With China as the world's third-largest economy and home to the biggest internet user population, major mainland 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 per cent market share that counts 1.057 billion registered users as of September last year. The company is also the country's top online games operator, with about 484 million active subscribers.
Alibaba.com, the flagship company of Alibaba Group in Hangzhou, is the world's No1 business-to-business e-commerce services provider, with more than 45 million registered users. About 64 per cent of its annual revenue is generated from domestic buyers and suppliers.
'We believe the increase in the number of internet users is a strong indicator of growth potential in China's internet sector,' analysts at JP Morgan said.
According to the China Internet Network Information Centre, the mainland had an internet user population of 384 million as of December last year, about 90 per cent of whom were individual subscribers to high-speed broadband connections.
Many of the new and young users, however, go online through shops that offer low-cost access. Online gamers, for example, typically play in internet cafes.
'Many of the new internet users in China start off their internet experience with the QQ service,' the JP Morgan report said. That makes Tencent 'the gateway' to internet users.