Tuesday Dec 19 after the clsoing bell, Ebay announced that it will shut down it’s main website in China and will enter into a joint venture with Beijing-based Internet company TOM Online Inc. Ebay will have a 49% stake by contributing $40 million in cash and TOM will have 51% majority stake with only will contribute $20 million in financing.
Ebay has already shut its Japanse website in 2002. It fell behind Yahoo in Japan. It has already acquired the auction site Baazee.com in India and has been successful so far in India since there’s no competitor. That may soon change though. Neither Baazee nor Ebay really knows how to cater a common Indian consumer since so far the common Indian consumer has not yet been served by any of the online companies. Not that they are reluctant to serve them but the online infrastructure is yet to become available and affordable to the common consumer. In India, urban or metropolitan consumers are the only ones that have easy access to the online infrastructure and hence currently the services provided are only available to them.
"Asia is very different from western Europe and the United States, no question," Whitman said. "In every country, we have a tailored strategy, and I will tell you that China needs an even more tailored strategy."
Although Ebay dominates the online auction market in the US and Western Europe, it has hardly been able to survive in the New Economies of East Asia.
posted by Webmaster @ 4:32 AM,
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