Quikr, India’s largest online and mobile classifieds portal, announced today that it has raised $32 million in series E financing, led by New York City-based private equity giant Warburg Pincus. The company’s existing investors, which include Matrix Partners, Norwest Venture Partners and eBay, also participated in the funding.
The investment is Quikr’s fifth and largest financing to date, following an $8 million raise in May 2011, led by Nokia Growth Partners, Norwest and eBay. The latest capital infusion brings Quikr’s total funding to $46 million. → Read More
Back in in 1999, just as Ebay was coming into bloom, William Gibson wrote a piece on his experiences buying expensive watches online. He called the article My Obsession and it details his youth as a picker in the 1970s.
He writes:
This “job,” if it can be called a job, is all but dead these days because of some of the basic properties of the new market. Barring those folks on American Pickers who find items that will eventually hang in a TGI Fridays, the potential for making a lucrative trade in a post-Internet world by finding and selling odd items is nearly nil. First, a picker depends on arbitrage. Arbitrage depends on incomplete information on someone’s part or, in the case of collectable, desire. → Read More
eBay was one of the first e-commerce giants to launch an iPad app following the device’s debut in 2010. As we’ve heard many times, mobile commerce is a huge growth area for eBay and the company is placing some pretty big bets on the mobile shopping experience. Today, the company, which says that its mobile apps have reached 80 million downloads, is debuting version 2.0 of its flagship iPad app, Buy and Sell with eBay, which has ramped up personalization, customization, image quality and more.
One of the major improvements in the app is a visual redesign of the home screen. Now you can completely customize your home screen with your most recent product searches or sales, which can be added, deleted or moved around based on user preferences. Additionally, first time users of the app will login and find their “My eBay Items” already populated to the home screen. → Read More
Last year,eBay acquired Magento, developer of an open-source e-commerce platform for around $180 million. Magento became part of X.commerce, a combined open platform business from eBay and PayPal. A year after the acquisition was announced, Magento co-founder and CTO Yoav Kutner has left eBay. While fellow Magento co-founder Roy Rubin sent Kutner off with a warm farewell, Kutner doesn’t have such nice things to say about eBay and X.commerce, according to this post on Quora.
In response to the question of why he left eBay, Kutner responded (Kutner confirmed to us that he posted this response): I will answer and give much more information over the next few weeks as to the reasons I had to leave Magento. As for now I can say that (very) short term I would not be worried about the ‘open’ part of Magento, but as I have learned eBay and the folks at X.commerce don’t really understand the meaning of open and have a hard time explaining and defining it to them selves and to others. As such, long term, it would be very interesting to see if Magento will continue to stay open in the manor the people behind Magento and I meant it to be. → Read More
eBay has sold off one of its properties today, real estate listings site Rent.com. The buyer is Primedia, which helps people find apartments, houses for rent or new homes for sale through websites, mobile and print publications. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
eBay originally bought Rent.com for $415 million in 2004. At the time, Rent.com fit in with eBay’s classifieds and listings business. Obviously, as the company as shifted towards a focus on e-commerce; classifieds, and real estate listings in particular, are no longer of major interest to eBay. Rent.com also partnered with eBay to help build a new shipping platform for eBay Motors.
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There’s been lots of debate about whether mobile apps or the web have the upper hand when it comes to making content for smartphones, and when it comes to using it. Some interesting insights from Nielsen out today on how in the case of mobile shopping, for now the main audience in the U.S. seems to be much more interested in using the mobile web over store-specific apps.
The research, which took into account data from some 5,000 Android and iOS smartphones in the U.S., doesn’t spell out how much money is actually spent on mobile web versus apps, and it looks like at least in the period covered by the research — which included the holiday shopping season — the results may have been particularly skewed by the sheer force of Amazon. → Read More
Over the holidays, eBay and PayPal both pushed the term ‘couch commerce,’, in which consumers use their tablets and mobile phones from the comfort of their couches. In fact, eBay launched a new feature of its iPad app called Watch With eBay, which allowed users to shop a selection of items on the marketplace related to what they are currently watching on TV. Today, eBay is separating out the feature into a standalone, free iPad app.
