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.
Continue reading “Google moves to top of smart speaker market in Q1”
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.
Singapore-based Carousell has secured US$85 million in Series C funding to grow and expand its e-commerce business across the region.
Alibaba Group has acquired Daraz, its second purchase for a Rocket Internet company following the earlier deal for Lazada in Southeast Asia.
Continue reading “Alibaba acquires Daraz to extend South Asia reach”
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.
Continue reading “Singtel and Razer to unite e-payment network”
The number is staggering even if the company is Amazon. Jeff Bezos has announced that Amazon Prime has more than 100 million members globally.
Continue reading “Amazon has more than 100m Prime subscribers”
Virtual reality (VR) has been tipped to be the next innovative technology to improve and impact retail and marketing.
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.
Continue reading “Tantalising line-up of speakers at NVIDIA AI Conference”
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.
Continue reading “E-commerce to account for a quarter of retail sales by 2025”
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 products, such as groceries, chilled beer, ice-cream, household, and home essentials, baby, beauty, electronics, and toys.
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 to modernise and elevate the brand in a design that is simple and elegant, yet unquestionably Mastercard. We’ve been on a fantastic trajectory, with digital technology being an increasingly important part of our business. Now it’s time for our brand to embody the company we’ve become,” said Raja Rajamannar, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer of Mastercard.
Designing a brand mark to work seamlessly across all digital platforms, retail channels and connected-devices, while preserving its heritage was key to the overall effort, which also includes the most comprehensive brand design system ever introduced globally within Mastercard. The evolved brand identity will be rolled out across Mastercard beginning in Fall.
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 e-commerce platform for a wide range of consumer products.
“With the investment in Lazada, Alibaba gains access to a platform with a large and growing consumer base outside China, a proven management team and a solid foundation for future growth in one of the most promising regions for e-commerce globally,” said Michael Evans, President of Alibaba.
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.
Continue reading “GSMA launches e-commerce platform for telecoms industry”
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.
Continue reading “Alibaba sets US$8b target for November 11 sales”
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.
Continue reading “Red Bull builds global B2B portal with hybris”
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.
Continue reading “hybris announces B2C Commerce Accelerator for China”
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.
Continue reading “Alibaba breezes through China Singles’ Day online traffic with ZTE technology”
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.”
Continue reading “Cloud Computing to account for most of IT budget by 2016”
hybris has been named alongside IBM, Oracle Commerce and Intershop as leading B2B commerce vendors in Forrester Research’s latest Wave report.
Entitled “The Forrester Wave: B2B Commerce Suites, Q4 2013”, the report examined seven vendors based on 66 evaluation criteria across each vendor’s current offering, strategy, and market presence.
According to the report, customers are attracted to hybris for four key reasons: the modern Java-based architecture; the embedded enterprise product content management capabilities; the embedded and rapidly maturing order management capabilities; and the flexibility of the “Framework”.
“One of our key differentiators is that the hybris B2B Commerce suite provides a scalable and flexible solution with rapid time to innovation, this, along with hybris now being a part of SAP, means that we are positioned to help our customers gain the revenue growth and cost-saving benefits they seek. We are therefore proud to see that we have been recognised as a leader in Forrester’s latest B2B eCommerce market report,” said Ariel Lüdi, CEO of hybris.
hybris B2B Commerce is built on a single, modern technology stack, with embedded capabilities for product content management and order management which provides a best-in-class solution for scalability and performance for high-volume, high-transaction environments. Built on the highly flexible hybris platform that is architected to be the operating environment for modern, always-on Internet applications, hybris B2B Commerce also provides a standards-based development framework on which anyone can build custom applications or extensions to the platform or hybris applications.
Download the report from http://www.hybris.com/en/forrester-wave-q4-2013.
Worldwide IT spending is forecast to reach US$3.8 trillion in 2014, a 3.6 percent increase from 2013, but it’s the opportunities of a digital world that have IT leaders excited, according to Gartner.
The beginning of the Digital Industrial Economy will make every budget an IT budget; every company a technology company; every business a digital leader, and every person a technology company.
