Digital technology promotes economic and social transformation
—— Summary of the 40th Statistical Report on Internet Development in China by ——CNNIC.
The main part of the Report consists of two parts: basic resources and personal applications: the basic resources chapter mainly introduces the development of Internet basic resources in China; Personal application mainly introduces the scale and structure of netizens, the internet access environment and the development of personal internet applications. As of June 2017, the number of websites in China was 5.06 million, up by 4.8% in half a year, and the number of websites under ".CN" was 2.7 million.
The number of netizens in China reached 751 million, and the status of mobile Internet access was consolidated.
As of June 2017, the number of netizens in China reached 751 million, accounting for one-fifth of the total number of netizens in the world. A total of 19.92 million netizens were added in half a year, with a half-year growth rate of 2.7%. The Internet penetration rate was 54.3%, up 1.1 percentage points from the end of 2016, and 4.6 percentage points higher than the global average.
As of June 2017, the number of mobile Internet users in China reached 724 million, an increase of 28.3 million compared with the end of 2016. The proportion of Internet users using mobile phones has increased from 95.1% at the end of 2016 to 96.3%, and mobile phones have become an indispensable device for Internet users.
As of June 2017, rural netizens accounted for 26.7% of netizens in China, with a scale of 201 million; Urban netizens accounted for 73.3%, with a scale of 550 million, an increase of 19.88 million compared with the end of 2016, with a half-year increase of 3.7%.
The scale of basic application users tends to be stable, and providing accurate and high-quality services is the key direction.
Internet applications based on instant messaging, search engines and online news, the user scale tends to be stable in the first half of 2017. The differentiation of the instant messaging market is further highlighted, and leading enterprises focus on three aspects: tapping the potential of traffic portals, connecting ability of content services and cultivating the maturity of business models; The application of search engines continues to be mobile, and the actual application effect of artificial intelligence has not brought obvious improvement to the user experience, so the market growth is under great pressure; The application of network news presents three trends: information aggregation platform, fierce cross-border competition and technical core; Social applications exert internal and external forces, internally focus on the production of high-quality content, and externally actively integrate with multi-industries.
As of June 2017, the number of instant messaging users reached 692 million, an increase of 25.35 million compared with the end of 2016, accounting for 92.1% of the total netizens. Among them, there are 668 million mobile instant messaging users, an increase of 29.81 million compared with the end of 2016, accounting for 92.3% of mobile Internet users.
As of June 2017, the number of search engine users in China reached 609 million, with a utilization rate of 81.1%. The number of users increased by 7.07 million compared with the end of 2016, with a growth rate of 1.2%. The number of mobile phone search users reached 593 million, with a utilization rate of 81.9%, and the user scale increased by 17.6 million compared with the end of 2016, with a growth rate of 3.1%.
As of June 2017, the number of online news users in China was 625 million, with a half-year growth rate of 1.7%, and the proportion of netizens was 83.1%. Among them, the number of news users on mobile phone network reached 596 million, accounting for 82.4% of mobile phone users, with a half-year growth rate of 4.4%. Network news is one of the earliest Internet applications in China. As the basic application of information acquisition, the form of network news service has changed from the early independent dissemination mode of editing and distribution to the information platform supply mode based on users’ information needs.
As of June 2017, the top three social applications with usage rate belong to comprehensive social applications. WeChat friends circle and QQ space are social services derived from instant messaging tools, and the user usage rate is 84.3% and 65.8% respectively. As a social media, Weibo has benefited from the establishment and strengthening of celebrity stars, online celebrity and media content ecology, as well as the in-depth layout of short videos and mobile live broadcasts. The user usage rate has continued to rise, reaching 38.7%, up 1.6 percentage points from December 2016. In vertical social applications, Douban, as a representative of interest social applications, has a user usage rate of 8.6%.
The rapid growth of business transaction applications has promoted the upgrading of national consumption.
In the first half of 2017, China’s personal Internet applications maintained rapid development, and the number of users of various applications showed an upward trend, among which online take-out was the fastest growing application; The scale of users of various mobile phone applications is increasing, and the scenes are more abundant. Among them, mobile phone take-out applications have grown the fastest.
