Temu Surges to Challenge Amazon's Global E-commerce Dominance

In a seismic shift for the global retail landscape, Temu, the budget shopping platform owned by PDD Holdings, has caught up with Amazon.com in cross-border market share globally. The platform, which launched in 2022, saw its share surge from less than 1 per cent then to 24 per cent last year, on par with American giant Amazon, according to a survey published by International Post Corporation (IPC), an association of 26 national postal services in Europe, Asia-Pacific and North America. Amazon’s share, on the other hand, has slightly slipped over the past few years. Its market share for the cross-border sector, where consumers purchase goods shipped from elsewhere, was 25 per cent in 2024 and 26 per cent in the two prior years. “Chinese e-commerce exports, especially from Temu, have significantly increased in the past three years, though the global e-commerce supply chain is evolving due to customs changes in 2025 and into 2026,” said IPC chief executive Holger Winklbauer. Shein, another Chinese-founded retail giant, stabilised its share at 9 per cent in 2025, while AliExpress, operated by China’s Alibaba Group Holding, held 8 per cent, down from 9 per cent in 2024 and 12 per cent the year before, IPC data showed. Alibaba owns the Post. The survey, conducted in September last year with 30,970 participants from 37 countries including the US, France and Australia, showed that some platforms lost a significant amount of their market. For example, eBay shed 68 per cent of its market share between 2018 and 2025, falling to fifth spot last year with 5 per cent compared with 17 per cent in 2018.