Every once in a while, I'm reminded of what a tenuous position the United States economy and its businesses are in, in terms of the world market. The US is in relative decline in influence, while China is rising in influence and wealth. American exceptionalism is going to become less and less viable as a governing philosophy in the coming years. This is one of those instances where I'm reminded.<p>Also, I need to learn start learning Mandarin, like today. The opportunities missed in the tech industry by not knowing it are going to be <i>huge</i> in the coming years. I set for myself a goal of learning one new language a year this year, starting with Spanish (and I'm doing pretty good on that goal). But, I'm tempted to try to learn both simultaneously. Just not sure where I'll find the time. Spanish study already gets a lot of my leisure time. Maybe I need to do less facebook, reddit, and HN.
According to Alexa, Amazon.cn is the 69th most visited website in the entire world and the 14th most popular in China. [0]<p>Their second largest competitor JD.com (according to that article) is only the 16th most popular in China. [1]<p>Tmall.com is 5th in China, so OK Amazon.cn isn't THE most popular ecommerce site in China. [2] But is that really failing and throwing in the towel?<p>What am I missing here? How has Amazon.cn failed in the Chinese market?<p>[0] <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/amazon.cn" rel="nofollow">http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/amazon.cn</a><p>[1] <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/jd.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/jd.com</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/tmall.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/tmall.com</a>
China is an extraordinarily difficult market to crack for outsiders. It's dominated by domestic companies across nearly every product category / industry.<p>For Amazon I actually think this move makes sense. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. There's no reason Amazon can't build a ~$40 billion per year type business riding on another platform in the massive China market (say over the next decade). Alibaba makes all of its money from advertising, and essentially zip from product sales. Amazon makes almost all of its money from product sales, and almost zip from advertising - Tmall is a great way for Amazon to drive sales via riding Alibaba's platform.
Does anyone knows how is the warehousing/delivery done in that case? Is Amazon using the Alibaba capacity there or it has still to do it itself in China?