Asia is warming to online shopping at last, writes Anita Davis The e-commerce industry in AsiaPacific has been slow to gain momentum because of infrastructure and trust issues that have long been overcome in the West. And with Asia-Pacific's demographic diversity, no single player has been able to dominate the region.

But this is starting to change as broadband penetration and payment methods develop. Recent months have seen growing interest in e-commerce sites in the region. In September, comGateway partnered with Visa and DHL to allow Asian consumers to shop on US sites without a US credit card.

Crucially for the broader media industry, a rise in e-commerce spending will have implications for online advertising.

1 Asia-Pacific's e-commerce industry is fragmented into several localised sites. In China, the major player is Alibaba Group, owner of the popular business-tobusiness platform Alibaba.com and auction site Taobao.com. These combined sites control more than 60 per cent of the e-commerce market share.

However, Alibaba is coming under pressure from Baidu, which beta- launched its e-commerce site in August, and portal host Tencent, which launched Paipai in 2006. Their goal is to cash in on the growingmarket - the number of online shoppers in China grew by 12 million to 55 milion last year.

Meanwhile, eBay's localised sites in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia continue to be popular. News Corporation's Mocca.com is also picking up steam in Singapore and allows sellers to post videos of their goods. In Korea, SK Telecom launched The list Avenue earlier this year which lets buyers track their deliveries via mobile phones and offers a tutorial for retailers unsure of how to start marketing their items.

As in the West, travel has been one of the first sectors to take off travel sites such as eLong, Zuji and CTrip dominate here.

2 Low web penetration and poor infrastructure have held ecommerce back. A major hindrance has been the lack of credit cards. Few consumers in Asia-Pacific own an American credit card, which was a prerequisite to shopping online at e-commerce sites based in the West. The major exceptions are Japan and Korea, the two most developed internet markets - according to a survey by Symantec, 99 per cent of Korean web users shop online, and 97 per cent of Japanese users, comparable with Western markets.

In China, India and Southeast Asia, delivery services have also become more reliable.