As of June 2017, the number of online shopping users in China reached 514 million, an increase of 10.2% compared with the end of 2016. Among them, the number of mobile online shopping users reached 480 million, with a half-year growth rate of 9.0%, and the usage ratio increased from 63.4% to 66.4%. The characteristics of consumption upgrading in the online shopping market are further manifested, user preferences are gradually shifting to quality, intelligence and new categories of consumption, and online and offline integration is further expanded to data, technology, scenarios and other fields, and the huge user data resources accumulated by various platforms are further valued;
As of June 2017, the number of online take-away users in China reached 295 million, an increase of 86.78 million compared with the end of 2016, with a growth rate of 41.6%. Among them, the number of online take-out users of mobile phones in China reached 274 million, with a growth rate of 41.4%, and the usage ratio reached 37.9%, an increase of 10 percentage points.
As of June 2017, the number of netizens who had booked air tickets, hotels, train tickets or travel and holiday products online reached 334 million, an increase of 34.41 million compared with the end of 2016, with an increase rate of 11.5%. Internet users who book train tickets, air tickets, hotels and tourism products online account for 37.6%, 19.1%, 20.5% and 9.3% respectively. Among them, the number of Internet users who booked air tickets, hotels, train tickets or travel and holiday products by mobile phone reached 299 million, an increase of 37.17 million compared with the end of 2016, with a growth rate of 14.2%. The proportion of Chinese netizens using mobile phones to book online travel has increased from 37.7% to 41.3%. Among them, the utilization rate of mobile phone booking hotels has increased the most.
Internet financial market tends to be standardized, and offline payment expansion is still a hot spot.
In the first half of 2017, the online and offline areas of Internet wealth management are integrating their respective advantages in traffic, technology and financial products and services, and entering a development stage from confronting competition to cooperation and win-win. The yield of online loan wealth management products continues to decline, and the industry is developing towards standardization; The field of offline payment is still a hot spot in the market, and the habit of netizens using mobile phones for online payment and settlement in offline stores such as supermarkets and convenience stores has further deepened. While deepening the domestic market, online payment enterprises in China have expanded overseas markets with great market potential.
As of June 2017, the number of Internet users purchasing Internet wealth management products in China reached 126 million, an increase of 27.24 million compared with the end of 2016, and the utilization rate of Internet users rose from 13.5% to 16.8%.
As of June 2017, the number of users using online payment in China reached 511 million, an increase of 36.54 million compared with December 2016, with a half-year growth rate of 7.7%. The proportion of netizens using online payment in China increased from 64.9% to 68.0%. Among them, the scale of mobile payment users has grown rapidly, reaching 502 million, with a half-year growth rate of 7.0%, and the proportion of netizens’ mobile online payment has increased from 67.5% to 69.4%.
The scale of users of online entertainment applications is growing steadily, and the industry is constantly developing towards standardization.
In the first half of 2017, online entertainment applications were further transferred to the mobile terminal. The growth rate of mobile online music, video, games and literature users was above 4%, among which the growth rate of mobile online games reached 9.6%. The revenue scale of online game industry has increased significantly, and the linkage between games and other IP industries has deepened day by day; Progressive ecologicalization and emerging internationalization are the two main development features of the online literature industry in the first half of 2017, and copyright income is expected to become the core of the industry’s revenue growth; In the online video industry, all major video websites have laid out a new ecology of pan-entertainment content including literature, comics, movies, games and their derivatives, and the overall synergy of the ecological platform is gradually becoming prominent; The webcasting service with live show and live game as the core has maintained a vigorous development trend, and the standardization of operation and the quality of content are the main development directions at present.
As of June 2017, the number of online game users in China reached 422 million, an increase of 4.6 million compared with the end of 2016, accounting for 56.1% of the total netizens. The number of mobile online game users was 385 million, an increase of 33.8 million compared with the end of 2016, accounting for 53.3% of mobile Internet users. From the point of view of game types, competitive attributes are still the core factor that drives the significant growth of online game revenue at present, and the market potential of PC stand-alone games with online as the main distribution channel has initially appeared.
