What does the author say about Singles' Day? PASSAGE PASSAGE PASSAGE Alibaba smashed its Singles' Day shopping record on Friday by clocking growth of more than 32 percent, the Chinese e-commerce giant said on Friday. Retailers on Alibaba's platforms had recorded $17.8 billion worth of gross merchandise volume (GMV). In 2015, the 24-hour e-commerce sales racked up $14.3 billion GMV in total. Media reports had forecast GMV from Alibaba's 11.11 Global Shopping Festival, as Singles' Day is officially called, to come at $20 billion in 2016, easily eclipsing(使黯然失色) the $2.74 billion and $3.07 billion respectively generated online during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales in the U.S. this year. Singles' Day was first celebrated in the 1990s by young, single Chinese as an anti-Valentine's Day. In 2009, Alibaba began using the made-up "holiday" to promote discounts at retailers on its e-commerce platforms, as a means of boosting revenue in the traditionally quiet sales period before the Lunar New Year season. Increasingly, international brands have jumped on Alibaba's Singles' Day bandwagon, with more than 14,000 taking part in the 2016 sale, accounting for about 30 percent of total GMV half-way into the , according to Alibaba stats. Orders, meanwhile, came from 207 countries and regions. Alibaba reported that deals offered by Apple, Nike and Siemens were among the top-sellers with Chinese consumers in the early hours of the day. Local Chinese brands that made a strong showing were appliance manufacturers Haier and Midea, and smartphone maker Meizu. Jessie Qian, head of consumer markets at KPMG China, told CNBC on Friday that mobile e-commerce transactions have been a major driver of China's online sales boom. At least 90 percent of online shoppers in China had used their smartphone at least once to make a transaction, she said, and forecast that that number would continue to grow. "There are several factors contributing to the growth in mobile users. First of all, it's the access of cheaper mobile phones and secondly, the confidence in the third party payments (systems)," she said. Meanwhile, the number of middle class consumers in Southeast Asia and India was also growing, and they wanted high-quality goods from the U.S. and Europe, Alibaba's President Evans said, according to the company's live blog.