Nvidia’s promotional store on China’s biggest e-commerce site has become the centre of speculation over whether the US tech giant will pull back from China after being targeted by Beijing in an antitrust investigation.
Nvidia’s GeForce store on Alibaba Group Holding’s Tmall e-commerce platform opened in 2016, and now has over 123,000 followers. The homepage provides links to sellers offering video game laptops equipped with GeForce graphics cards, but the Nvidia store does not sell products directly. According to Nvidia’s website, GeForce graphics processing units (GPUs), first introduced in 1999, target video gaming and general-purpose users.
After Nvidia became the target of a Beijing antitrust investigation this week, some Chinese netizens posted comments on social media, wondering if the US company had deliberately removed items from the shop.
However, Nvidia said in a statement that the Tmall store never stocked inventory. A third-party e-commerce analyst, after reviewing the shop’s sales record, said that it has no transaction records.
Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
The attention on Nvidia’s Tmall presence comes at a time when there are fresh questions being raised about the company’s future prospects in China.
