Interesting to see Meituan offering services within Alipay's mini-programs and Taobao integrating WeChat as a payment method - giants are helping each other in the "winters".
I’m not sure if these companies are really helping each other or if it’s being pushed by the government.
I’m still trying to figure out the consequences of this open competition. It’s a big shift from the past when the market was divided between Alibaba and Tencent. The uniqueness of Chinese e-commerce came from this history, with Alibaba dominating and JD, followed by Pinduoduo, emerging under Tencent’s influence. Now, we’re seeing even more players （Douyin and Kuaishou) entering the space, and I wonder how long these five big e-commerce platforms can coexist. And I am not even talking about Tencent itself here, which is going after that market as well. It’s not a winner-takes-all market, but it’s very unusual to have five/six big players; usually, there are one or two dominant players and a few niche ones.
Or for the food delivery business: Meituan has a scale advantage over Ele.me, and now that Meituan is integrated with Alipay, I’m not sure how Ele.me can stay competitive. It’s clear that Alibaba won’t drop Ele.me because it’s a strategic investment, focused more on instant delivery capabilities than just food delivery, but I’m still not seeing how Ele.me will come out on top here.
I agree that a 5-player market seems to be not very stable. One perspective to consider is that Douyin and Kuaishou are more live streaming e-commerce focused, which can come from different consumption scenarios vs. traditional shelf-based shopping.
THIS: "The Ongoing Destruction of Walled Gardens in China’s Tech Industry" ... is very interesting and something to get my head around... In the USA, big tech consists of quasi-monopolized walled gardens who collude with each other (e.g. its been proven by court cases they have informal non-compete agreements when it comes to employee poaching...) with the govt enforcing this (together with censorship/deplatforming political rivals in a coordinated fashion) by going after (usually) smaller rivals who aren't completely in bed with the govt (e.g. free speech platforms like Parler, Gab, Twitter under Elon etc) or other competitors (e.g. TikTok, Temu, Shein etc) - symbiotic relationship... I wonder IF what China is doing will actually hurt competition by strengthening the big players OR would it help smaller players by giving them access to things like payment processing they would otherwise not have???
Interesting to see Meituan offering services within Alipay's mini-programs and Taobao integrating WeChat as a payment method - giants are helping each other in the "winters".
I’m not sure if these companies are really helping each other or if it’s being pushed by the government.
I’m still trying to figure out the consequences of this open competition. It’s a big shift from the past when the market was divided between Alibaba and Tencent. The uniqueness of Chinese e-commerce came from this history, with Alibaba dominating and JD, followed by Pinduoduo, emerging under Tencent’s influence. Now, we’re seeing even more players （Douyin and Kuaishou) entering the space, and I wonder how long these five big e-commerce platforms can coexist. And I am not even talking about Tencent itself here, which is going after that market as well. It’s not a winner-takes-all market, but it’s very unusual to have five/six big players; usually, there are one or two dominant players and a few niche ones.
Or for the food delivery business: Meituan has a scale advantage over Ele.me, and now that Meituan is integrated with Alipay, I’m not sure how Ele.me can stay competitive. It’s clear that Alibaba won’t drop Ele.me because it’s a strategic investment, focused more on instant delivery capabilities than just food delivery, but I’m still not seeing how Ele.me will come out on top here.
I agree that a 5-player market seems to be not very stable. One perspective to consider is that Douyin and Kuaishou are more live streaming e-commerce focused, which can come from different consumption scenarios vs. traditional shelf-based shopping.
THIS: "The Ongoing Destruction of Walled Gardens in China’s Tech Industry" ... is very interesting and something to get my head around... In the USA, big tech consists of quasi-monopolized walled gardens who collude with each other (e.g. its been proven by court cases they have informal non-compete agreements when it comes to employee poaching...) with the govt enforcing this (together with censorship/deplatforming political rivals in a coordinated fashion) by going after (usually) smaller rivals who aren't completely in bed with the govt (e.g. free speech platforms like Parler, Gab, Twitter under Elon etc) or other competitors (e.g. TikTok, Temu, Shein etc) - symbiotic relationship... I wonder IF what China is doing will actually hurt competition by strengthening the big players OR would it help smaller players by giving them access to things like payment processing they would otherwise not have???