Shopee’s mobile application achieved the highest Monthly Active Users number in Vietnam for the 1st quarter of 2019, according to an all-new ranking by iPrice Group and App Annie Intelligence.

Mobile shopping is quickly becoming an important factor of e-commerce business in Vietnam.

According to Google and Temasek’s 2018 report on Southeast Asian e-Conomy, more than 90% of Southeast Asians are now connecting to the internet primarily through their smartphones, making this region one of the most mobile-first globally. iPrice Group also noted that during last year’s Singles’ Day, the rate of consumers accessing their e-commerce platform by mobile has risen rapidly from 62.5% in 2017 to a whopping 80.4% in 2018.

Facing such an important trend in customer behaviours, e-commerce merchants in the country are now scrambling to improve and promote their mobile apps.

To provide a better understanding on the state of this competition, iPrice Group has cooperated with App Annie Intelligence to come up with a ranking for mobile shopping apps with highest Monthly Active Users in Vietnam. Taking first place in this ranking for Q1/2019 is Shopee, a reward for their clear mobile-first approach.

Shopee has been investing a lot on campaigns to attract consumers to their mobile app specifically. Most noteworthy is their notorious Shopee Baby Shark video. Another one which happened exclusively in Vietnam is their “Shopping festival 4.0”, a musical event featuring some of the country’s biggest pop stars.

When it comes to the app itself, Shopee is also not afraid to innovate. An assessment report by marketing research agency Econsultancy in 2018 has this to say about the Shopee mobile app: “Shopee has focused on mobile from the beginning and built its user interface around it. This made users’ mobile shopping experiences faster and more intuitive – users can buy or sell their items in less than 30 seconds – allowing Shopee to capture a large group of mobile users in Southeast Asia and Taiwan.”

Ranked at number two is Shopee’s biggest regional competitor Lazada. This is perhaps a more surprising result as according to iPrice Group’s previous Map of E-commerce Report, which ranks Vietnamese e-commerce companies based on average website traffic, Lazada’s monthly website traffic has been on a decline that puts them at the 3rd position in the country, behind Shopee and Tiki.

However, when it comes to mobile, Lazada is still fighting strong. It seems that the e-commerce giant is now shifting to put a bigger emphasis on mobile shopping.

Ranking in top 5 behind Shopee and Lazada are the apps from three local e-commerce platforms: Tiki, Sendo, and Adayroi. These three companies also have been achieving good results in term of average website traffic for recent quarter, making them worthy opponents for the two regional companies.

Behind this top 5 in the ranking are AliExpress, Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba, all of which are currently not officially operating in Vietnam.

Source: iPrice Group Written by Dang Dang Truong iPrice