Financial Highlights

Huawei reported a total revenue of RMB 704.2 billion (approximately USD 99.4 billion), marking a 9.6% increase from the previous year.

The company’s net profit rose dramatically to RMB 86.95 billion (approximately USD 12.28 billion), illustrating Huawei’s effective management and strategic realignment in response to external pressures and market dynamics.

The ICT infrastructure segment, a cornerstone of Huawei’s business, generated RMB 362 billion, a modest increase of 2.3% year-over-year. Meanwhile, the consumer business, including smartphones and other smart devices, brought in RMB 251.5 billion, surging by 17.3%.

The company’s burgeoning cloud computing and digital energy sectors witnessed growth rates of 21.9% and 3.5% respectively, further diversifying Huawei’s revenue streams. Notably, the smart car solutions business stood out with a remarkable growth of 128.1%, although from a smaller base, signaling Huawei’s strategic pivot towards new technology frontiers.

Strategic Investments in R&D

Huawei’s commitment to research and development (R&D) remained steadfast, with an investment of RMB 164.7 billion in 2023, accounting for 23.4% of its total revenue.

Over the past decade, the company has invested more than RMB 1.1 trillion in R&D, underscoring its long-term vision to lead in technological innovation and contribute to the global digital economy.

Expanding Global Footprint and Ecosystem

The report highlights Huawei’s efforts in expanding its global ecosystem and fostering open innovation. By the end of 2023, Huawei Cloud boasted over 6 million developers and more than 40,000 partners worldwide, creating a vibrant and innovative digital ecosystem.

Future Outlook

Looking ahead, Huawei remains optimistic about its future growth prospects. The company plans to continue its investment in core ICT technologies and platforms, enhancing its product and service offerings across different sectors.

Huawei’s chairman, Hu Houkun, emphasized the importance of quality, innovation, and open collaboration with partners to create greater value for customers and society at large.

The fourth quarter of 2021 saw a year-on-year increase of 33% to US$7.7 billion. Canalys predicts that by 2026, the scale of the cloud infrastructure market in the mainland will reach US$85 billion, and the five-year compound annual growth rate will be 25%.

Visit here for AI Cloud market share.

Alibaba Cloud remains the leader with a 37% market share, ranking first in the cloud market in 2021, Huawei Cloud and Tencent Cloud second and third respectively, and Baidu AI cloud fourth. In 2021, the four cloud providers jointly accounted for 80% of the market share.

Huawei Cloud reached an 18% market share in 2021, with an annual growth of 67%. The rapid growth has widened the gap between Huawei cloud and Tencent Cloud, ranking second in the market.

Tencent cloud, the third-largest provider, accounted for 16% of the market share, an increase of 55%. Tencent Cloud grew steadily as a whole in 2021, with diversified growth in multiple sectors.

Baidu AI Cloud, the fourth-largest vendor, accounted for 9% of the market share, an increase of 55%.

Top 10 forecasts for China cloud computing market 2021-2024

China’s Public Cloud Services Market to Grow to 10.5% of global share by 2024

In 2020, the overall market size of global public cloud services (IAAs/PAAS/SaaS) reached US$312.42 billion, with a year-on-year growth of 24.1%, according to IDC.

The overall market size of China’s public cloud services reached US$19.38 billion, with a year-on-year growth of 49.7%, with the highest growth rate in all regions of the world. IDC predicts that the global share of China’s public cloud service market will increase from 6.5% in 2020 to more than 10.5% by 2024.

Check out market share of IaaS and PaaS markets in China here.

CIW Subscribers (Annual) can download the chart here to see the comparison of the cloud platforms in China.

Download China Internet Overview whitepaper here.

From the IaaS + PaaS market perspective, the first half of 2021 increased by 43% (vs. 48.6% in H1) year-on-year, down 6% from the first half of 2021, but still maintained the highest growth rate in the world.

In the next five years, China’s public cloud market will continue to grow at a compound growth rate of 30.9%. By 2026, the market is expected to reach US$105.76 billion, and the global share of China’s public cloud service market will increase from 6.7% in 2021 to 9.9%.

The competition in China’s cloud computing extends from focusing on infrastructure to the competition of comprehensive cloud platform capabilities. In addition to increasing investment in infrastructure construction at the IaaS layer, cloud vendors also continue to strengthen chip self-research capability, improve PaaS capability (data processing capability, cloud-native, low code development, etc.), build leading, fast, and perfect solution service capability and implementation and delivery ecology and develop a more comprehensive cloud platform.

The digital transformation of government and enterprises has fully entered the cloud era.

In the first half of 2021, the State Council put forward decisions on deepening the integrated development of new-generation information technology and manufacturing industry and creating new advantages of the digital economy.

Also read: the latest on China’s public cloud market

Local governments and regulators have issued relevant technical specifications and application standards of cloud computing platforms, actively promoted the all-around and in-depth integration of digital technology and social development, and accelerated the application and implementation of digital technology in various industries.

Cloud computing has become the basis and hub of digital transformation. Under this background, there is a huge demand and market space for cloud services in the field of government and enterprises.

Cloud vendors have released their own cloud-native strategies to seize the opportunity from the aspects of products, partners, standard-setting, talent cultivation, and so on.

Industry digitization and low-carbon development have become the mainstream trend. In terms of themselves, cloud vendors continue to improve product energy efficiency and promote the low-carbon development of the cloud industry by investing in innovative energy-saving technologies.

