Tencent Holdings Ltd’s (騰訊) messaging services were by far the most popular Chinese mobile apps last year, leading steady growth in the world’s largest Internet and smartphone market, the Chinese government’s online industry overseers said yesterday.
WeChat (微信) remained the most heavily used app in the country last year, with almost 80 percent of the online population employing the social media service frequently, the China Internet Network Information Center or CNNIC said in its annual report.
Tencent’s QQ took second place, while Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s (阿里巴巴) online bazaar Taobao (淘寶) came in third. Baidu Inc’s (百度) mobile app and Alipay (支付寶), the payments service run by Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial Services Group (螞蟻金服), rounded out the top five.
The rankings underscore how China’s “BAT” Internet triumvirate — Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent — dominate the country’s Internet industry, which is walled off from the likes of Google, Twitter Inc and Facebook Inc. Internet users there climbed about 6 percent to 731 million — about twice the population of the US.
The number of people who accessed the Internet through a mobile device surged more than 12 percent to 695 million.
China has become a major source of revenue for smartphone industry players from Qualcomm Inc to Apple Inc, which now counts the greater China region as its biggest international market, but the domestic scene is again lorded over by a clutch of local players, including Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp (歐珀移動), Vivo Communication Technology Co Ltd (維沃移動通信) and Huawei Technologies Co (華為).
One of the fastest-growing areas last year was ride-hailing, according to the CNNIC. That segment is dominated by Didi Chuxing (滴滴出行), which drove Uber Technologies Inc out of the market last year when it bought the San Francisco start-up’s local operation.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure