Alibaba's dominance inflates earnings
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E-mail Shanghai Daily, January 30, 2014
Alibaba Group, China's largest e-commerce company, posted a 51 percent jump in revenue to US$1.78 billion in the third quarter of last year as it underlined its dominance in the online shopping sector.
Its profit in the three months ended on September 30 added 12 percent from the previous quarter to US$800 million, Yahoo, which owns 24 percent in Alibaba, said in a stock exchange filing.
To boost its presence beyond the e-commerce sector, Alibaba last year invested US$586 million for 18 percent in Sina Weibo, the twitter-like microblog service. It also bought 28 percent of online mapping company AutoNavi Holdings Ltd for US$294 million.
It has also been promoting mobile payment through Alipay, the third party payment service affiliated to the group, to tap the growing demand of consumers to purchase products through smart devices.
Alibaba's Tmall and Taobao saw a record 35 billion yuan (US$5.8 billion) in sales on November 11, the Single's Day shopping spree when vendors offered a 50 percent discount.
Alibaba is also fending off rival Tencent, China's largest Internet firm by market value, which operates popular smartphone chatting tool WeChat.
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