These are two of the biggest stats in Alibaba’s newest visual overview of the Chinese e-commerce market. Alibaba is China’s online shopping giant — the company sold over $175 billion worth of products in 2012, and it owns TMall, which manages online sales for thousands of Chinese companies, as well as Taobao, which is, roughly, the Chinese version of eBay.

Alibaba, which Yahoo partially owns, made history in 2012 by racking up $3 billion in sales in a single day.

Sixty percent of those 242 million Chinese have incomes of less than $320 a month, but the average Chinese user spends almost as much online as U.S consumers: $1,054 — mostly because online prices are cheaper than in a store.

Alibaba reports that 54 percent of Chinese shop online at TMall — its own online shopping mall — with only 3 percent shopping at Joyo Amazon, which is Amazon’s Chinese division. Interestingly, 68 percent of what they buy is clothing and accessories, with much lower rates for digital goods, consumer electronics, and media.

Alibaba predicts that 2013 will be the year that Chinese e-commerce surpasses U.S e-commerce, with $265 billion in sales compared to a projected $230 billion for America, and that total Chinese online sales will reach $445 billion in 2015.

All the details in visual form:

photo credit: Sprengben [why not get a friend] via photopin cc

In fact, Alibaba chairman Jack Ma said only two companies have ever recorded annual transaction volumes at this level: Wal-Mart and Alibaba.

Alibaba — which recorded $3 billion in sales in a single day earlier this year — is a conglomerate primarily composed of Tmall, which manages e-commerce operations for thousands of companies in China, and Taobao Marketplace, a rough equivalent of eBay. All payments are handled by Alipay, the company’s own payments processor, and Alipay has over 700 million registered users — with credit card information.

The company has grown massively in the past four years as the Chinese middle class increases in size and wealth, and as it has become a hub for a massive share of Chinese e-commerce. E-commerce has been growing at 60 percent year-over-year in 2012 in China’s third and fourth-tier cities, the company says, and currently just over five percent of all Chinese retail spending – RMB 18.39 trillion — passes through Alibaba websites.

And it’s not looking backward, as chairman and CEO Jack Ma made clear:

“It’s very likely that next year our transaction volume will be bigger than all the American e-commerce companies combined,” Ma said in a company statement.

In 2012 so far, the company has accounted for an amazing 60 percent of all packages delivered in China — an astounding 12 million packages a day. That’s up from an average of eight million packages a day in 2011.

The company measures GMV, a sales equivalent that takes into account all product sold by clients who use Alibaba’s e-commerce infrastructure to enable their own sales, and all Chinese consumers or businesses that sell their products on Taobao’s marketplace. The measure is roughly equivalent to gross sales, but an important distinction is that most of the profits of each sale do not reside with Alibaba, which takes a small percentage. That’s not entirely dissimilar to Amazon, which facilitates the sale of many other companies’ products, or eBay, which takes a small percentage of any item you might sell on the site.

Alibaba is predicting three trillion RMB of total volume of sales through its various sites in 2017, which would be $471 billion, and would surpass Wal-Mart’s current sales of about $444 billion.

Amazon’s annual sales volumes are in the $50-60 billion range, with quarterly sales of $13 to $15 billion. eBay sold about $5 billion 2011 and is projecting about $8 billion in sales in 2012. The U.S e-commerce market, however, is much more fractured than the Chinese market, with many companies taking small slices of the overall pie.

Yahoo still owns a stake in Alibaba — about 23 percent after selling half of its shares for $7.6 billion earlier this year.

photo credit: Jim Nix / Nomadic Pursuits via photopin cc

In May of this year, Yahoo agreed to sell half of its stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba for about $7 billion. At the time, Yahoo chief financial officer Tim Morse planned to return the cash to shareholders — a feel-good quick hit, perhaps, but hardly something that would revive the company.

But new CEO Marissa Mayer, who is already bringing a new product focus to the company, may have different plans.

In an 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that Business Insider noticed today, Yahoo states that it is reevaluating those plans as Mayer restructures the company and looks for acquisitions.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer

Here are the relevant excerpts from the filing, “New Chief Executive Officer and Review of Business Strategy:”

Ms. Mayer is engaging in a review of the Company’s business strategy to enhance long-term shareholder value.

As part of that review, Ms. Mayer intends to review with the Board of Directors, among other things, the Company’s growth and acquisition strategy, the restructuring plan we began implementing in the second quarter of 2012, and the Company’s cash position and planned capital allocation strategy.

This review process may lead to a reevaluation of, or changes to, our current plans, including our restructuring plan, our share repurchase program, and our previously announced plans for returning to shareholders substantially all of the after tax cash proceeds of the initial share repurchase under the Share Repurchase and Preference Share Sale Agreement we entered into on May 20, 2012 with Alibaba Group Holding Limited.

Judiciously spent, $7 billion might be the ticket to help the once-proud Internet giant regain some of its former glory. That may only be seven Instagrams, but there are plenty of other startups available for significantly less money. Superangel Dave McClure has already suggested buying properties focusing on fashion, shopping, and women.

And while Pinterest might be a little pricy — it was already valued at $1.5 billion in May of this year, and traffic continues to grow — TheFancy has recently been in the acquisition rumor mill.

The only problem?

Yahoo is not great at creating lasting value from acquisitions. Talk to Flickr or Delicious. Or Broadcast.com.

One thing I will say: If anyone can figure it out, Mayer can.

Image credit: Gl0ck/ShutterStock