Singapore — Chinese e-commerce giant AlibabaThe Taobao shopping app apple After releasing its English version on Tuesday, it charted in Singapore’s App Store thanks to artificial intelligence translations.
it is Sensor TowerTaobao topped all categories in Apple’s Singapore App Store as of Sept. 11, according to data from the market research firm. On Tuesday, when the English version was released, the app From 5th to 1st It’s in the Shopping category.
Prior to that, the Taobao app had been relatively popular, consistently ranking in the top 10 shopping apps among iPhone users since mid-August, according to Sensor Tower.
“The new update underscores Taobao’s commitment to serving users in Singapore, who have a strong preference for an English interface to reflect their diverse linguistic capabilities,” Alibaba said. Press release on Tuesday. No details were provided about the AI translation feature, as the company has its own AI model.
According to the announcement, the new platform will “improve accessibility for non-Chinese users and eliminate the need for manual translations that previously reduced the shopping experience.”
Taobao and Tmall are by far Alibaba’s biggest revenue generators, but until now it has mainly sold to people in China using a Chinese-language interface. Revenue from Taobao and Tmall Group rose 6% year-on-year to 26.55 billion yuan ($3.65 billion) in the quarter ended June 30.
In recent years, Alibaba has also been expanding its e-commerce business overseas through platforms such as Alibaba.com and AliExpress.
According to Alibaba, Singapore will be the first market, along with neighbouring Malaysia, where Taobao will roll out the new update.
Already last year, Taobao users in Singapore created guides on how to buy clothes, furniture and lifestyle items on Taobao. These video guides were posted on the TikTok platform, another Chinese app owned by ByteDance. Some videos received more than 10,000 views, and one even had 105,000 views.
Alibaba’s latest move reflects a growing trend of Chinese companies seeking global expansion and using Singapore as a cultural testing ground to further their ambitions of penetrating Western markets.
Last week, consulting firm Bain & Company said in a study of consumer goods companies headquartered in the Asia-Pacific region that Chinese companies have a key advantage over their Korean and Japanese counterparts in the race to expand globally: the presence of a large ethnic Chinese immigrant population outside mainland China.
“Many Chinese companies have a very ambitious, global mindset and are able to leverage their homegrown entrepreneurial spirit and ability to innovate quickly to carve out new positions overseas,” Bain senior partner David Zenner previously told CNBC.
According to the government As of the end of June 2023, nearly three-quarters of Singapore’s population of 5.92 million are of Chinese descent. 20% of Malaysia’s population Ethnically, I am Chinese.
Not a perfect English learning experience
Taobao users in Singapore and Malaysia can buy a wide range of products, from electronics to shoes to kitchen appliances, and have them delivered to their homes for a small delivery fee, with prices quoted in yuan.
The new version of Taobao allows users to convert prices from RMB to Singapore dollars and provides product descriptions in English.
But as of Thursday, the user experience was far from perfect.
CNBC found that prices were not being converted from Chinese Yuan to Singapore Dollars despite changing the currency display option, and translations were also fairly literal, although an English translation option was available in the product reviews.
Singapore-based social media users were quick to highlight the new feature, despite it being incomplete.
The day after the announcement, a TikTok user showed how to change the Taobao app’s display language to English, garnering 947,000 views in one day.
Sensor Tower told CNBC that Taobao’s average monthly active users in Singapore will reach 167,000 in the third quarter of 2024.
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