APAC Region Holds Majority Of World’s Online Retail Business

There’s a new champion in worldwide retail eCommerce share by region.

Via eMarketer comes news that, for the first time ever, Asia-Pacific is the outright home to the majority of the online retail market throughout the globe, as global digital retail spend in the region is forecast to reach 52.5 percent by year’s end. Retail commerce sales in the APAC region will total $877.61 billion, which eMarketer notes is a 35.7 percent increase from the region’s total last year.

The outlet attributes Asia-Pacific’s rapid growth in global retail eCommerce in part to the rising middle classes in China, India and Indonesia, as well as the increasing popularity of mobile devices, which are being used more frequently for shopping in the region.

EMarketer adds that China — a country in which online commerce is the primary driver of overall retail sales growth — by itself will be home to over 40 percent of the world’s retail eCommerce sales for 2015, which is about a 5 percent increase from last year.

Commented Monica Peart, eMarketer’s director of forecasting: “This rapid growth in Asia-Pacific, coupled with faster Internet service and greater mobile uptake, is heating up the competitive landscape, where large local players are increasingly vying for market share by improving their logistics and mobile platforms and, in some cases, moving entirely to an app-only service.”

The eMarketer story goes on to point out that in addition to its current dominance of worldwide retail eCommerce, the Asia-Pacific region also leads the world in terms of how much of its total retail market is transacted online. While the global average in that regard is 7.4 percent and projected (by eMarketer) to reach 12.8 percent by 2019, Asia-Pacific currently sees the retail eCommerce portion of its overall retail sales at 10.2 percent, which eMarketer projects will rise to 20.4 percent in 2019.