Forrester: Mobile shopping sales in China tipped to reach $1 trillion by 2020

Chinese online retail sales via a mobile phone are expected to reach $1 trillion in 2020, according to new data from Forrester.

As the world’s largest online retail market, China is expected to be the first market to reach this milestone driven by its saturated smartphone market and the explosion in mobile commerce.

Chinese consumers spent $681 billion on online retail in 2016, with online sales accounting for more than 19% of all retail sales. Forrester expects this share will increase to 24% by 2021.

Globally, Asia Pacific is the largest region for online retail sales, driven by the size of the market in China and the fast growth of the market in India. One fifth of all retail sales in Asia Pacific will take place online by 2021.

China accounts for nearly 80% of online retail sales in Asia Pacific, it is followed by Japan with $93 billion, South Korea with $46 billion, Australia with $25 billion, and India with $16 billion.

However, India is expected to overtake Australia in 2019 when its online retail market hits $64 billion in 2020 – almost twice the size of Australia’s at $38 billion.

Apparel is the largest category for online retail, followed by consumer electronics and computer hardware. In a sign of the increasing maturity of online shopping the fastest growing categories are homeware and furniture, grocery and beauty and cosmetics.

Source: The Drum

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