Southeast Asia's platform race is now a three-layer channel system

Cube's read on 2025 Southeast Asian platform ecommerce earns its keep by not stopping at the market headline. It tracks the six core markets of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, and estimates that Shopee, Lazada and TikTok Shop together grew physical-goods GMV by 22% in 2025. That growth pool, though, is not being shared evenly.

Shopee remains the largest platform in Cube's three-platform measure, while TikTok Shop gained share and Lazada's share declined. For brands, the useful response is not to settle a "who wins" argument but to build the 2026 platform budget around different jobs for different platforms, then validate those jobs by country and category.

The market grew, but the roles changed

Cube's headline split is clear enough. Shopee held 59% of combined three-platform GMV in 2025, grew 18% year-on-year and added more than US$14 billion of incremental GMV. Scale alone is not what makes that notable — it is that Shopee is still adding absolute volume on top of an already large base, which keeps it close to everyday search, price comparison, replenishment and mega-campaign habits.

TikTok Shop is the faster-moving layer. Cube puts its 2025 GMV growth at 66%, with share rising from 23% in 2024 to 31% in 2025, and its fourth quarter was the strongest quarter of the year. That shows continued growth in Cube's Q4 estimate, without isolating the cause.

Lazada moved the other way. Cube estimates its 2025 GMV fell 28%, with share declining from 16% to 9% of the same three-platform pool, weakness that carried through the fourth-quarter peak. None of that makes Lazada irrelevant. It does mean Lazada now needs a specific reason to stay in the plan, rather than being carried as an automatic equal-weight marketplace line.

Shopee's advantage is habit, not only share

Shopee's position is hard to replace because buyers have built a routine around it. Search, price comparison, checkout, delivery tracking, returns, voucher discovery and campaign timing already live together inside the platform. A content platform can create new demand; it does not automatically displace those transaction habits.

Cube also notes Shopee's movement into services such as Instant Mart, faster delivery, membership and native payments. Those moves do not all show up immediately as GMV share, but they raise switching costs for buyers and sellers alike. Sea Limited's own 2025 results give a broader company-level reference point: Shopee reported US$127.4 billion of GMV and 13.9 billion gross orders for 2025. That company-wide scope is not directly comparable with Cube's SEA-6 three-platform estimate, though it supports the same direction of travel — Shopee is still expanding at scale.

For most mass-market categories, then, Shopee should be treated as the volume layer: the place where stable transactions, search-led demand, platform campaigns, price anchoring and replenishment are most likely to be managed.

TikTok Shop is a demand-generation layer

TikTok Shop's role is different in kind. Traditional marketplaces wait for consumers to search; TikTok Shop shortens the path from watching content to buying inside the same environment. Short video, creators, live sessions and product cards create reasons to buy before the user has formed a search query at all.

Category fit matters for exactly that reason. Cube highlights beauty and personal care as the largest TikTok Shop GMV category in the region, which matches the mechanics of demonstration-led products. Thailand's public market signals point the same way. Euromonitor's public page for its Digital Shopper in Thailand report notes the mainstreaming of live commerce and social commerce, while TikTok Shop Thailand's seller page connects creators, shoppable video, live commerce and in-app checkout in one seller journey.

The operational mistake is to reduce all of this to "make more short videos." TikTok Shop should be measured through content views, product-page visits, add-to-cart, payment, cancellation, refund, repeat purchase and creator type. TikTok's ThaiRisers campaign is a platform-selected case set rather than a market average, but it still shows the operating model at work: the highlighted brands use affiliate, ads, campaigns, Mall and live selling together. That is a system, not a single placement.

Lazada still has a job, but it is narrower

Lazada's decline in Cube's tracking is not a blanket exit signal. Retain it where a specific product line requires and validates official-store trust, warranty support, assortment control or another defensible operating reason.

If the product needs authenticity signals, after-sales support, a longer comparison cycle or a higher-trust purchase environment, Lazada can remain useful. If the budget is there because it has historically been there, 2026 should force a fresh return check. Brands should avoid letting "all-platform presence" stand in for net contribution by platform.

So what

The practical 2026 architecture is not equal distribution across Shopee, Lazada and TikTok Shop. Use regional averages as context, then assign and validate each platform's role by country, category, price band, content conversion strength and fulfilment cost.

The main risk is over-correcting toward the fastest-growing platform and forgetting that Shopee has not lost the main transaction field. TikTok Shop is no longer just a test channel, and it is also not a universal replacement. The next decision is to define what each platform is supposed to do, then review net sales, refunds, content cost and fulfillment cost against that assigned role.