China’s online shopping market increased by just 24 per cent year-on-year in 2016, implying the near $700 billion market is decelerating after growing 37 per cent in 2015 and 47 per cent in 2014, according to iResearch.

The online shopping market, as measured by gross merchandise value (GMV), reached CNY4.7 trillion ($684 billion) last year (see chart, click to enlarge).

About three-quarters of the country’s total online shopping is done via mobile devices.

As the industry becomes increasingly mature, e-commerce companies are going beyond just expanding their coverage, and improving delivery and after-sales service, to exploring cross-border and rural e-commerce opportunities, iResearch said.

The consumer-to-consumer (C2C) segment increased by just 16 per cent in 2016, while GMVs of the country B2C online shopping market grew 32 per cent to CNY2.6 trillion. The B2C market accounted for 55 per cent of the entire online shopping market in China, up 3.2 percentage points from 2015.

Alibaba’s tmall.com maintained is spot as the market leader in the country’s B2C online shopping market, with a 56.6 per cent share. JD.com was a far second with a 24.7 per cent share and suning.com was third with a 4.3 per cent share.

iResearch said JD.com, Suning.com and vip.com all had growth rates of at least 32 per cent last year in the B2C segment.