The Watch With eBay app surfaces merchandise related to what consumers are watching on television, from the latest fashion trends at red carpet awards shows to sports memorabilia, to DVDs, signed autographs and other items related to favorite shows and actors. → Read More
When Groupon was gearing up for its IPO last year, there was a lot of talk about whether the company would be able to sustain its business on a diet that mainly consisted of daily deals. Today, a little sign of what Groupon might be cooking up for its next course.
Over in Germany, Groupon has launched a new site, Groupon Deals, an Amazon-like storefront that sells a range of goods, from boots to bodysuits.
Like its mainstay-daily deals, the products are being sold at big discounts, of up to 70 percent on some items. Unlike the daily deals, these products do not appear to have timeouts on buying them. → Read More
Personal recommendations have always been a part of ecommerce, but there has been little innovation since Amazon introduced retail and product personalization 10 years ago. But with the increasing mountains of data at digital retailers’ fingertips, ecommerce is about to get even more personal.
The fact is that right now there is little iteration from personalized ecommerce beyond what is taking place on Amazon. So you’ll see suggestions of what other shoppers who bought a certain item also purchased, or recommendations to similar items to what you have purchased, but there is a whole world of social data, and even more-in-depth purchase data that can be mined by retailers to help increase sales. → Read More
eBay just reported fourth quarter and fiscal year 2011 earnings today, which were above analysts expectations. eBay posted revenue of $3.4 billion, up 35 percent from the same quarter in 2010. The company reported fourth quarter net income on a GAAP basis of $2.0 billion, or $1.51 per diluted share, and non-GAAP net income of $788.6 million, or $0.60 per diluted share. Net income was up 15 percent to $789 million. Analysts expected earnings per share of $0.57 on revenue of $3.32 billion.
eBay says the year-over-year increase in the fourth quarter GAAP earnings per diluted share was driven primarily by a gain on the sale of the company’s remaining investment in Skype. The year-over-year increase in the fourth quarter non-GAAP earnings per diluted share was driven primarily by strong top-line growth and improved productivity partially offset by a higher tax rate. → Read More
At his CES keynote yesterday evening, eBay CEO (and new interim PayPal CEO) John Donahoe revealed a number of new mobile payments forecasts for both eBay and PayPal. As we heard from PayPal VP David Marcus a few days ago, PayPal surpassed its expectation of $3.5 billion in mobile payments in 2011, reaching $4 billion for the year. Donahoe said in his keynote that eBay reached $5 billion in mobile GMV (gross merchandise volume) in 2011, doubling 2010′s GMV.
He also projected yesterday that eBay would reach $8 billion in mobile GMV in 2012, and PayPal will reach $7 billion in transactions in 2012. eBay Mobile currently has more than 65 million downloads of eBay’s mobile applications across platforms. And more than 890,000 new eBay shoppers made their first eBay purchase through the company’s mobile apps in 2011, a 113% increase year over year.
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As online retail sales continue to soar, brick and mortar stores are seeing margins dissipate. Online holiday sales are expected to grow 15 percent to $37.6 billion this season while retail sales in physical stores are only expected to increase by 3.8 percent to $469.1 billion. Best Buy recently reported a 29 percent drop in profits because of discounts and sales of top grossing electronics. The fact is that the electronics retailer was probably forced into offering deeply discounted deals in order to compete with e-commerce giant Amazon. And it doesn’t help that Amazon is now offering discounts to consumers on any product purchased via its price comparison mobile app, another huge blow to physical retailers.
Brick and mortar retailers need to figure out a way to compete with Amazon and other e-commerce giants that doesn’t eat into margins. Deals and coupons simply aren’t enought. And as former Apple retail chief Ron Johnson has said, retail isn’t broken, stores are. So how are retail stores going to survive? While mobile may be the technology e-commerce companies are using to jab physical stores, it is also the technology that may save these stores. Personalization and data are the two key factors that could save retail stores; and the vehicle by which these technologies can be utilized is via the mobile phone.
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It’s no secret that eBay is pushing mobile in a big way. Especially during this holiday shopping season, the e-commerce giant is seeing record mobile engagement. And today, eBay is announcing that more than 1 million listings are now made every week through eBay mobile.