In terms of industry empowerment, cloud manufacturers invest in power electronics technology and integration and innovation with digital technology, promote the development of clean energy and the digitization of traditional energy, bring digital technology to each industry, and support all walks of life to promote low-carbon development through digitization.

In both IaaS and Iaas+PaaS markets, the competition is tight. The leading vendors Alibaba Cloud, Huawei Cloud, and Tencent Cloud have firmly taken the top three positions and jointly have 60% of the market share.

Cloud vendors in the network operator camp grew rapidly, with independent research and development and cloud network integration as their keywords.

The fourth ranked China Telecom Tianyi Cloud formed a full-stack cloud product system by the end of 2020, further deepened to the vertical industry and territory in 2021, sank the resource and service team to the local city, and the local cloud business grew rapidly, creating a new growth level for Tianyi Cloud.

Pricing only the 2nd most important in China for choosing cloud vendors

Energy Expert provides actionable insights and energy-saving recommendations to help customers accelerate their sustainability journeys. It helps customers automate the carbon accounting and reporting process at a corporate and product level, and obtain real-time sustainability impact statistics for them to make informed decisions.

It enables companies to identify the sources of the carbon emissions from their daily business activities as well as the full life cycle of their products, based on the PAS 2060 and ISO 14064 standards on carbon neutrality.

Customers can also quantify their carbon footprint through a prebuilt calculation model leveraging public emission factors datasets and Energy Expert’s proprietary datasets.

It provides visibility into their real-time carbon emission patterns and the progress of their sustainability performance through visualizations on dashboards and online reports. In addition, Energy Expert provides analytics on energy efficiency and emission forecasts through deep learning-based AI models hosted on Alibaba Cloud.

To help customers minimize their overall environmental impact, Energy Expert also offers actionable optimization plans with recommendations that balance business growth and environmental impacts. These can include increasing the use of clean energy, reducing excessive electricity consumption during peak times, and optimizing the supply chain ranging from sourcing materials to shipping products.

It has served over 2,000 companies in China since its deployment in February 2022, generating energy savings of over 2 million kilowatt-hours per day, or a reduction of 400,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions, according to Alibaba.

Top 10 forecasts for China cloud computing market 2021-2024

Dubbed the “Land of Hope”, the XiRang platform enables up to 100,000 online attendees to interact simultaneously in the same space.

According to Robin Li, Baidu CEO, Chairman, and Co-Founder, intelligent transportation will see a significant transformation in the next 10-40 years that will greatly influence the future.

Purchase restrictions limiting the number of cars sold in China’s first-tier cities, and number plate restrictions reducing by 20% the number of cars on the roads on weekdays will be lifted within five years and improved traffic efficiency will solve urban congestion within 10 years.

Li believes that intelligent transportation can address three major problems: Firstly, it can reduce road traffic accidents by 90%. Secondly, the problem of urban congestion can be resolved. Lastly, autonomous driving and intelligent transportation will help reduce carbon emissions.

From autonomous driving to smart cars and smart roads, Baidu has deeply integrated AI, 5G, and cloud computing into the transportation sector.

With a total of 115,000 rides provided by the third quarter of 2021, Baidu’s autonomous ride-hailing platform “Apollo Go” has become the largest autonomous mobility service provider in the world.

Baidu’s future goal is to expand the “Apollo Go” service to 65 cities by 2025 and 100 cities by 2030.

Also read: Top 10 AI Cities in China

Baidu AIR intelligent road system will achieve real-time optimization of “city-level” signal control at hundreds of thousands of road intersections, greatly enhancing vehicle safety over millions of kilometers across the country.

Baidu believes that automotive robots will be the ultimate form of vehicle transportation in the future. Having L4 intelligent driving capabilities, Baidu’s smart EV venture, Jidu Auto, has been designed to operate under the concepts of “free movement”, “natural communication”, and “self-improvement”.

Li said that Jidu is planning to release its first concept car in the first half of 2022, followed by mass production and delivery by 2023.

At the convention, Baidu Chief Technology Officer Haifeng Wang released Baidu AI Cloud digital avatar platform XiLing, which is a platform level product integrating digital avatar generation and content production.

It can provide creation and operation one-stop services such as virtual host, virtual idol, brand spokesperson creation and operation for radio, television, Internet, brand and other customers.

Apart from providing an “AI toolkit” to creators, Baidu Brain also provides the technological foundation for digital transformation in society and many industries. Baidu Brain’s approach relies on standardization, automation, and modularization for industrial mass production, which allows it to evolve into an AI mass production platform.

“Wenxin”, Baidu Brain’s recently-released technological breakthrough, is the world’s first knowledge-enhanced 100-billion-scale pre-trained language model and the largest Chinese-language monolithic model.

Baidu’s open-source deep-learning platform PaddlePaddle has garnered 4.06 million developers, served more than 157,000 enterprises and units, covered dozens of industries, and created almost 500,000 models. PaddlePaddle’s combined market share ranks first among China’s deep-learning platforms.

Computing power is one of the core elements to support AI development. Baidu created the base for green computing, including self-developed Kunlun AI chips, an AI heterogeneous computing platform Baige, and a green data center to support AI technology research and a wide range of applications.

