Who’s Winning the App War? Shein Ahead of Amazon but Temu Wins Key Metric
Amazon may boast twice as many U.S. users, but PYMNTS.com’s monthly shopping app ranking shows Shein leading the pack.
The payments-centered media company’s Provider Rankings gave the ultra-fast-fashion e-tailer an overall score of 94, placing it just ahead of competitors Amazon and Walmart, which each scored a 93. The ranking accounts for a combination of publicly available information and app usage data that PYMNTS.com has access to, including average session length, sessions per user, downloads and monthly active users.
More from Sourcing Journal
Alibaba Group’s AliExpress and Alibaba.com apps took the next spots with scores of 90 and 88, respectively, followed by Nike at 87, Target at 78, Poshmark at 77 and Adidas and The Home Depot tied at 76. PYMNTS.com did not include Temu, which is currently the No. 1 free app in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, in its ranking.
The analytics firm GWS published its own shopping app analysis last month. Focused solely on the U.S. market, the research showed Amazon far and ahead the leader in daily users. Though down 8 million daily users from nine months earlier, the 46 million remaining Amazon app users easily surpassed the roughly 17 million daily users of Walmart and Temu’s apps. Shein, meanwhile, had seen notable user growth in the U.S. in 2023—climbing from 3.1 million to 4.9 million daily users in the past year—but ultimately remained well behind it competitors.
GWS also shared data on how much time users spent on each app. Temu led the way with an average of 20 minutes per day, followed by Shein and Amazon at 14 minutes and 12 minutes, respectively.
In a letter to investors last month, Shein executive vice chairman Donald Tang reported that the company had recorded its highest first-half net profit ever, thanks largely to marketplace launches in Brazil and the U.S. The achievement came as Shein faces on an ongoing copyright infringement lawsuit from H&M in Hong Kong, a lawsuit in Massachusetts from Temu accusing it of coercing Chinese manufacturers into exclusive agreements and a copyright infringement lawsuit from independent artists in California. At the same time, it has faced scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers who claim it is using the “de minimis” exemption—Tang recently voiced support for “responsible reform” of the statute—to skirt tariffs, as well as scrutiny under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.
