Chinese Competitors Are Closing in on Amazon

The e-commerce leader in Europe is Amazon - but Chinese ventures into international e-commerce, for example AliExpress or more recently Temu, have made inroads. The following infographic looks specifically at the example of the Chinese company Pinduoduo, drawing from ecommmerceDB figures. According to this data, Pinduoduo will only be 13 percent behind Amazon in terms of gross merchandise volume in 2024. To put this in perspective: in 2019, Amazon's gross merchandise volume was more than twice as large as that of Pinduoduo.

Pinduoduo also owns the online marketplace Temu. The Temu app went online in the U.S. in autumn 2022, where it went straight to number one in the download charts. While Temu's global goods volume of around $30 billion is still quite small compared to the $389 billion of amazon.com, sales forecasts are pointing upwards.

Shortly after the release of the shopping app Temu in autumn 2022, Pinduoduo renamed itself PDD Holdings and has since served as the holding company for both platforms. In 2023, PDD Holdings recorded record sales of $34.9 billion. Compared to the previous year, this corresponds to sales growth of almost 90 percent, which, according to the company, is due to an increase in revenue from online marketing services and transaction services.

Written by: Matthias Janson

Translated by: Anna Fleck