With China the world’s third largest economy and home to the biggest internet user population, major Chinese online services firms Tencent Holdings and Alibaba.com appear set to remain on the inside track to steady growth.
Shenzhen-based Tencent operates the country’s top social-networking website, Qzone, with an active user base of 485 million. Its QQ instant-messaging software has a 90.7 percent market share that counts 1.06 billion registered users as of September last year.
Alibaba.com, the flagship company of Alibaba Group in Hangzhou, is the world’s number one business-to-business e-commerce services provider, with more than 45 million registered users. About 64 percent of its annual revenue is generated from domestic buyers and suppliers.
According to JP Morgan, Tencent is forecast to report revenue of CNY12.38 billion (USD1.81 billion) for last year, up from CNY7.15 billion (USD1.05 billion) in 2008. And Alibaba.com is expected to post revenue of CNY3.84 billion (USD562.6 million) for last year, up from CNY3 billion (USD439.5 million) in 2008.
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(Source: scmp.com)