As of June 2017, the number of online literature users reached 353 million, an increase of 19.36 million compared with the end of 2016, accounting for 46.9% of the total netizens, of which the number of mobile online literature users was 327 million, an increase of 22.91 million compared with the end of 2016, accounting for 45.1% of mobile netizens.
As of June 2017, the number of online video users in China reached 565 million, an increase of 20.26 million compared with the end of 2016, with a growth rate of 3.7%; The usage rate of online video users was 75.2%, up 0.7 percentage points from the end of 2016. Among them, the number of mobile video users was 525 million, an increase of 25.36 million compared with the end of 2016, with a growth rate of 5.1%; The mobile phone network video usage rate was 72.6%, an increase of 0.7 percentage points compared with the end of 2016.
As of June 2017, the number of online music users reached 524 million, an increase of 21.01 million compared with the end of 2016, accounting for 69.8% of the total netizens. Among them, the number of mobile phone network music users reached 489 million, an increase of 21.38 million compared with the end of 2016, accounting for 67.6% of mobile phone netizens.
From the content category of webcasting, the usage rate of users of live games and reality shows has increased significantly. As of June 2017, there were 343 million webcast users, accounting for 45.6% of the total netizens. Among them, the number of users of live games reached 180 million, an increase of 33.86 million compared with the end of 2016, accounting for 23.9% of the total netizens; The number of live users of reality shows reached 173 million, an increase of 28.51 million compared with the end of 2016, accounting for 23.1% of the total netizens.
The scale of online education and online car service has maintained growth, and bike-sharing has enriched its travel modes.
As of June 2017, the scale of application users in all segments of public services has increased. The online education market is developing rapidly, and artificial intelligence technology drives the online education industry to upgrade; The network car market experienced a rapid expansion stage driven by capital, and returned to a standardized development path focusing on the overall situation; Bike-sharing enriches citizens’ modes of travel, and technology and capital promote the vigorous development of the industry.
As of June 2017, the number of online education users in China reached 144 million, an increase of 6.62 million compared with the end of 2016, with a half-year growth rate of 4.8%; The utilization rate of online education users was 19.2%, an increase of 0.4 percentage points over the end of 2016. Among them, the number of mobile online education users was 120 million, an increase of 21.92 million compared with the end of 2016, with a growth rate of 22.4%; The usage rate of mobile online education users was 16.6%, an increase of 2.5 percentage points over the end of 2016.
As of June 2017, the number of online taxi users in China reached 278 million, an increase of 53.29 million compared with the end of 2016, with a growth rate of 23.7%. The number of users of Internet-bound special cars or express trains reached 217 million, with a growth rate of 29.4%, and the proportion of users increased from 23.0% to 28.9%.
Since the second half of 2016, bike-sharing Service has achieved rapid development under the strong promotion of capital. Small bike-sharing start-ups have emerged constantly, and industry-leading brands have completed multiple rounds of financing in less than one year. As of June 2017, the number of users in bike-sharing has reached 106 million, accounting for 14.1% of the total netizens. Its business coverage has penetrated from first-and second-tier cities to third-and fourth-tier cities, and bike-sharing brands with strong financing ability have begun to set foot in overseas markets.
[link] keyword analysis:
Netizen scale
In the first half of 2017, the growth of Internet users in China tends to be stable, the Internet industry continues to develop steadily, and the Internet economy has become the leading force in China’s economic and social development. Digital technology, represented by the Internet, is accelerating its deep integration with various fields of economy and society, and has become an important driving force for promoting China’s consumption upgrading, economic and social transformation, and building a new competitive advantage in the country. At the same time, the rapid development of online government affairs and people’s livelihood, shared travel, mobile payment and other fields has played a huge role in improving people’s livelihood and enhancing social well-being, and contributed significantly to the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity.