Baidu Brain can support across 1,400 capabilities. Baidu AI Cloud can distribute the AI technology capabilities to various industries, contributing to digital transformation and intelligent enhancement of China’s industries, economy, and society.

Report: China growth AI companies overview

Alibaba Cloud unveiled a new in-house processor design for use in its data centers. The server chips, named Yitian 710, are custom-built by Alibaba Group’s chip development business, T-Head.

Powered by these chips, Alibaba Cloud also announced the development of its proprietary servers, called Panjiu.

Alibaba plans to use the chips to support current and future businesses across the Alibaba Group ecosystem. It will also offer its clients next-generation computing services powered by the new chip-powered servers in the near future.

Built upon advanced 5nm process technology, Yitian 710 is powered by 128 Arm cores with 3.2GHz top clock speed to deliver exceptional performance and excellent energy efficiency.

Each processor chip has 60 billion integrated transistors. Yitian 710 is the first server processor that is compatible with the latest Armv9 architecture and includes 8 DDR5 channels and 96-lane PCIe 5.0, providing high memory and I/O bandwidth.

Yitian 710 achieved a score of 440 in SPECint2017 (a standard benchmark to measure CPU integer processing power), surpassing that of the current state-of-the-art Arm server processor by 20% in performance and 50% in energy efficiency.

Panjiu was developed for the next-generation of cloud-native infrastructure. By separating computing from storage, the servers are optimized for both general-purpose and specialized AI computing, as well as high-performance storage.

With a modular design approach for large-scale data center deployment, these servers are expected to deliver exceptional economic value for a wide variety of cloud-native workloads, such as containerized applications and computed optimized workloads.

Alibaba also announced that it will open the source code of the XuanTie IP core series, among other upcoming cores. The XuanTie series is Alibaba’s custom-built processor based on RISC-V instruction-set architecture.

Developers can now access the source code of the XuanTie series IP cores on Github and Open Chip Community to build prototype chips of their own, which can be customized for IoT applications such as networking, gateway and edge servers.

In addition, XuanTie-related software stacks, which support multiple operating systems, including Linux, Android, RTOS, and Alibaba’s own AliOS, will also be opened. Alibaba will provide more services and support for development tools, SDKs and customized cores in the future.

Alibaba released its first AI inference chip Hanguang 800 in 2019. The AI chip has been deployed in Alibaba Cloud’s data centers to power businesses in areas such as search, recommendation and live streaming.

China IoT market forecast 2021-2024; Internet of Vehicles the fastest growing segment

Cloudflare announced a significant strategic partnership with JD Cloud & AI, the cloud and intelligent technology business unit of JD.com (Jingdong).

Through this partnership, Cloudflare will be adding 150 data centers in mainland China, an increase of over 700% in the region. The partnership will also enable JD to provide a Cloudflare-powered service to China-based customers.

Cloudflare has helped their global customers deliver a secure, fast, and reliable Internet experience for China-based visitors since 2015. Cloudflare customers currently are able to extend their configurations with the click of a button across data centers in 17 cities in mainland China.

Partnering with JD Cloud & AI provides not only local expertise, but also a relationship with one of the world’s largest logistics, e-commerce, and Internet companies, JD.com.

JD Cloud & AI has made serving a global audience a key part of its strategy and has partnered with the likes of Microsoft and Citrix to build on this strategy. Importantly, like Cloudflare, the company has continued to invest in its infrastructure through the current pandemic, and has been critical to keeping China’s supply chains flowing and its businesses functioning.

Cloudflare’s partnership with JD Cloud & AI will allow international businesses to grow their online presence in China without having to worry about managing separate tools with separate vendors for security and performance in China.

Customers will benefit from greater performance and security inside China using the same configurations that they use with Cloudflare everywhere else in the world.

Using Cloudflare’s international network outside of China, and JD Cloud & AI’s network inside of China, any enterprise can rapidly and securely deploy cloud-based firewall, WAN optimization, distributed denial of service (DDoS) mitigation, content delivery, DNS services, and Cloudflare Workers, its serverless computing solution, worldwide.

JD Cloud & AI will use Cloudflare’s international network outside of China, and the JD Cloud & AI network inside of China, to allow any China-based enterprise to use Cloudflare’s integrated performance and security services worldwide, all seamlessly controlled from within the JD Cloud & AI dashboard.

Data Management. Cloudflare operates all services outside of China, and JD Cloud & AI all services inside of China. No Cloudflare customer traffic passes through the China network unless a customer explicitly opts-in to the service.

For Cloudflare customers that opt-in to proxying content inside China, traffic and log data from outside of China is not stored in the China network or shared with our partner.

Alibaba Cloud’s IaaS market share in APAC over 28% in 2019

Latest on China Cloud Computing Market

Alibaba Cloud remained the leading cloud service provider in Q4 2019, accounting for 46.4% of total spending. Tencent Cloud and Baidu AI Cloud both increased their shares to 18.0% and 8.8% respectively.

China’s top 3 accounted for 73% of the cloud infrastructure services by total spending in China in Q4 2019.

Read how some industries in China benefiting from the novel coronavirus outbreak

Alibaba Cloud offered credits to organizations to buy its Elastic Compute Service, cybersecurity and other services. It made its AI-powered platform available for free to research institutions to accelerate gene sequencing, protein screening and related work in treating and preventing coronavirus.