“The Digital Industrial Economy will be built on the foundations of the Nexus of Forces (which includes a confluence and integration of cloud, social collaboration, mobile and information) and the Internet of Everything by combining the physical world and the virtual,” said Peter Sondergaard, Senior Vice President of Gartner and Global Head of Research.
Continue reading “Beginning of the Digital Industrial Economy”
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alahari.com has selected hybris Commerce Suite to power its retail vision forward, strengthen its position as an innovative market leader, and fast-track market growth selling both digital and physical goods via its online stores and marketplaces.
As Africa’s leading online retailer of electronics, toys, appliances, games and books, kalahari.com will leverage hybris Commerce Suite to respond to growth opportunities and further extend its market share in the fast growing Southern African commerce market.
Providing a true omni-channel experience, the scalability of the hybris Commerce platform will enable kalahari.com to support its rapidly expanding online operations, which include consumer-to-consumer (C2C) and business-to-consumer (B2C) retail, and deliver a feature-rich experience to a growing number of mobile shoppers. This will include selling digital goods such as eBooks, via kalahari.com’s own e-reader device the Gobii, and a large expansion of its online catalogue of digital and physical goods.
Continue reading “kalahari.com accelerates market expansion with hybris”
Tommy Bahama, which has an outlet in Wisma Atria, Singapore, has selected hybris Commerce Suite to improve its omni-channel commerce capabilities and create a more agile response to expanding market opportunities.
A leading retailer of island-inspired apparel and home furnishings, the brand has achieved rapid growth in online commerce over the past few years. In addition to the web, Tommy Bahama offers in-store kiosks, a commerce channel that enables an “endless aisle” of products available through the e-commerce warehouse, allowing shoppers to access out-of-stock or online exclusive items directly in-store.
To ensure the brand’s continued global expansion and establish a foundation for market and channel growth, Tommy Bahama needed a robust commerce platform capable of integrating with its existing Adobe Experience Manager solution to deliver a world-class, end-to-end user experience across all channels. hybris not only complements the Adobe Experience Manager but enables it to further create and deliver a heavily optimised user experience.
Continue reading “Tommy Bahama partners hybris to seize market opportunities”
Customer engagement — that’s what SAP and hybris hope to deliver as a new category of enterprise software. It’s about providing customers with a consistent unified experience. Leveraging the omnicommerce expertise of hybris and the enterprise software strengths of SAP, the two are providing the best of both worlds — data and e-commerce technologies.
“The ideal solution is something that can manage data and process complexity across channels. We want to be the leader in this space” said Ariel Luedi, Chief Executive Officer of hybris.
“We have an edge over Oracle and IBM as we are two generations younger so our solutions are easier to implement. Our time to go live is much shorter than our competition,” he added.
SAP is investing in the future of commerce and customer engagement with its acquisition of hybris. The two companies plan to combine the agile omni-channel commerce solutions of hybris with robust enterprise technology and industry leading in-memory, cloud and mobile innovations from SAP to help facilitate new levels of customer insight and engagement.
“SAP and hybris will deliver the next-generation customer experience for businesses and consumers in a world where digital and physical converge seamlessly,” said Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe, co-CEOs, SAP AG. “With the addition of the hybris commerce platform, we intend to help enterprises achieve unprecedented intimacy with customers in real time and across all devices, delivery channels and touchpoints.”
The rules of engagement have changed and customers are in control. Modern businesses need systems that can predict and adapt in real time to customers wherever and however they engage. hybris expands SAP solutions that address customer engagement comprehensively across marketing, sales, service and commerce. As part of SAP, hybris is expected to take advantage of mobile, cloud and big data innovations from the company while continuing to drive forward the most modern, agile commerce platform in the market today.
UK online fashion and beauty store ASOS has selected the hybris Commerce Suite to launch its new e-commerce business in China. Providing an omni-channel experience for those 420 million potential customers, the site will include a fully-integrated, feature-rich mobile version.
With six million active customers, ASOS stocks more than 60,000 branded and own-label products through each of its websites: UK, USA, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Australia, and Russia. It ships to 241 countries and territories from its 1.1 million square foot global distribution centre in the UK.
