Scale of internet development spreads across industries

The population of internet users in China hit 989 million by the end of 2020, with an internet penetration rate of 70.4 percent, according to the latest report from the Internet Society of China on Tuesday.

The total number of mobile internet users exceeded 1.6 billion, and 5G users topped 160 million people, accounting for 89 percent of the total number of 5G users worldwide last year, the report said.

As 5G networks has been speeding up to build, the number of new building mobile communication base stations reached 900,000, and the total number of stations hit 9.31 million in 2020.

The scale of the industrial internet industry reached 916.48 billion yuan last year and saw an increase of 10.4 percent from a year earlier.

The country's digital economy continued to grow rapidly to hit 39.2 trillion yuan ($6.06 trillion) in 2020, making it the world's second-largest in digital economy scale.

The market size of cloud computing reached 178.18 billion yuan and grew at a rate of 33.6 percent last year, while the market size of public cloud computing was 99.06 billion yuan, surging 43.7 percent year-on-year. The market size of private cloud computing was 79.12 billion yuan, a jump of 22.6 percent year-on-year.

The growth of China's big data industry lead the world last year, with industrial scale hitting 71.87 billion yuan in 2020, up 16 percent year-on-year, the report said.

The industrial scale of artificial intelligence reached 303.1 billion yuan in 2020, an increase of 15 percent year-on-year. The market size of virtual reality and augmented reality was 30 billion yuan, and VR market size was 23 billion yuan, accounting for 80 percent. By 2024, the market size of AR is expected to surpass the figure of VR.

The internet of things industry has developed quickly, with the industrial scale breaking through 1.7 trillion yuan last year. The figure is projected to reach 2 trillion yuan by 2022.

The sales volume of intelligent connected vehicles reached 3.03 million in 2020, surging 107 percent from a year earlier.

Last year, the country's online video market size hit 241.2 billion yuan and saw an increase of 44 percent year-on-year, while the digital music market size was 73.2 billion yuan, up 10 percent from a year earlier. The scale of online live-streaming reached 150.2 billion yuan, growing 42 percent year-on-year.

E-commerce transactions hit 37.21 trillion yuan in 2020. The turnover of physical commodities, service, and contract was 27.95 trillion yuan, 8.08 trillion yuan and 1.18 trillion yuan, respectively. Moreover, the scale of cross-border e-commerce reached 6 trillion yuan and online retail sales in rural areas reached 1.79 trillion yuan. The market size of fresh food via e-commerce and live-streaming e-commerce was 400 billion yuan and 961 billion yuan, respectively.

Fintech market sales reached 395.8 billion yuan in 2020, and the figure is expected to exceed 890 billion yuan by 2025. The number of online payment users hit 854 million, accounting for 86.4 percent of total netizens in China.

Impacted by the COVID-19 epidemic, which resulted in people staying at home, the demand for online entertainment had a robust showing last year, with the market size of online gaming reaching 340.59 billion yuan, a jump of 26.27 percent year-on-year. The figure will be 380.11 billion in 2021, and exceed 400 billion yuan by 2022. Moreover, the country's online game players reached 648 million people, up 2.01 percent year-on-year.

The transaction scale of the online transportation market decreased 15.7 percent year-on-year to 288.6 billion yuan because of the COVID-19 epidemic's restrictive effect on transportation last year, with the online car-hailing transaction scale down 17.9 percent year-on-year to 249.91 billion yuan, while the transaction scale of shared two-wheelers (bicycle and electric bicycle) surpassed 29.13 billion yuan.

The online education market maintained steady growth in 2020, with the figure hitting 485.8 billion yuan, an increase of 20.2 percent from a year earlier.

The internet medical and health market was expanding rapidly last year, with market size hitting 196.1 billion yuan, which surged 47 percent year-on-year. The figure is expected to reach 283.1 billion yuan in 2021, an increase of 45 percent from a year earlier. The revenue of the mass healthcare industry will hit 7.4 trillion yuan, up 7.2 percent year-on-year, and the market size of medical informatization will exceed 65 billion yuan, an increase of 18.6 percent year-on-year in 2021.

Internet security and data security are important parts of the infrastructure, the report said. The scale of internet security and data security industries reached 170.2 billion yuan last year, an increase of 8.85 percent year-on-year, which showed steady growth.