As China’s mobile Internet enters a period of steady development, the industry as a whole is developing in the direction of content quality, platform integration and model innovation. First of all, all mobile application platforms further deepen the improvement of content quality, focus on segmentation and seek differentiated competitive advantages; Secondly, all kinds of comprehensive applications continue to integrate social, information services, transportation and people’s livelihood services to create an integrated service platform and expand the scope and influence of services; Finally, the mobile Internet industry has shifted from business transformation to model innovation, leading the development of intelligent society, from intelligent manufacturing to sharing economy, and the application of massive data and big data technology on the mobile Internet provides more possibilities for social production optimization. (Hao Liyang: Analyst of China Internet Network Information Center)
search engine
In terms of fuzzy search and personalized recommendation, the matching algorithm with artificial intelligence enables search engines to understand the content, provide search results for fuzzy needs, and provide more personalized active recommendation around user attributes, habits and interest tags. For example, the information flow mode recommended by the algorithm is replacing some active search behaviors of users. However, the algorithm improvement based on artificial intelligence technology still needs the accumulation of data and time, and there has not been a breakthrough in improving the user experience at the product level. More accurate and comprehensive search services such as one search and knowledge map have not yet entered the user’s field of vision.
The search engine industry is facing greater competitive pressure, and the year-on-year growth rate of advertising revenue and net profit have both declined. Innovative business models have become the focus of industry development. First, the external competition pressure of the search engine industry is great, vertical applications such as online shopping, tourism, news and social search are developing rapidly, and the business model and product service innovation process of search engines are relatively backward; Second, the industry is facing the competitive pressure of new entrants, and the addition of WeChat search will have an impact on the existing pattern; Third, under the background that the growth of internet users’ online time has basically peaked, the growth of users’ search traffic is weak, and the search demand from PC is close to saturation, while the search demand from mobile terminal is obviously diverted; Fourthly, augmented reality technology is gradually gaining practical application, online streaming media service is booming, the demand for native advertising and content marketing is growing, advertisers can choose more advertising forms and improve their bargaining power, and the market space for keyword advertising in search engines is limited. (Gao Shuang: Analyst of China Internet Network Information Center)
Online takeout
With the further development of the industry and low profitability, it is an inevitable choice for the platform to deepen its existing business and expand horizontally. In the take-away business, various platforms are still investing huge subsidies to improve market penetration, and at the same time, they are continuing to promote refined operations to enhance user experience, such as providing food safety claims insurance services for users and upgrading logistics scheduling engines by using artificial intelligence technology. In terms of business development, take-away Internet companies have accelerated the transition to a comprehensive life service platform, and started to provide more categories and scenes of delivery services by using the take-away logistics system, such as daily necessities, flower cakes, medicine delivery, running errands and other life services.
Food safety and food delivery traffic safety are still two practical problems facing the takeaway industry. In terms of food safety, in the first half of 2017, platforms such as Hungry, Meituan Takeaway and Baidu Takeaway were notified by the Food and Drug Administration due to problems such as unlicensed shops and over-range operation of shops, and some problem shops were offline. In terms of food delivery safety, because the take-away platform mainly operates in crowdsourcing mode, the distribution system lacks unified norms and management, and the delivery staff sometimes drive at a speed limit, drive into the motorway, and run a red light. The expansion of the take-away platform beyond its own operation and maintenance capacity and over-emphasis on performance indicators are also important factors leading to food and traffic safety problems in the take-away industry. (Chen Jing: Analyst of China Internet Network Information Center)
online payment
The field of offline payment is still a hot spot in the market, and the habit of netizens using mobile phones for online payment and settlement in offline stores such as supermarkets and convenience stores has further deepened.