According to a report from eMarketer released in February 2013, this year’s B2C e-commerce sales are expected to grow 18.3 percent to US$1.298 trillion worldwide as Asia-Pacific (APAC) surpasses North America to become the world’s No. 1 market for B2C e-commerce.
Continue reading “ASOS leverages hybris for China e-commerce business”
Gartner has adjusted its worldwide IT spending forecast for 2013 downwards to US$3.7 trillion in 2013. Last quarter, the research firm predicted a 4,1 percent increase compared to 2012 but that projection has been sliced by half to 2 percent. This reduction takes into account the impact of recent fluctuations in US dollar exchange rates.
The Gartner Worldwide IT Spending Forecast is the a leading indicator of major technology trends across the hardware, software, IT services and telecom markets. For more than a decade, global IT and business executives have been using these highly anticipated quarterly reports to recognise market opportunities and challenges, and base their critical business decisions on proven methodologies rather than guesswork.
“Exchange rate movements, and a reduction in our 2013 forecast for devices, account for the bulk of the downward revision of the 2013 growth,” said Richard Gordon, Managing Vice President at Gartner.
Continue reading “Gartner adjusts worldwide IT spending projection downwards to 2% growth this year”
hybris has integrated hybris Commerce Accelerator with hybris Order Management Services (OMS) to enable merchants to deliver a complete omni-channel shopping experience, including browsing and fulfillment – like buy online and pick up in store and cross-channel stock-level display.
This significant enhancement means that B2C merchants of all sizes can now, at an affordable price point, go live with a world-class commerce system in less than four months through ready to use storefront templates and channel integrations that can be deployed quickly and then enhanced with more functionality over time.
Customers can also chose the deployment and purchase model which best meets their needs – traditional on-premise perpetual license, hosted by hybris or on-demand (software-as-a-service) with a monthly fee based on usage or revenue share.
Sports footwear maker ASICS has selected hybris Commerce Suite for the infrastructure of the company’s new global consumer websites, featuring corporate, branding and e-commerce functions.
The solution will empower its branding and transactional pages, supporting its omni-channel deployments and B2C commerce with consumers.
In the middle of 2011, ASICS launched an internal project to rebuild the system, by using an omni-channel enabled e-commerce solution. After carefully comparing and evaluating several vendor solutions, ASICS selected hybris Commerce Suite in May 2012. It will start designing and integrating the new system in the US this year before rolling it out to other countries.
Continue reading “ASICS picks hybris for new global consumer websites”
hybris will partner intelligent engagement solution provider LivePerson to offer an integrated solution for businesses to optimise the online commerce experience and drive greater return on investment (ROI) to their digital properties.
The hybris Commerce Suite is now fully integrated with LivePerson’s award-winning chat solution and available on the hybris Extend marketplace. The new integration will be essential to e-commerce professionals seeking to differentiate their brands from competitors, enabling them to connect more meaningfully to visitors and delivering a richer, more personalised experience for customers that will drive higher customer satisfaction and greater value to their business.
With LivePerson’s chat solution, merchants are able to increase conversion rates through their online stores and decrease cart abandonment. For example, if a customer is having difficulty locating a particular item, a customer service agent will be alerted and offer immediate assistance with the customer directly through live chat or ‘click to call’. Likewise, customers can engage directly with a customer service agent through a ‘click to chat’ button. To ensure an optimised client engagement, the customer’s page data is dynamically passed through to the agent.
Continue reading “hybris partners LivePerson to provide digital engagement solutions”
For the second year running, hybris has been included as a Leader in Gartner’s latest Magic Quadrant for E-Commerce. Following substantial growth in 2011, hybris has further consolidated its position as the market’s dominant independent e-commerce and omni-channel vendor.
“Given the size of our next two biggest competitors, we believe our placement in the report confirms that hybris represents the most compelling e-commerce and omni-channel solution available in the market today,” said Ariel Luedi, CEO of hybris.
“Both our larger competitors, and smaller-sized vendors, struggle to compete with us on performance, value and functionality. In the next 12 months, we look forward to increasing our market share and building on the gains we made in 2012,” he added.
Continue reading “hybris a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for e-commerce”
