Jack Ma, CEO of Alibaba.com, the parent company of online auction site Taobao.com, has told local media that Taobao.com has already taken 75% of the online auction market share in China and has left eBay Eachnet far behind.
According to Jack Ma, Taobao.com has 26 million goods online and its web pages are browsed 110 million times each month.
Jack Ma aims to make the online transaction volume of Taobao.com reach US$450 million in each quarter this year, and the total transaction volume of the whole year will increase to US$1.8 billion from the previous year's US$1 billion. At the same time, he estimates that the total registered users of Taobao.com will exceed that of eBay Eachet in June this year.
Three years ago Ma promised that Taobao.com will start charging fees from May this year, and he now confirms that this will be initiated by the end of 2006. He has not disclosed what type of fees will be charged.
However, Ma adds that unlike eBay Eachnet, Taobao.com will not charge a transaction fee for each good sold because he thinks this type of pricing model is unfair to users.