That means that now more than ever, eBay’s marketplace sellers are uploading items they want to sell via mobile devices. Last year, eBay consolidated its buying and selling iPhone apps, allowing seller to quickly take photos of items and post them on eBay from the same app that buyers browser items on. → Read More
Online commerce giant eBay this morning ran a Cyber Monday deal for a white Apple iPad 2 WiFi 16GB, selling the popular tablet for $449 or exactly $50 off the MSRP (+ free shipping). Turns out a lot of people figured that was a great deal.
And they were right, too. After all, Apple only discounted the iPad 2 16GB with $41 on Black Friday, so you would indeed have been better off waiting until today and buying it on eBay … if you could get your hands on it quickly enough. → Read More
As we heard earlier today, Thanksgiving proved to be a lucrative day for online retailers. IBM reported online Thanksgiving 2011 sales were up 39 percent over Thanksgiving 2010, with mobile shopping on the rise. eBay and PayPal are seeing similar trends. PayPal Mobile just announced a 511 percent increase in global mobile payment volume when compared to Thanksgiving 2010.
On Thanksgiving in the U.S., consumers shopped on mobile via PayPal most frequently between 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. PST. Around the world, consumers shopped on mobile most frequently between 1:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. PST. → Read More
eBay and PayPal are both pushing the term ‘couch commerce,’ in which consumers will be using their tablets and mobile phones from the comfort of their couches to shop this holiday shopping season. eBay is launching a new feature of its iPad app, which should help take couch commerce to another level.
A new “Watch with eBay” tab has been added to the e-commerce giant’s iPad app that allows users to shop a selection of items on the marketplace related to
what they are currently watching on TV. → Read More
Online holiday shopping reached record levels in 2010. And e-commerce spending is up this year. All signs point to consumers spending even more online this holiday season. I sat down with executives from Google, eBay, PayPal and ShopKick to discuss the trends that are expected to emerge in the e-commerce space over the next few months. They center around mobile, tablets, and deals.
PayPal has more than doubled its mobile payments volume since the 2010 holiday shopping season, and we haven’t even hit the thick of this year’s rush. eBay is projecting $5 billion in mobile payments volume in 2010 and this number could increase in the next few months. And Google projects that 15 percent of total search on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving and one of the biggest shopping days of the year) will come from mobile devices. Tablet devices are now a part of the online shopping experience and retailers are taking note. Clearly, all signs point to the fact that this could be the breakout year for mobile shopping.
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eBay reported third quarter earnings today, which were in-line with Wall Street expectations. Revenue for the third quarter increased 32% to $3 billion, compared to the same period of 2010. This was actually a record quarter for revenue, says the company. Net income on a GAAP basis was $490.5 million, or $0.37 per diluted share, and non-GAAP net income came in at $628.2 million, or $0.48 per diluted share, up 18 percent from 2010. Analysts expected $0.48 cents per share, and revenue was expected to hit $2.9 billion.
The company’s PayPal business continued to help buoy the company’s earnings. PayPal ended the quarter with 103 million active registered accounts, a 14% increase year over year. PayPal revenue increased 32% year over year driven primarily by increased penetration on eBay as well as continued merchant and consumer adoption. PayPal’s net total payment volume grew 31% to $29.3 billion in the third quarter of 2011 compared to the same period of last year. PayPal had its first billion dollar quarter last quarter but exceeded this, bringing in $1.1 billion in revenue, which is up over 30 percent from 2010. And PayPal expects to generate more than $3.5 billion in mobile TPV in 2011, up from $750 million in 2010.
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Today, at eBay’s new developer conference, Innovate, CEO John Donahoe told reporters that the company plans to roll out image-recognition technology for its mobile offerings by the end of the year. Yes, that’s right. Images, get ready to be recognized.
The image recognition integration will allow users of eBay’s mobile apps to snap photos of items they see in the real world on their mobile phones, at which point the apps will then match the photo with similar products currently on sale on eBay.com. This will be a huge addition for the eCommerce giant: Point, click, upload, and find the product you desire. Via image search. → Read More
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