The money spent on Double 11 didn’t increase; people just spent it differently — this whale spotted a few clues in JD.com’s results report 📦
JD.com released its Double 11 results today: from 8 p.m. on October 12 to late night on November 11, it sold more than 50 million AI products and handled over 300 million service orders, with new users placing an average of six orders each. Sales for brands including Midea, TCL, Gree, and Xiaomi each topped RMB 1 billion, while sales doubled for more than 2,000 home appliance and home furnishing brands.
But the broader market was cooling: data from Star Chart showed that GMV across major e-commerce platforms in the first round of Double 11 reached RMB 1.0263 trillion, up just 2.4% year over year, compared with 14.2% over the same period last year. That was even below the 4% growth during 618. Citi expects full-cycle growth to land in the low-to-mid single digits at best.
On the one hand, JD.com’s AI products are flying off the shelves, Token searches have surged more than 13-fold from last quarter, and sales of AI glasses and AI computers have doubled. On the other, growth across the industry has slumped to 2.4%. The money hasn’t increased; it’s simply shifted from “hunting for bargains” to “buying AI and services.”
This whale’s take: consumers haven’t stopped spending — they’ve switched tracks. People are no longer placing extra orders just to qualify for discounts; they’re buying because of the AI hardware and services themselves. The real signal in JD.com’s results is that AI has become the star of Double 11 for the first time. E-commerce is no longer about which platform has the most complicated discount tricks, but about who can put AI in your shopping cart. Still, that 2.4% market-wide growth figure speaks for itself: one platform’s stellar results can’t prop up the entire industry. If everyone competes on price again next year, the competition will only get fiercer. $JD
JD.com released its Double 11 results today: from 8 p.m. on October 12 to late night on November 11, it sold more than 50 million AI products and handled over 300 million service orders, with new users placing an average of six orders each. Sales for brands including Midea, TCL, Gree, and Xiaomi each topped RMB 1 billion, while sales doubled for more than 2,000 home appliance and home furnishing brands.
But the broader market was cooling: data from Star Chart showed that GMV across major e-commerce platforms in the first round of Double 11 reached RMB 1.0263 trillion, up just 2.4% year over year, compared with 14.2% over the same period last year. That was even below the 4% growth during 618. Citi expects full-cycle growth to land in the low-to-mid single digits at best.
On the one hand, JD.com’s AI products are flying off the shelves, Token searches have surged more than 13-fold from last quarter, and sales of AI glasses and AI computers have doubled. On the other, growth across the industry has slumped to 2.4%. The money hasn’t increased; it’s simply shifted from “hunting for bargains” to “buying AI and services.”
This whale’s take: consumers haven’t stopped spending — they’ve switched tracks. People are no longer placing extra orders just to qualify for discounts; they’re buying because of the AI hardware and services themselves. The real signal in JD.com’s results is that AI has become the star of Double 11 for the first time. E-commerce is no longer about which platform has the most complicated discount tricks, but about who can put AI in your shopping cart. Still, that 2.4% market-wide growth figure speaks for itself: one platform’s stellar results can’t prop up the entire industry. If everyone competes on price again next year, the competition will only get fiercer. $JD
