Alibaba's Jack Ma is attacking competitor Ebay at home in California, talking to local journalists.
Jack Ma, chief executive of Alibaba.com, China's leading Internet marketplace, said that early mistakes by eBay have made it difficult for the company to gain traction in what is an increasingly important beachhead for e-commerce.According to research firm Analysys Ebay had in 2005 still a market share of 31.5 percent, but then I find it very hard to believe any figure from this research firm. When a spokesman of Ebay was quoted saying they are in China for the long term, I was certainly they were losing out. Who is in China not making money now, should count their blessings and stop losing money.
"In China, they are gone," Ma said during an interview Friday with members of The Chronicle's business staff. "They have made so many mistakes in China -- we're lucky."
2 comments:
I am curious. How is E-bay messing up in China and are you suggesting they just cut and run?
China Law
I quoted Jack Ma here and of course he thinks so. I think they should have done so already earlier. They made indeed a few rather dramatic mistakes. First, they have been spending a fortune on a US-style marketing campaign that simply did not make sense. Their local competitor (Alibaba's Taobao) has been much more prudent and is therefore in a financially much better position.
Second, they started to charge their clients money for their serices, while their competitor offered the service for free. That allowed their competitor to gain ground in the market. Later Ebay had to change their strategy anyway and offered their services for free, pissing off the customers that had been paying.
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