Amazon Uses Singapore as Beachhead for SE Asian Expansion (Jul 26, 2017)

TechCrunch reports that Amazon is launching in Singapore as the first step in an expansion into South East Asia, and other publications have reported that the Prime Now app is live in Singapore. Singapore is a great starting point for Amazon in the region, with high GDP per capita, a small and densely populated area, and proximity to other markets such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and so on. As such, a successful launch there could easily serve as a beachhead for expansion into the rest of the region. After a couple of years of higher profits, Amazon appears to be upping investment in growth again in recent quarters, and its international expansion has been a big part of that push, with an acquisition in the Middle East, early moves in Australia, and now this launch. The context for all this, though, is that Amazon is still active in only relatively few countries with its full set of offerings including Prime. Only thirteen countries were included on Amazon’s list of top selling items on its recent Prime Day, and 92% of its global revenues come from just four countries: the US, Germany, Japan, and the UK. That’s easy for those of us in the US to forget, but Amazon is still far from ubiquitous globally and major players dominate e-commerce in several important markets. In Singapore and the rest of SEA, Amazon faces some existing strong competitors backed by some of those larger players from Asia, including Alibaba, so it’s going to be far guaranteed that it enjoys US- or UK-level dominance. But brand awareness seems to be high in the region already and it has a decent shot at establishing a good business in Singapore and beyond.

via TechCrunch

The company, topic, and narrative tags below will take you to other posts with the same tags. The narrative link(s) will also take you to the narrative essay which provides additional context behind the post.

• Amazon
• Prime

• Growth

• Amazon Dominates E-Commerce

Vote for or share this post

Use the Like button below to vote for this post as one of the most important of the week. The posts voted most important are more likely to be included in the News Roundup podcast episode I do each week. Or use the sharing buttons to share a link to this post to social networks or other services.