Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba‘s Taobao shopping app surged to the top of the Apple App Store charts in Singapore after launching an AI-powered English version on Tuesday.
According to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, Taobao climbed to first place in all categories on Singapore’s Apple App Store as of September 11. The app had previously jumped from fifth to first in the shopping category on the day the English version was announced.
Before this update, Taobao had maintained steady popularity, consistently ranking among the top ten shopping apps for iPhone users since mid-August, Sensor Tower reports.
The new update “demonstrates Taobao’s commitment to serving its Singapore users, who have expressed a strong demand for an English-language interface, reflecting their varied language proficiency,” Alibaba stated in a press release on Tuesday. The company did not provide further details on the AI translation features but noted that it has its own AI model.
The release said the new platform “enhances accessibility for non-Chinese users, eliminating their need for manual translations that previously made shopping less convenient for them.”
Taobao and Tmall are Alibaba’s largest revenue drivers, though they have historically catered primarily to Chinese-speaking customers using a Chinese-language interface. For the quarter ending June 30, Taobao and Tmall Group generated 26.55 billion yuan ($3.65 billion), marking a 6% year-on-year increase.
In recent years, Alibaba has also focused on expanding its global e-commerce presence through platforms like Alibaba.com and AliExpress.
According to Alibaba, Singapore is the first market to receive this new update, along with neighboring Malaysia.
As early as last year, Singaporean Taobao users had created video guides on how to buy clothes, furniture, and lifestyle products from Taobao. These guides were shared on TikTok, the Chinese app owned by ByteDance. Some videos garnered over 10,000 views, with one reaching 105,000 views.
Alibaba’s latest initiative highlights the increasing trend of Chinese companies seeking global expansion, using Singapore as a cultural testing ground to advance their ambitions of entering Western markets.
Last week, consulting firm Bain and Company said in their study of Asia Pacific-headquartered consumer goods companies that Chinese companies have a significant advantage versus South Korean and Japanese companies in the race to go global: the large ethnic Chinese diaspora settled outside of mainland China.
“There are many of these Chinese companies that have really ambitious global mindsets and are able to take the sort of entrepreneurial, fast-innovation capability that they built domestically and use that to create new positions overseas,” David Zehner, senior partner at Bain, previously told CNBC.
According to a government report as of end-June 2023, almost three-quarters of Singapore’s 5.92 million-strong nation is of Chinese descent. About 20% of Malaysia’s population is ethnically Chinese.
For more such updates, click here.
