Taobao surges in popularity as overseas shoppers flock to the site

Chinese e-commerce platform Taobao has surged to the top of Apple App Store's free download charts in 16 countries as a large number of overseas consumers are flocking to the online marketplace to buy products directly from Chinese suppliers amid U.S. tariff hikes.

Data from third-party data analytics company showed that the overseas download volume of Taobao app came up to 326,000 on Tuesday, surging 222 percent compared to 104,000 downloads on Sunday.

The app is now among the top 10 of app downloads in 123 countries. Taobao's downloads in Apple's iOS platform in North America and Europe skyrocketed by 483 percent and 439 percent, respectively, during this period.

It climbed to the second spot in the U.S. Apple App Store on Wednesday and topped the download charts in France.

The sudden popularity of Taobao among overseas shoppers came after Chinese cross-border e-commerce app DHgate secured the second spot on the free app download charts in the Apple App Store in the U.S., just behind OpenAI's ChatGPT.