Amazon launches Prime Now, its two-hour delivery service, in Singapore, taking on Chinese rival, Alibaba
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc launched its two-hour delivery service in Singapore on Thursday, marking the e-commerce giant's biggest push into Southeast Asia and its first head …
Context & Ripple Effects
Prime Now has been Amazon's vehicle for exporting fast delivery since its first international one-hour launch in London in 2015, followed by food delivery in Seattle. Singapore is different in kind: it is the service's biggest push into Southeast Asia and puts Amazon head-to-head with Alibaba on the Chinese rival's regional doorstep.
The arc since then runs through India, where Amazon Fresh arrived in Bengaluru in 2019 and the Now service has since compressed to ten-minute deliveries in New Delhi. Alibaba's answer, visible in its later $7B delivery and shopping subsidy plan alongside a Singapore AI hub, confirms the city-state became the contested ground this 2017 entry opened.
First-order effects
- Singapore shoppers gain two-hour delivery from Amazon, and Alibaba now faces a direct Amazon-branded logistics presence in a Southeast Asian hub rather than competing only through local proxies.
Second-order effects
- Alibaba's subsequent subsidy-heavy counterplay — billions earmarked for delivery and shopping incentives plus infrastructure in Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines — prices the defense of the region Amazon just entered.
- Amazon's own playbook keeps accelerating: the same Now brand that launched here at two hours now delivers in as little as ten minutes in New Delhi, forcing both companies to treat delivery speed as a recurring capital commitment, not a one-time launch.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Southeast Asian e-commerce consolidates around two foreign platforms competing on subsidized latency rather than assortment, with each delivery-speed escalation raising the fixed logistics cost of staying in the market.
The trend: E-commerce competition between Amazon and Alibaba is migrating from catalog breadth to delivery latency, with each side funding ever-faster fulfillment through standing subsidy and infrastructure budgets.