Singles Day, China’s biggest year-end shopping event, kicked off its pre-sale period across platforms on Monday. Sales data from e-commerce giant JD, a platform known for consumer electronic offerings, showed sizable growth in consumer electronic sales.
Why it matters: Although JD’s sales data showed growth, the data still suggests some cause for cautious optimism as the platform only revealed the percentage change in sales – not the exact number of units sold. This year’s Singles Day comes amid a backdrop of a global slowdown in consumer electronics due to weak demand, especially for smartphones and PCs. Brands are hoping that the mega e-commerce event can offset some of the losses in recent months.
Details: Within the first second of Monday’s shopping event, smartphone sales from Apple, Xiaomi, Honor, and iQOO hit RMB 100 million ($13.76 million) cumulatively on JD, according to data from the platform. Oppo, Vivo, Samsung, OnePlus, Motorola, and Meizu saw 100% growth in sales in the first ten minutes compared with the same period last year. Foldable phones also had a 400% yearly growth in sales within the first ten minutes of the promotion. High-end gaming laptops equipped with a display with over 2k resolution and ultra-light laptops saw smaller 70% yearly growth in sales within the first ten minutes.
- These figures include both pre-booked purchases and real-time ones.
- Meanwhile, sales of XR glasses were up eight times over the same period last year.
- Nvidia’s newly released RTX 40 series graphics cards made by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) sold out in the first three seconds on JD. The cards are built with new Ada Lovelace Architecture, which Nvidia says is two times better than the last generation on a range of critical specs.
- Other devices like compact printers and portable power generators also witnessed significant growth, rising 165% and 2,000% year-on-year, respectively.
- Home appliances from all brands achieved RMB 1 billion in sales within the first ten minutes of the sales event, a 40% year-on-year growth on JD. Midea, Haier, TCL, LittleSwan, Gree, Hisense, Rongsheng, and Sony all saw a 50% yearly growth in sales.
Context: Major e-commerce giants Alibaba and JD have started their yearly Singles Day shopping event with a major promotion of RMB 50 discounts for every RMB 300 spent.
- For last year’s Singles Day, JD and Alibaba’s Tmall accounted for 92.15% of the total GMV generated, according to BBC, quoting the e-commerce data platform Dianshubao.
- Last year, on the first day of Singles Day pre-sales, the high-end smartphone sales of Xiaomi, iQOO, Oppo, Honor, Huawei, and Vivo were four times those made during the same period in 2020, according to a report by Huaan Securities.