Temu's "fever" in this country has waned, with both users and installations declining!

In recent years, the increasing penetration of the Internet and smartphones, coupled with the increasing number of people turning to online shopping, has led to a rapid expansion of the Korean e-commerce market. Global Data forecasts that the country's e-commerce market transaction volume will reach US$242.2 billion in 2025 .

Faced with a market with such great development potential, platforms such as Temu have entered the market one after another and are actively accelerating their local layout.

In the past two months, the news that "Temu's monthly active users in South Korea reached 8.29 million, a month-on-month increase of 42%" attracted widespread attention in the cross-border e-commerce circle, and also caused panic among South Korea's local e-commerce platforms.

However, a recent survey shows that Temu's popularity in South Korea is waning.

Data from big data analytics company IGAworks Mobile Index shows that Temu's installation volume has been declining since April, when 2.28 million users installed the app, while in May the number of installations was only 1.71 million, a drop of 25% (about 570,000) in one month.

Data shows that Temu has been ranked first in the installation ranking of Korean shopping applications from October last year to April this year, and the number of installations in May was the lowest since October last year (2.22 million).

Meanwhile, TikTok surpassed Temu in South Korea last month. Another major platform, Shein, also showed a good development trend. It was reported that its installation volume was 170,621 in April and increased slightly to 187,763 in May.

In addition, the number of monthly active users also shows that Temu 's growth in South Korea is gradually slowing down.

In April, Temu's monthly active users were 8,238,624, which decreased to 7,970,318 in May, showing a downward trend for two consecutive months.

Professionals analyzed that the reason why Temu’s popularity in South Korea has declined in the past two months is actually because local people are worried about the quality of the products on the platform.

Recently, the Korean Customs found that some of Temu's products contained excessive amounts of carcinogens during product testing . In addition, the platform's leakage of user personal information is also a major controversy.

A logistics industry insider said that Koreans were particularly interested in Temu's low-priced goods at the beginning, but after experiencing a series of quality and delivery problems, they turned to local e-commerce platforms.

However, some industry insiders believe that the decline in popularity of Chinese e-commerce platforms may be temporary. After all, the wide range of low-priced goods is too attractive to Korean consumers.

Recently, Korean media reported that the surge in parcel volume on platforms such as Temu has brought a lot of business to Korean airlines. Data shows that from January to May this year, the total amount of cargo transported by 11 Korean airlines on international routes reached 1,154,524 tons, setting a record high since 2009.

Having said that, the phenomenon of "fading enthusiasm" is still a wake-up call for platforms like Temu. It also warns all cross-border e-commerce platforms to continuously improve product quality. If not handled properly, it will inevitably affect their popularity overseas and be detrimental to their own development.