Media365
Hours after Alibaba Group Holding began offering freebies including bubble tea through its artificial intelligence app Qwen on Friday, a surge in downloads pushed the chatbot past Tencent Holdings’ Yuanbao to the top of China’s Apple App Store, climbing from 10th place a day earlier.
More than 10 million free orders – worth 250 million yuan (US$36 million) – were placed within nine hours using vouchers capped at 25 yuan through Qwen, its team said on its official Weibo account.
The surge in traffic and orders temporarily disrupted the campaign and overwhelmed many storefronts across mainland China, according to shop owners posting on social media platforms.
Alibaba joined other Chinese Big Tech firms, including Tencent and Baidu, in a high-stakes battle for Spring Festival attention. Tencent and Baidu committed a combined 1.5 billion yuan to their digital red packet giveaways to win customers for their flagship AI assistant apps.
Analysts said the Hangzhou-based e-commerce giant was achieving two goals with one campaign, attracting new users to Qwen while driving growth for its e-commerce and on-demand delivery businesses, according to Zhuang Shuai, founder and chief analyst at e-commerce consultancy Bailian. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
