by NUR HAZIQAH A MALEK/ pic by TMR FILE

SHOPEE topped a list of Malaysia’s leading e-commerce players for the second quarter of 2019 (2Q19) with 21.26 million monthly web visits and ranking first in both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

According to iPrice Group Sdn Bhd’s “The Biggest E-commerce Apps and Websites in South-East Asia” 2Q19 study, the competition between Lazada and Shopee in the region continued in the quarter.

“Shopee started making strong improvements in web traffic across South-East Asia in 3Q18. Within one year, the South-East Asia-backed e-commerce doubled its total visits. This growth also coincides with it successfully raising US$575 million (RM2.41 billion) back in June 2018,” the study noted.

Meanwhile, Lazada maintained its consistency across the region, having acquired almost 180 million visitors in both the desktop and mobile web categories during each quarter.

“In addition to this, Lazada has been putting a high emphasis on the development of its mobile shopping application,” it said.

According to iPrice Insights, tailing the two top e-commerce players are Zalora with 1.57 million monthly web visits, Sephora with 385,100 visits and Go Shop with 749,000 visits. In terms of web-based shopping year-on-year (YoY), Malaysia is showing a big fall in total web traffic YoY, decreasing by 33%.

Regionally, Shopee and Lazada remain as the frontrunners in the most visited e-commerce websites category during the quarter under review, after achieving the same feat in 1Q19.

Shopee improved its position by jumping from third to second place in Indonesia, and second to first place in Malaysia in terms of most visited website, while Lazada continued to lead with the highest average total visits (desktop and mobile web) in three out of six countries (Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines).

However, the two website platforms are also challenged by homegrown players in other countries such as Tokopedia and Bukalapak in Indonesia, Tiki and Sendo in Vietnam, as well as Qoo10 in Singapore.

South-East Asia is the world’s fastest-growing Internet region due to the high potential in the number of smartphone users in the region.

According to an updated report by Google LLC and Temasek Holdings Pte Ltd, it is projected that the Internet economy would reach US$240 billion by 2025.

To track the growth of e-commerce in the region, iPrice Group partnered App Annie Intelligence to rank the top-performing mobile e-commerce shopping apps based on monthly active users and total downloads.