Amazon's Singapore play a precursor to S-E Asia e-commerce battle

AMAZON has been mulling an entry into Singapore for some time and anecdotal evidence suggests it postponed a launch here at least once. The reason for that is not hard to understand: timing was of the essence. For Amazon, entering the Singapore market is not an end by itself. Rather, it is a stepping stone to the larger, lucrative South-east Asian market. More on that later.

Last month, Amazon introduced its "most innovative product", Prime Now - a service that guarantees free two-hour delivery for orders of S$40 and above - in Singapore. Overwhelmed by the initial demand, Amazon's much vaunted delivery network was disrupted for the first few days.

The giant e-retailer has been a trailblazer in the e-commerce marketplace globally, setting standards others aspire to achieve. But in the case of Singapore, it was a latecomer. Lazada, Qoo10 and a number of other players already have a presence here for a number of years. For this reason, Amazon had to adopt a new strategy for Singapore and that came in the form of Prime Now which is actually a niche product within its Prime subscription service.