In a recent letter to its shareholders, Alibaba‘s Executive Chairman Jack Ma mentioned that with e-commerce rapidly becoming a “traditional business,” pure e-commerce players will face tremendous challenges. The company is anticipating a transformed retail industry in the future, one driven by the integration of online and offline shopping, logistics and data transmission across a single value chain. The company is thus adapting itself to remain a major player in the new economic environment. As the line between online and offline retail blurs, large e-commerce giants such as Amazon are looking to open physical stores to adapt to this trend and brick and mortar stores such as Walmart are strengthening their online presence. Alibaba is looking to create an integrated solution for the future of commerce which includes marketplaces, logistics, cloud computing and payments, making it easy for merchants to do business anywhere. Cloud computing is likely to play a major role in the company’s long term strategy as it aims to serve 2 billion customers around the world in the next twenty years.

from Forbes – Tech http://ift.tt/2e0OnIn
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