Alibaba shatters 11/11 sales record

Workers at Hangzhou-based China'sAlibaba GroupHolding Ltd handle orders on the e-commerce giant's "11/11" online sales event on Tuesday, Nov 11. Shoppers placed a record number of orders on Alibaba's platforms within the first 40 minutes and sales exceeded 10 billion yuan ($1.6 billion). [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

China's e-commerce giant Alibaba has shattered the single-day sales for its Nov 11 online shopping festival, known as 11/11, reaching the a new mark at 1:31pm, more than 10 hours earlier than last year.

Alibaba's online platforms, including Taobao and Tmall, topped sales of 36.2 billion yuan($5.91 billion in 13.5 hours, surpassing the total of the entire 24-hour event from last year. Analysts said the total sales of the Hangzhou-based firm for Nov 11 could be as high as 80 billion yuan.

Created in 2009, the event was originally launched to tempt single people without partners to console themselves with some retail therapy, spurred on by massive discounts from retailers.

More than 45 percent of Alibaba's transactions from this year's event came from orders placed on mobile devices, signaling a strong growth in smartphone shopping.

The group also upgraded this year's event into a global online shopping carnival by helping Chinese shoppers purchase overseas products and overseas buyers acquire goods from China.

Shoppers from 199 countries and regions placed orders on Alibaba's platforms by 1:30 pm on Tuesday. The top overseas markets by transactions were Hong Kong, United States, Taiwan,Australia and Canada.