Tencent Cloud also made its platform available to research teams from universities across the country. It launched the Cloud Office Portfolio to support remote working, which includes Tencent Meeting and WeChat Work.

Baidu AI Cloud made its online doctor consultation platform free for any medical queries, which handled over 15 million interactions. And, it also opened its platform and AI algorithm for free to research institutions.

For full-year 2019, cloud infrastructure services spend in China increased by 63.7% to exceed US$10.7 billion.

Alibaba Cloud was the market leader, accounting for 46.1% of the market. Tencent Cloud was ranked second, with a 17.3% share. Amazon’s AWS was the third, followed by Baidu AI Cloud.

Coronavirus outbreak’s impact on China’s consumption

A Gartner research shows Database Management Systems (DBMS) cloud services are already $10.4 billion of the $46.1 billion DBMS market in 2018. And, the overall DBMS Market grew at 18.4% from 2017 to 2018 – its best growth in over a decade. Cloud DBMS accounted for 68% of that growth.

Amazon Web Services and Microsoft combined account for 75% of the growth from 2017 to 2018. AWS is 100% cloud and Microsoft DBMS growth (Gartner believes) was almost 100% cloud. Cloud growth is dramatically changing vendor rankings.

Alibaba (9), Huawei (11), and Tencent Cloud (13) made it to the top 15 of Gartner Total DBMS Market Share Ranks 2018.

Internet users and market overview: China vs. the U.S.

The top 5 public cloud services providers in China are all local companies, with Alibaba taking a disproportionally large share of 43%. Roughly 40% of the top 500 enterprises and 50% of listed companies in China are using Alibaba Cloud.

When it comes to public cloud services, the top 5 providers in China are all local companies. Alibaba Cloud retained its top spot for the third year by grabbing a larger share of 43% in H1 2018. Alibaba derived 10.37 billion yuan (US$1.54bn) from cloud computing in revenue in H1 2018. Roughly 40% of the top 500 enterprises, 50% of listed companies, and 80% of startups in China are paying customers of Alibaba Cloud.

Tencent Cloud ranked in the second place with a share of 11.2%, followed by China Telecom (7.4%) and Amazon Web Services (6.9%).

Globally, Alibaba ranked second in the APAC region and fourth worldwide. Tencent made it up to the top 5 public cloud leaders in the APAC region. China accounted for over a third of the total APAC market, according to the report from Synergy Research Group.

ByteDance: A Chinese Mobile App Factory

China’s online healthcare market is estimated to reach 17.7 billion yuan (US$2.61bn) with a YoY growth of 17.2% in 2018 and grow to 20.4 billion yuan (US$3bn) by 2019 according to data from iResearch. B2C medicine e-commerce contributes the largest share of the total market size (89.2% in 2017), followed by advertising revenues.

Many Chinese Internet companies attempted in the healthcare market with “big data + AI” in recent years. Alibaba concentrated on the midstream of the industry chain with cloud computing services and AI technology. Tencent invests more in application development and has built some online healthcare service interface a series of related offline services. Baidu applies AI technology in new medicine development after its strategic adjustments in the healthcare business in 2017.

Check out China’s smart speaker market insights

China devoted almost the same amount of expenditures to the public and private cloud in 2017.  That differs a lot from the United States where public cloud took far more IT budgets versus private cloud.

But the public cloud is capturing market shares rapidly, the public-usage rates could rise more than 20% annually in the next three years running, according to McKinsey.

The revenue of China’s cloud market was 51.49 billion yuan (US$7.54 bn) in 2016, an increase of 35.9%, according to MIIT. Specifically, 34.48 billion yuan (US$5.05 bn) was from the private cloud (up by 25.1%) and 17.01 billion yuan (US$2.49 bn) was from the public cloud (up by 66.0%).

This market is estimated to reach 136.6 billion yuan (US$19.99 bn) by the end of 2020, largely driven by the two growth engines – IaaS and Saas.

It’s not easy for Chinese enterprises to just move to cloud usage, most of them took the cost/difficulty of migration and security into top considerations.

When selecting cloud vendors, 52% of respondents preferred a single integrated cloud vendor while 48% of them like the best of each breed. With regards to the factors that influence enterprises to choose cloud vendors, performance and technical requirements were the most important, pricing ranked second, closely followed by service and support.

Within public cloud services market, Alibaba Cloud ranked second in the APAC region and fourth worldwide.

In China, the top five cloud providers are all local companies. China now accounts for a third of the total APAC market and its share of the regional total is increasing each quarter.

81% of WeChat users playing Mini-Games in 2018

Alibaba Group reported total revenue of RMB50,184 million (US$7,403 million) for Q2 2017, an increase of 56% year-over-year. Tmall recorded 49% year-over-year growth for physical goods GMV. 

• Revenue from core commerce increased 58% year-over-year to RMB43,027 million (US$6,347 million).
• Revenue from cloud computing increased 96% year-over-year to RMB2,431 million (US$359 million); it reached a key milestone of exceeding one million paying customer
• Revenue from digital media and entertainment increased 30% year-over-year to RMB4,081 million (US$602 million).
• Revenue from innovation initiatives and others increased 21% year-over-year to RMB645 million (US$95 million)

Tmall recorded 49% year-over-year growth for physical goods GMV in the quarter ended June 30, 2017. Fashion and apparel, consumer electronics and fast moving consumer goods, or FMCG, were among the key categories that experienced robust and reaccelerating GMV growth during the quarter according to Alibaba.

