The world’s largest e-commerce company, Alibaba, did not release full sales figures for its annual Singles Day event for the first time. The event falls on November 11th (11/11) and is the world’s biggest online shopping day. According to Tradingplatforms.com, this year, Alibaba’s sales reached $84 billion, which is in line with last year’s sales.
The slowing global economy, rising inflation, and Covid-19 lockdowns have been blamed for the sales stagnation. This is the first time in Alibaba’s history that Single’s Day sales have not increased year-over-year. The event was first created by Chinese college students in the 1990s as a way to celebrate being single and has since morphed into the world’s biggest online shopping event.
According to Tradingplatforms’s Edith Reads, “Singles Day is the world’s largest shopping festival, outshining similar US events such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday in terms of sales. The event is supposed to encourage Chinese consumers to shop online and has been increasingly popular. This year, however, things are different. The global pandemic has put a halt to many people’s spending habits, and this is reflected in Alibaba’s sales figures.”
Reads goes on to say that “It is not just Alibaba that is feeling the effects of the pandemic. Other major retailers such as Amazon, also reported slowing sales growth in recent months. The good news is that Alibaba is still seeing strong growth in other areas, such as its cloud computing business. This shows that the company is diversified and will be able to weather the storm.”
Difficult Economic Times
Other companies are also feeling the effects of the pandemic. For example, Amazon announced that it would not be hiring as many seasonal workers this holiday season as it did last year. Google and Microsoft have also said they will slow down their hiring rates. Apple has stated that it plans to be more cautious about expanding its workforce during these difficult economic times.
Tesla’s Elon Musk stated that the company would reduce its workforce by 10%, and Netflix, which lost 1 million subscribers this year, has let go of 300 employees.
The pandemic has also affected the Metaverse. The Metaverse is a virtual world that various tech companies are creating. Meta is one of the companies working on the Metaverse. It has poured billions of dollars into its development. However, the company has been losing money. Meta’s Reality Labs division, which is in charge of the virtual and augmented reality that makes up the metaverse, said it lost $3.7 billion compared to $2.6 billion last year.
Despite the difficult times, it is encouraging to see companies still investing in new technologies. The Metaverse is one example of this. It is an ambitious project that has the potential to change the way we interact with the world. Hopefully, it will help the world to come out of this pandemic stronger than ever before.
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