China's ecommerce industry is the largest in the world, with some estimates placing it at three times the size of the United States and responsible for approximately 50 percent of all spending on retail apps.
Part of this is due to China's enormous mobile population, with approximately 975 million smartphone users in the country. That is about 300 million ahead of the nearest country, India, and more than three times the size of the United States.
It is also due to how established shopping on mobile is in China, in comparison to other countries. In China, over 50 percent of all retail sales come through mobile, by comparison less than 15 percent of retail is mobile in the United States and less than five percent in India.
Like most app industries in China, domestic players control almost all of the market. Alibaba, through its marketplaces Taobao and Tmall, is the largest ecommerce company by merchandise volume in the world. In 2022, it was responsible for $1.3 trillion of sales.
Other competitors include JD.com, which competes with Tmall and is more of b2c marketplace. JD.com generates more revenue than Alibaba, due to its large first-party marketplace, while Alibaba has a far larger third-party marketplaces in which it takes a smaller commission.
Pinduoduo has upset the balance of the duopoly in the past few years, with its direct-to-consumer marketplace platform. One of the key product categories which push Pinduoduo mainstream was fruits and vegetables, which could be bought on the app direct from the farmer.
Live commerce is massive in China, with ByteDance's Douyin, Kuaishou, and Alibaba's Taobao Live competing for users. This new form of commerce has been pushed by Douyin's sister app, TikTok, outside of China, but has not seem the same level of success.
We have collected data and statistics on China's ecommerce market. Read on below to find out more. If you would like to dig deeper into the ecommerce app market, check out our in-depth report.
Key China Ecommerce App Statistics
- JD and Alibaba are in a two horse race on revenue generated from ecommerce sales, with JD ahead in 2023 at $152 billion
- Alibaba has a much higher merchandise volume than the others. It is the only ecommerce company in the world to have over $1 trillion volume
- Alibaba had the most app users when combining both Taobao and Tmall, but Pinduoduo was the most used ecommerce app in China
Retail App Report 2024
Want to learn more about the retail app industry? Our Retail App report covers detailed breakdowns of financials, market share, users, installs, demographics and benchmarks.
- Charts: 163
- Data Points: 2188
- Apps covered: 24
Top China Ecommerce Apps
| App Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Alibaba | The largest ecommerce company by merchandise volume, generating $1.3 trillion GMV primarily through Taobao and Tmall |
| JD | While far behind Alibaba in volume, JD is the largest ecommerce platform in China by revenue |
| Pinduoduo | Responsible for the shift in China's ecommerce market towards direct-to-consumer business over the past five years |
| Douyin | China's TikTok, which has a thriving live commerce platform responsible for billions in merchandise sales |
| Vipshop | An ecommerce platform focused on discount and flash deals, serving about 50 million customers |
| Suning | One of the oldest ecommerce platforms in China, which has seen its fortunes decline as Alibaba grew in the 2010s |
| Xiaohongshu | Called 'China's Instagram', similar to Douyin it offers live commerce services which are very popular in the country |
Shopping App Market Landscape
The shopping app industry contains a wide variety of subsectors. A lot of the apps on this market map are either buying from, or directly operated by Chinese companies. You can download this map as a PDF, for presentations and slides.
China Ecommerce App Revenue
In terms of revenue, China's ecommerce apps are in a two horse race, with Alibaba and JD grabbing the vast majority of it.