JD’s GMV for Q2 2017 increased by 46% to 234.8 billion yuan (US$34.6 billion).

Alibaba has established Tmall as a leading brand-building and distribution platform that is capturing increasing digital marketing and commerce spending from owners of both domestic and international branded products that are doing business in China. During the quarter, international brands such as Moet Hennessy, Victoria’s Secret, Roland and Abercrombie & Fitch established Tmall flagship stores to engage with and sell their
products to consumers on its platforms.

Annual active consumers (annual active buyers) on Alibaba’s China retail marketplaces reached 466 million, an increase of 12 million from the 12-month period ended March 31, 2017. Mobile MAUs on its China retail marketplaces reached 529 million in June, an increase of 22 million over March 2017.

Net income was RMB14,031 million (US$2,070 million), income from operations was RMB17,513 million (US$2,583 million) and adjusted EBITDA was RMB25,124 million (US$3,706 million). Operating margin was 35%, adjusted EBITDA margin was 50% and adjusted EBITA margin for core commerce was 63%。

Integration of online and offline retail experience

In May 2017, Alibaba completed the privatization and the acquisition of a controlling stake in Intime Retail Group for HK$12.6 billion (US$1.6 billion). Intime is a leading department store and mall operator in China with 49 department stores and shopping malls as of June 30, 2017.

Alibaba expects Intime to support its strategy to transform conventional retail, especially in soft goods and branded products, by leveraging Alibaba’s  substantial consumer reach, insight, and technology.

International expansion

Revenue from Alibaba’s international commerce retail business reached meaningful scale at RMB2,638 million (US$389 million) in the quarter ended June 30, 2017, representing a 136% year-on-year growth, driven by strong growth in its Southeast Asian platform Lazada (Alibaba increased its ownership in Lazada to 83%)and its China outbound platform AliExpress.

Lazada launched “Taobao Collection” in Singapore and Malaysia, which expands Lazada’s product offering by giving local customers access to products from China.

In June, Alibaba hosted Gateway ’17 in Detroit, Michigan – a conference where 3000 U.S. small businesses, farmers, brands, and entrepreneurs attended to learn about how to sell to China using Alibaba as their gateway. Businesses such as Gerber, Stadium Goods, and 100% Pure shared their experiences on how Alibaba has helped them grow their businesses by tapping into the China market, which is good for the Chinese consumer as well as for business growth and jobs creation in the United States.

On September 25, Alibaba will host a similar event in Canada to educate and engage Canadian businesses in selling to China.

In July Alibaba launched its first AI-powered voice assistant, Tmall Genie, which was developed by Alibaba’s AI Lab leveraging Alibaba’s AI technology. The Tmall Genie assists with shopping, ordering local services, searching for information, controlling smart appliances and playing multi-media content, including educational stories and music for children.

In August, with Marriott, Alibaba established a joint venture to provide a completely new travel experience for hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers with personalized VIP experiences, cashless travel and an integrated loyalty program.

E-commerce development in China’s rural areas in H1 2017

This research explores the digital adoptions among Chinese enterprises including internet usage, proportions of enterprises using trending technologies (mobile broadband, cloud computing, CRM, ERP), top channels for digital marketing and mobile marketing, and their expectations to solve problems.

Almost all companies in China adopted computers(99%) and Internet (95.6%) in their operations; and, more companies are utilizing mobile broadband (32.3%).

Over 90% enterprises in China use emails; however, only a bit more than half (63.7%) use corporate mailing systems.

Enterprises’ internet usage for information includes finding out product or service information (77%), publishing information (73.3%), and obtaining information from government agencies (63.6%).

Online banking is widely used (86.4%) among enterprises in China.

92.4% Chinese enterprises have safety precautions for the internet. But, less than half use paid antivirus / firewall software.

60% enterprises in China adopted certain information systems; 50.4% use office automation. However, less than one-third are using ERP or CRM.

Utilizing internet for sales is increasingly popular during the past few years; now, near half enterprises in China have adopted internet for sales and purchases.

The proportion of China enterprises, who have deployed digital marketing activities, increased to 38.7% from 33.8% a year ago.

Instant messenger, e-commerce platforms, and search engines are the top 3 channels for digital marketing activities in China.

WeChat, mobile websites, and search are the most popular mobile marketing channels among China enterprises in 2016.

Over half enterprises are aware of the trending technologies, including cloud computing, big data, and internet of things. However, only about one in five enterprises adopted these technologies.

Also read: China social application user insights 2016

According to a piece of public information on Fuzhou City government website, Apple started using China Telecom cloud storage for iCloud data from China users on 8 August 2014 after fifteen months’ testing.

The same document reveals that the downtime of the used China Telecom data center is 4 minutes and 19 seconds.

iCloud is the latest branding of Apple’s cloud computing services. It has previously been branded as iTools in 2000, .Mac in 2002, and MobileMe in 2008.

Baidu launched Open Kitchen project for restaurants whoever participated in will open up their kitchens to internet users, based on Baidu’s video streaming and cloud computing technology.

Last month, one of McDonald’s and KFC’s suppliers was accused of selling rotten meat; Open Kitchen program is helpful for restaurants facing the deteriorating food safety concerns in China.