While deepening the domestic market, China’s online payment enterprises have expanded overseas markets with huge market potential. On the one hand, China’s payment enterprises take the form of cooperation with local merchants, dig deep into overseas travel payment scenarios, and gradually penetrate into local consumers to meet the overseas payment needs of domestic outbound netizens. On the other hand, through acquisition, capital injection and strategic cooperation, we can seize the vast overseas market more quickly and accelerate the global layout of Chinese payment enterprises. The application of online payment in China is rapidly reaching netizens in different regions of the world, and the expansion of overseas markets will also bring broader space and strong international competitiveness to the development of Chinese payment enterprises. (Wang Tao: Analyst of China Internet Network Information Center)
livestreaming
The webcasting business with live show and live game as the core has maintained a vigorous development trend, and many large-scale live broadcast platforms completed high financing in the first half of 2017. From the perspective of the development of the industry, the standardization of the operation and the quality of the content of the webcast industry are the two main directions of its current development.
The regularization process of live broadcast of games and reality shows was vigorously promoted in the first half of the year. Since the "Regulations on the Administration of Internet Live Broadcasting Service" was promulgated at the end of 2016, the governance actions against the vulgar content of webcasting platforms have been launched in the first half of this year. In January 2017, the Ministry of Culture held a briefing for online performance companies, requiring all live broadcast platforms to conduct a comprehensive self-examination and self-cleaning of illegal content, and carry out "double random and open" law enforcement inspections, focusing on cracking down on "three customs" and other illegal content. In April, Beijing Netcom Office and other relevant departments talked about today’s headlines, volcano live broadcast and pepper live broadcast, investigated and dealt with the above-mentioned websites for allegedly illegally providing pornographic content, and ordered them to make rectification within a time limit. After many times of governance, vulgar webcast content has basically disappeared from major webcast platforms, and a clear webcast space has gradually formed. The live broadcast platform concentrates its superior resources on the production of PGC content (professional production content), making the quality of webcast content an inevitable trend of future industry development. Different from 2016, the specialization of webcasting industry has gradually increased in the process of rapid development, and the resources of live broadcast platform for PGC content creation have increased, making it difficult for non-professional UGC content (user-produced content) to compete with it. Program features, media resources and operational capabilities will become the three core competitive advantages of future network anchors. Tencent’s NOW Live and YY’s Tiger Tooth Live respectively launched an ecological support plan to encourage original content producers in the first half of the year.Set up a special fund and invest media resources to support the content creation, exposure and operation of the anchor. (Guo Yue: Analyst of China Internet Network Information Center)
online education
Artificial intelligence technology drives the upgrading of online education industry. In 2017, artificial intelligence education products came out one after another. From "Uni Intelligent Learning System" of Hujiang.com to "College Entrance Examination Robot" of Xuebajun, and then to "AI English Teacher" who speaks English fluently, artificial intelligence technology began to enter and influence online education. At present, the landing scene of artificial intelligence technology in the field of education mainly includes language oral examination and intelligent marking, adaptive learning, virtual learning assistant and expert system, which basically covers the whole industry chain of "teaching, learning, examination, evaluation and management".
Some online education platforms improve the service effect by introducing artificial intelligence technology, and attract users to pay by combining technology drainage with live courses. Other technology-oriented enterprises use technology output to cooperate with schools within the system, and apply artificial intelligence to oral assessment, intelligent marking and other scenarios, and the business prospects are improving. (Tan Shufen: Analyst of China Internet Network Information Center)
Wangyue taxi
In the first half of 2017, since the implementation of the Interim Measures for the Administration of Online Booking Taxi Management Services, the market order has performed well. Although the new policy of network car has reduced the market fever, bid farewell to the rapid expansion stage driven by capital and returned to the standardized development path focusing on the overall situation, the user habits of network car have gradually developed and the user scale has grown steadily. The new policy of network car has raised the threshold of the industry. According to the needs of the city’s own development, various localities have issued detailed rules for the implementation of network car management with different policies. The new policy of network car has strengthened industry supervision, and enterprises have divided their ways to seek new development space and expand profit-making methods.
In addition, despite the introduction of the New Deal, the positioning distinction between the online car and the traditional cruise taxi is gradually clear, and the market competition environment is more fair. However, the transformation and upgrading of the traditional cruise taxi network is the general trend, and the Internet information service platform will play an increasingly important role in improving the efficiency driven by network technology. (Chen Jingjing: Analyst of China Internet Network Information Center)