Global Marketing News – 9th August 2016
Android dominates the Indian market
According to a study from Strategy Analytics, Android now controls 97% of the smartphone market in India.
Within the country, just under 31 million phones were shipped during the second quarter of 2016, with Android devices accounting for nearly 30 million of them.
Strategy Analytics’ senior analyst Rajeev Nair said that phone shipments in India grew by 19% from the same point in 2015, made possible by India’s “low penetration rates, and expanding middle class with more disposable income”.
The large market share is also down to Apple’s falling sales in India – after it released its new iPhone SE model with high-prices – where cheaper, entry-level options are more successful.
Alipay to launch in Indonesia
The ecommerce company Lazada has announced that it will introduce Alibaba’s Alipay to Indonesia.
The company, which is now part of Alibaba, has in the past introduced its own payment system HelloPay, but it has failed to take off, with CEO Florian Holm calling its performance simply “okay”.
Holm announced that the company will now be pushing forward with its investment in technology, and currently plans to integrate its own payment system with Alipay.
It was also revealed that the reason for the integration lay within Alibaba’s payment system having a “good fraud detection” system, adding that the recent hacking issues that hit the local taxi-hailing app Go-Jek would not happen.
No launch date has been revealed, but Holm said the new system was a high priority for the company, and that it would be launched “soon”.
Amazon launches cargo plane delivery service Amazon Prime Air
Amazon has launched its own cargo plane delivery service, Amazon Prime Air.
Intended to speed up delivery times, the company unveiled its new branded aircraft, Amazon One, in Seattle last week.
Vice President of Amazon’s worldwide operations, Dave Clarke, said that the plan was to expand the fleet to 40 aircraft in the next two years.
Clarke described the move as the start of a growing “air transportation network”.
This announcement comes with the addition of 4,000 new delivery trucks and the launch of Amazon Flex, which allows freelance drivers to use their own vehicles to make deliveries to customers.
Line is the top social app in Japan
New research has shown that Line is currently the top social app in Japan.
The Japanese software firm Just Systems has revealed that the app is by far the leading social platform amongst all age groups, particularly with people in their forties, 84% of whom use Line more than any other service.
The only age group where less than 70% of respondents said they used Line the most frequently were those aged from 15 to 19, where less than 58% of those questioned said they used it most.
The survey compared Line to other major social media apps such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Additionally, another survey from Mobile Marketing Data Lab showed that around 90% of all smartphone users in Japan said Line was their preferred social media app.
Nigerian companies should launch own ecommerce stores
And finally, it has been reported that Nigeria’s large ecommerce platforms are not large enough to cope with the demand of the country’s online consumers.
Whilst ecommerce shopping in the country is expanding, with a 34% growth in total online spend in the last year, many new businesses are joining existing marketplaces such as Jumia or Konga, instead of opening their own online stores.
Whilst there are significantly less start-up costs to enter one of these online marketplaces, it limits growth in the long term because these marketplaces do not have the resources to fulfil all the orders.
This means that even with a growing ecommerce market, the limited number of large marketplaces cannot meet the needs of Nigeria’s online shoppers at a high standard.
Supermart’s Raphael Afeador, has said that “one player can’t do it all”, and that more ecommerce stores are needed in order for the market to continue to increase.
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Cal O'Connell
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