Taking a closer look at a few participating restaurants, the video quality is good with quite good sound quality, but video doesn’t seem to cover a wide angle of the kitchen (not to mention 360 degree view for real transparency). It is not so transparent. And, the live video streaming only covers a specified time period. Being checked at about eight in the evening, many have already ended the live video steaming.

What’s in it for Baidu?

Besides publicity side of benefits and its contribution to healthy and safe dining in China, the program definitely helps promote Baidu’s video streaming service based on Baidu Cloud.

The hardware supporting this project is also from Baidu called iErmu, currently available on JD.com at RMB388 (US$63). Similar to Dropcam but much cheaper, iErmu comes with supplementing cloud storage service.

Aliyun, Alibaba Group’s cloud computing services company, announced a search product, OpenSearch.

OpenSearch is based on Alibaba’s self developed large-scale distributed search engine platform, which powers digital properties under Alibaba Gropu, such as Taobao and Tmall. Aliyun provides this search technology to public developers.

With OpenSearch, developers can implement on-site search function within one day for their websites and even build a professional search engine.

Aliyun currently released OpenSearch to its users for free during public testing phase via its cloud computing platform. And it will be priced at one tenth of the cost of similar product overseas.

Aliyun is Alibaba’s ambition in providing cutting edge cloud computing based services. And, it just released Open Data Processing Service or ODPS about one week ago.

A new report from research and advisory firm Gartner identifies the top 10 strategic technology trends that CIOs in China should consider in order to pursue business growth and remain competitive throughout the digital era.

The top 10 technology trends highlight the current state of technology adoption in China, as well as the maturity and traction of the technologies. Organizations in China are expected to spend $140.6 billion (RMB 854 billion) on technology products and services in 2014, according to Gartner’s latest forecast.

Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt. A strategic technology may be an existing technology that has matured and/or become suitable for a wider range of uses, or an emerging technology that offers an opportunity for strategic business advantage.

China is a large IT market full of potential and competiveness,

said Amy Teng, principal research analyst at Gartner.

China’s technology trends align with other regions worldwide – but with some variations because of unique market conditions. Enterprises in China are in various stages of adoption, with some mature organizations being early adopters of technology and some still in the early stages of evaluation.

“Although the top 10 technologies that Chinese companies should factor into their strategic planning processes are defined here, this does not necessarily mean investment in all of the listed technologies is essential,” said Ms. Teng.

However, companies should look to make deliberate decisions about each of them during the next two years.”

The top ten strategic technology trends for China in 2014 include:

Mobile Device Diversity and Management

The rapid adoption of BYOD makes enterprise mobility strategies more complex and challenging. Through 2018, the growing variety of devices, computing styles, user contexts and interaction paradigms will make managing this diversity a priority strategic initiative for enterprises CIOs. In China, CIOs experience an even more serious situation because the region exhibits a faster device replacement cycle due to the popularity of low-tier smartphones. Another distinct differentiation is created by the culture of Chinese employees, who tend to work longer hours and increasingly mix work with life, a trend that extends to their digital “self.”

Mobile Apps and Applications

Mobile apps and applications will continue to grow in 2014 and there is no sign of that trend slowing down, driven by the strong demand for mobile services that have moved beyond the early stage of enabling information and content access to bringing new capabilities to consumers and businesses. With the popularity of using mobile devices to explore the physical world, Chinese companies are employing new interactive technologies such as quick response (QR) code, audio, augmented reality, gesture and Near Field Communication (NFC) with QR code being the most popular one. Enterprises are gearing up efforts on mobile applications and early adopters, including banks and airlines, have introduced mobile apps for consumers or employees, such as mobile banking, self-check-in services and in-cabin services.

Social Commerce

Social commerce is the use of social networks and social media to support sales transactions. China is well ahead of western counterparts by almost five years in successfully deploying all use cases of social commerce. The most common use case for social commerce in the U.S. and Europe is product reviews with limited success in social shopping and social network commerce. China proves contrary with social network commerce dominating the market. Tencent QQ, Tencent WeChat and Sina Weibo are the three major social networks in China that enterprises leverage to drive social commerce.

Internet of Everything

Gartner forecasts that the Internet of Things (IoT) will include 26 billion units installed by 2020 and related IoT product and service suppliers will generate incremental revenue exceeding $300 billion, mostly in services, in 2020. China’s leaders have provided support and encouragement to bring China to the forefront of IoT development. A number of key policies have been developed to target IoT innovation, with nine areas being identified as the applications areas that the government will invest in. These are: smart industrial, smart logistics, smart agriculture, smart grid, intelligent medical, smart household, intelligent transportation, smart city security and management, and smart environment protection.

Hybrid cloud and IT as a Service Broker

Hybrid IT is the mission and the operational model for IT in a cloud computing world. As more cloud computing services emerge, the value of a trusted broker for the enterprise will increase. This broker will ensure maximum efficiency and effectiveness in provider selection, governance, payment, integration, management, security and compliance. Most Chinese enterprises have started leveraging cloud computing and their users are increasingly accepting the new modes of working. However, for reasons both external and internal, Chinese enterprises are yet to form successful Hybrid IT environments. Nevertheless Gartner expects that the demand for hybrid solutions will intensify over the next three years, forcing companies in China to deploy technologies to secure, manage and govern solutions across a hybrid architecture.

