in Singapore
The online grocery market in Singapore has just gotten hotter with Amazon’s launch of its Prime Now service. It is the e-commerce giant’s first stop in the region. Prime Now offers tens of thousands of […]
Mastercard sports new logo
Mastercard has unveiled a new brand identity and logo to be aligned with its position as a forward-thinking, human-centred technology company. “To thrive in this new digital world where business moves faster than ever, we want […]
Alibaba to take US$1b stake in Lazada
Leading e-commerce giant Alibaba has announced that it would pay US$1 billion for a controlling stake in Singapore startup Lazada, which has e-commerce operations across Southeast Asia. Established by Rocket Internet in 2011, Lazada is a popular […]
GSMA launches e-commerce platform for telecoms industry
GSMA has launched GSMA Marketplace, an e-commerce platform dedicated to the mobile industry.
GSMA Marketplace leverages the associations’s reputation as a trusted intermediary in the telecoms industry to bring together buyers and sellers to do business more easily with each other.
“Whether you are a buyer looking for greater innovation or better prices in your procurement of products or services, or a seller seeking to win new business and enter new markets, GSMA Marketplace will let you browse, contact and connect with companies who can help you achieve your objectives,” said John Hoffman, CEO of GSMA.
Alibaba sets US$8b target for November 11 sales
November 11 is Singles’ Day in China and the singular thing retailers are aiming for today is record sales. China e-commerce giant Alibaba has set US$8.18 billion (RMB50 billion) as its 2014 target of single-day transaction value for the November 11 online shopping festival, according to IDC.
The research firm believes Alibaba is very likely to achieve five percent more. “11.11” is not only a festival for Alibaba, online shoppers, and online retailers; it also changes consumers’ buying behaviour and impacts the evolution of the China e-commerce ecosystem.
“11.11” has become a special day for many Chinese consumers ever since Alibaba created this single-day online shopping festival in 2009. The total transaction value during last year’s “11.11” reached US$5.73 billion (RMB35 billion), which shocked Alibaba’s e-commerce competitors all around the world as well as the entire retail industry.
Red Bull builds global B2B portal with hybris
Red Bull has implemented a new global B2B order management portal based on the hybris B2B Commerce solution. Known as the SOET 2.0 Solution, the portal provides a highly flexible solution for quick and easy order entry for global retailers and distributors placing orders with the beverage brand across multiple channels.
Launched in March, the global roll-out was completed in June and 79 countries are now using Red Bull’s order management portal utilizing hybris’ B2B Commerce solution.
Founded by Dietrich Mateschitz in the mid-1980s and inspired by functional drinks from the Far East, Red Bull is currently available in more than 165 countries.
hybris announces B2C Commerce Accelerator for China
hybris has announced the coming availability of hybris B2C Commerce Accelerator for China. As businesses move from a single channel, such as print catalogues, to multiple channels — including online, mobile, print and call centers, complexity increases.
Founded on hybris Commerce Accelerator, hybris B2C Commerce Accelerator for China has been specially configured and equipped with functionalities specifically to address Chinese e-commerce needs.
Adapted expressly for the Chinese market, it comes with pre-configured page templates that are designed to suit the highly characteristic ‘click’ culture and specific shopping atmosphere enjoyed by Chinese consumers, providing big product images, larger merchandising bars and a very visual user experience.
Alibaba breezes through China Singles’ Day online traffic with ZTE technology
Alibaba Group handled a record-breaking surge in online shopping traffic on China Singles’ Day on November 11 , the busiest day of the year for Internet retailers in China.
China’s largest e-commerce company broke its one-day sales record by more than 80 percent. ZTE’s ZXONE 8700 optical transport network system carried 90 percent of Alibaba’s operating data traffic that day, as online shopping orders pushed Alibaba’s peak data traffic to almost 300 Gbits per second, sustained for a period of seven hours.
For the 24-hour duration of China Singles’ Day, ZTE’s OTN systems deployed by Alibaba delivered excellent network performance and fault-free reliability, with no malfunction warning reported.
Cloud Computing to account for most of IT budget by 2016
Cloud computing adoption is growing and will form the bulk of new IT spend in 2016. According to Gartner, 2016 will be a defining year for cloud as private cloud begins to give way to hybrid cloud, and nearly half of large enterprises will have hybrid cloud deployments by the end of 2017.
Gartner describes cloud computing as a style of computing in which scalable and elastic IT-enabled capabilities are delivered “as a service” using Internet technologies. It heralds an evolution of business in positive and negative ways. It has also become a hot industry term that has been used in many contradictory ways.
“Overall, there are very real trends toward cloud platforms, and also toward massively scalable processing. Virtualisation, service orientation and the Internet have converged to sponsor a phenomenon that enables individuals and businesses to choose how they’ll acquire or deliver IT services, with reduced emphasis on the constraints of traditional software and hardware licensing models,” said Chris Howard, Research Vice President of Gartner. “Services delivered through the cloud will foster an economy based on delivery and consumption of everything from storage to computation to video to finance deduction management.”
