Malaysia is PricePanda’s ‘most successful market’
By Digital News Asia July 22, 2014
- Highest volume of traffic, referrals, organic searches, app downloads
- Local SEA smartphone brands giving big boys a run for the money
PRICE comparison startup PricePanda, part of the Rocket Internet portfolio, said that Malaysia has become its most successful market, based on internal figures.
While it declined to give actual numbers, the company said that Malaysia has the highest volume of visitors in most categories based on its research on the monthly average figures across a 12-month period (June 2013 to June 2014).
Malaysia has the highest volumes when it comes to referrals (via desktop); organic search visitors (via desktop); referrals (via mobile and tablets); and PricePanda mobile app downloads (see below).
“Due to its constant growth in the past few years, Malaysia has become our most successful market,” cofounder Christian Schiller (pic) said in a statement issued by his company.
“91% of Malaysia’s population is shopping online and while on-the-go through their smartphones and tablets.
“There is clearly a huge market here that PricePanda can help [with], with so many users looking to get the latest gadgets in the market at the best deals and with e-commerce businesses looking to reach out to those users.
“By gathering the product information and presenting it on a concise and user-friendly platform, we aim to continue providing total price transparency to our existing users and to the online community here,” he added.
Malaysia has a higher Internet penetration rate than the world’s average, overtaken only by Singapore, PricePanda said.
Its e-commerce market has grown rapidly from an estimated market size of RM3.65 billion in 2013 to RM4.76 billion in 2014, while the mobile-commerce market has increased from RM1.82 billion to RM2.68 billion within a year, according to PayPal.
[RM1 = US$0.31]
Based on research by the World Bank, there are over 10 million smartphone users in Malaysia alone, a number that is predicted to rise by 60% in 2015, PricePanda said.
PricePanda was founded in 2012 by Schiller and Louis Iskandar and is currently available in Argentina, Colombia, Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore and the Philippines.
“When we started PricePanda in 2012, we only had one goal: To re-structure today’s shopping information overload and to be a helpful guide through the jungle of different price offers from diverse e-commerce stores,” said Schiller.
“Since then, we have helped more than four million people from all of these countries with their buying choices. At the same time, our platform also empowers e-commerce businesses, as we help them to convert their offerings into sales.
“With e-commerce a fast growing market in Malaysia due to the high penetration of smartphones and the popularity of social media, especially Facebook, we saw a lot of potential in Malaysia and it was naturally one of the first few countries we entered in South-East Asia,” he added.
Other SEA markets
PricePanda also released information on visits its South-East Asian platforms receive from mobile sources (both smartphone and tablet), plus mobile Facebook and Google referrals (click infographic to enlarge).
As local South-East Asian smartphone brands such as Cherry Mobile (Philippines), Ninetology (Malaysia) and SmartFren (Indonesia) gain market share and continue to grow, global competitors such as Samsung are beginning to feel the push, PricePanda said.
According to GfK data released June 5, smartphones selling in South-East Asia for less than US$100 had the strongest growth, equivalent to over 30% of the region’s sales in the first quarter.
Malaysia and Indonesia are the biggest markets for ‘phablets,’ with Indonesian consumers buying over 7.3 million units in the same period – two-fifths of total smartphone sales in the region.
Mobile app
In October last year, PricePanda launched its first mobile application in South-East Asia, targeted at Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Indonesia in October 2013.
The app allows users to search for a certain product by name and can find the best deals online and while on the go. Users can also contact the merchants and retailers’ websites through the app.
The PricePanda mobile app is available on both Android and iOS.
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