Cloud/Client Architecture

The high growth in smartphone sales and the thriving mobile apps ecosystem coupled with a broad choice of devices and brands have created a seedbed for enterprises to adopt a new cloud/client applications model in China. The availability of 4G telecom services and a few emerging public cloud services will further fuel the development of mobile services and change of client/cloud architecture in imminent future. CIOs and enterprises IT will need to think about how they can provide a unified and seamless integrated users experience across mobile endpoint devices and re-gain the software engineering best practices to balance among monolithic, modular, object- and service-oriented approaches. Fortunately, Chinese enterprises have relatively less legacy to abandon when adopting this new model.

The Era of Personal Cloud

Users in China are increasingly adopting various personal cloud services such as Tudou for streaming video, WeChat for social network, Qzone for cloud storage and data synchronization across devices and platforms. However, the major difference between personal cloud service in China and most other mature markets is the current revenue model. Most of the personal cloud services provided in China are currently free to customers – even the streaming video services. This looks set to change as Chinese businesses look increasingly at how they can develop their services over the personal cloud to their employees, business partners or customers to improve their operations and expand revenue.

Software-Defined Anything

Software-defined anything (SDx) decouples the IT services (such as computing, networking, security, and storage) from the hardware underneath, hence extending the concept of virtualization into a new level in which all data center resources are abstracted, pooled and automatically managed. The core components of SDx in data centers include compute virtualization, software-defined networks (SDNs), and software-defined storage (SDS). In China, SDN is rising very fast in Type A enterprises, as well as in large e-commerce and cloud services providers. Although SDS is at a very early stage, its potential market opportunity has attracted globally established providers such as EMC and HP, while Chinese vendors such as DataCore and global startups such as Nexenta have also introduced relevant solutions.

Web-scale IT

To most of Chinese enterprises, Web-scale IT is a new concept that will be driven by the trend of consumerization. The rise of consumer culture is changing the way enterprises do business. Digital marketing and e-commerce require an efficient and agile IT support and, given the large mobile and Internet population of China, scalability will be a big issue. All these factors challenge the conventional IT approach in terms of scalability, cost, and speed to respond. Web-scale IT focuses not only on potentially being able to scale IT-related facilities and technology, but also the associated operational processes and supporting organizational structure in the context of a more risk-embracing culture.

3D Printing

3D printing is achieved by using an additive process through a device able to create physical objects from digital models. The market is broadly divided into three segments: bioprinting, consumer 3D printing and enterprise 3D printing. The main advantage of 3D printing is to build custom or low-volume items that aren’t being mass manufactured. There are many very real opportunities for 3D printing in China, from product design and manufacture of 3D printers and printing materials, bioprinting to 3D printing services provided as an export.

Reference: Emerging Market Analysis: China’s Top 10 Technology Trends in 2014 (You need sign in to view this report).

As Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, announced the strategy of “cloud app”, the two global giants in e-commerce – Alibaba and Amazon confronted with each other in cloud service.

In Beijing office, AWS (Amazon Web Service) China was fighting for their goal in the first quarter of 2014: the first batch of Chinese clients will be invited to try AWS in China. Not long ago, AWS declared its entering into Chinese market.

In Hangzhou, headquarter of Alibaba, Jack Ma gave a careful consideration during 2014 Spring Festival and decided not to focus on the wins and losses on mobile terminal at one time. “Alibaba should lay emphasis on cloud service, and cloud app will be the star of future mobile market.”

Alibaba made quick moves about cloud service in a week: On February 24, Alibaba allied with Neusoft (the biggest Chinese multinational provider of software engineering services, IT services, etc.) to develop cloud service; On February 27, Alibaba invested in Hainan Province to build a “Future City”; On March 1, Jack Ma flew to Guizhou Province to start business in cloud service.

Since the set up of “cloud computing center” in 2008, the status of cloud service in Alibaba has never been so important. Except for internet finance, it could raise the capital market’s expectation of Alibaba; compared with other enterprises such as Tencent, cloud service targeting small and medium enterprises is suitable to the advantage of Alibaba which are big data and platform.

In technology, two things were notable. One was in July 2013, Alibaba completed a three year plan of “de-IOE”, in other words, not using IBM minicomputers, Oracle Database and EMC storage. Alibaba used computer cluster of low cost PC to build supercomputer, which was the first Chinese internet enterprise to fulfill “de-IOE”. In October 2013, Alibaba finished its 5K plan independently, with a single cluster servers of 5000 computers to complete 100 TB sorting in merely 30 mins. It beat Yahoo’s record in July 2013 of 71 mins. Ali Cloud became the first enterprise to offer 5K cloud computing service.

AWS In China

AWS was launched in 2006, offer IT services and grew to be the number one in global cloud computing. Amazon announced on December 18 in 2013 to enter into Chinese market, the tenth of AWS in global market. Meanwhile, Ali Cloud and Tencent Cloud gave 40% or 50% off when AWS entered China. Besides AWS, Micosoft Cloud also came to China in 2013 and IBM planned to develop cloud computing as well.

AWS is invincible in global market, Amazon is going to conquer Chinese market. China market means everything for Alibaba, therefore it lowered its price by 30%, invested 100 million yuan (USD 16.27 million) to cultivate partners and tried to expand Ali Cloud to overseas market in 2014. It is said that “Alibaba wants to be the Amazon of China, while Amazon wants to be the Amazon of China.”

