Tmall Singles' Day sales rise 60%

HANGZHOU - Alibaba's Tmall online marketplace has reported dazzling sales of 91.2 billion yuan ($14.3 billion) on this year's Singles' Day shopping spree on Thursday, a 60-percent rise from last year's 51.7 billion yuan.

Over 68 percent of transactions were made on wireless devices such as smartphones and tablets during China's equivalent of Cyber Monday, Alibaba's data showed.

Cellphones became the most popular product, with a whopping 3.13 million sets sold on the day, followed by nuts, milk, honey, cars, apples, TV sets and watches. Tmall is applying to Guinness World Records to recognize the sales of the eight items as single-day records.

According to the company's Zhejiang HQ in east China, 232 countries and regions and more than 5,000 overseas brands participated in the promotion. The United States, Japan, Republic of Korea, Germany and Australia ranked as the top five countries in terms of imported products.

Rural residents also joined the shopping spree in more than 8,000 centers set up by the company offering free Internet access. They purchased a record number of down feather quilts, thermal underwear items and washing machines. The most popular digital products were iPhones and TV sets.

Sales generated in rural areas topped 10 million yuan just eight minutes after midnight.

The purchases meant 467 million parcels needing to be delivered nationwide. The first parcel was signed 14 minutes after the order was placed, and it took one and a half hours for the first cross-border parcel to arrive in the hands of its buyer, according to Alibaba.

Over 200 banks and Alipay, Alibaba's online financial service, processed 710 million payments in 24 hours, peaking at 85,900 deals per second.

Alibaba President Ma Yun said he hoped to turn Singles' Day into a global occasion.