Comparisons of AWS and Ali Cloud

Price

Cloud computing’s biggest advantage is cheap price. AWS’s annual service of single-core CPU and 2G RAM costs 3,530 yuan (USD 574), Ali Cloud costs 2,368 yuan (USD 385). Dual-core CPU and 8G RAM of AWS costs 14,212 (USD 2,312), while Ali Cloud only costs 6,452 yuan (USD 1,049).

Tech

Though AWS is generally better than Ali Cloud in technology, but in China, Ali Cloud’s performance beats AWS.

Products

In Cloud Services, AWS accumulated a series of products, such as AWS IAM, Cloud Watch and CDN, etc. Their clients could have a complete solution. Alibaba announced that they would beta-launch its mobile cloud platform in the middle of March 2014, aimed at providing one-stop solution for clients.

Stability

On Christmas Eve of 2012, Netflix users could not watch videos because of Netflix cloud provider AWS data center broke down. That was the third time AWS broke down. Ali Cloud had few big clients, so there was no break down of this kind happened before. As the biggest e-commerce enterprise in China, Alibaba faced severe challenge of traffic peak during Double 11.

Resources

Amazon’s data center has the cutting-edge advantage in global, however, Alibaba is in control of scarce resources in China. Alibaba set up data centers in Hangzhou, Beijing and Qingdao, and is currently building data centers in Inner Mongolia and overseas.

AWS intended to cooperate with Chinese CDN enterprise Wangsu to avoid high expenses of purchasing BGP (Boarder Gateway Protocol). Another problem laid in front of Amazon is the regulation from Chinese government.

Tencent Cloud version 2.0 press release was held on January 9, 2014 at Beijing. Ji Shunyou, Tencent Cloud vice president, showed the new features of Tencent Cloud 2.0 on the scene. Ji Shunyun announced that Tencent cloud users reached 300 million, becoming the top priority of most Chinese internet users for cloud storage. This press release, filled with a such pleasant surprise, was the first Tencent Cloud 2.0 product media event before the official launch.

Tencent Cloud was launched on July 12, 2012, is one of the most important cloud service of Tencent. Its users hit 100 million after 10 months of launch, and on August 29 in 2013, Tencent increased free cloud storage to 10TB. Since then, the number of Tencent Cloud users had been growing extremely fast, broke 300 million in the recent.

Tencent Cloud 2.0 renewed its functions all-around, transformed from a single cloud storage to aggregated cloud services. Photo and file backup and share are still the core of Tencent Cloud 2.0. Dependent on its 10TB high speed cloud storage, Tencent Cloud 2.0 offers photo and file storage and cross-platform transmit, and further aggregates QR-code scanning, media player, note, face-to-face sharing, applications store, Tencent promotion activities etc. The new version allows users to play videos, check files and share in one platform-Tencent Cloud, to meet all the needs of Chinese internet users.

The update of Tencent Cloud changed cloud competition in China, which was upgraded from storage size fight to a battle for resources aggregation and user needs satisfaction.

Tencent Cloud 2.0 was launched on January 15, 2013.

Sina tech news released on December 18 2013, that Amazon Web Service (AWS) achieved strategic cooperation with cloud valley belonged to China Broadband Capital (CBC). AWS finally was ready to launch AWS in Chinese market.

It’s very likely that AWS and CBC would build data base in Ningxia province and locate operating center in Beijing. The specific cooperation between AWS and CBC was still unclear, but it might refer to Microsoft’s Windows Azure model.

On November 1 2012, Microsoft agreed with 21Vianet Group, a carrier-neutral internet data center services provider in China to launch Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Services Office 365 and Windows Azure in China. Microsoft offered technology support, and 21Vianet Group operated these two cloud services in China. Microsoft successfully avoided telecom value-added services license issues.

Word had been spreading that AWS to enter Chinese market so many times. The most recent rumor was in the beginning of 2013, actually, Amazon did made several preparations for entering Chinese market. Amazon launched Chinese website by the end of 2012 and began recruiting Chinese staff. Seemingly, Amazon was about to enter Chinese market very soon, but then the cooperation negotiation was dominated by Amazon American company and it didn’t end well.

Amazon chose CBC this time probably because the latter’s success in helping Evernote enter Chinese market. AWS had developed over 10 years, in 2001, Amazon global began offering web technology support and operation for offline retailers which was the predecessor of AWS. In 2002, Amazon offered AWS paid services to third parties. Now, AWS was one of the fastest growing business of Amazon, Evercore Partners analysts predicted that Amazon’s market value would surpass USD 50 billion in 2015.

AWS was invincible in the U.S. market, but it faced fierce competition in Chinese market with Alibaba Cloud Computing, Baidu Cloud Storage, Sina Cloud and Ucloud. Ucloud CEO told media that AWS entering Chinese market would be a good thing for Chinese cloud services companies, because of its high-profile in cloud services could help developing Chinese market.

AWS still faced localized operation difficulties, Ucloud CEO said that if AWS want to win Chinese market, they need to focus on product development, technology support and sales. Kaifu Lee once told media in May 2013, that the era of global enterprises operating their businesses in China through its subsidiary coporations had failed, AWS could only had the chance to compete in Chinese market by authorizing its technology to a single Chinese company.