The development of the Internet industry is generally stable

In the first 10 months, revenue and profit both increased——

The development of the Internet industry is generally stable

According to the latest data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, in the first 10 months of this year, Internet and related service enterprises above designated size in mainland China achieved Internet business revenue of 1,403.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.9 percent, and a total profit of 107.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10 percent.

Life services are growing rapidly

"The total revenue and total profit of the Internet business in the mainland have increased, thanks to the steady progress of the mainland's communication network infrastructure, computing power infrastructure and new technology infrastructure in the early stage, and the world's leading large-scale deployment of 5G, gigabit optical network and IPv6, which has laid a solid foundation for the development of Internet business. Zou Xiaoxiang, director of the Institute of Informatization of the China Academy of Cyberspace, said.

According to the data, as of the end of November, a total of 3.282 million 5G base stations had been built across the country, and the number of gigabit broadband users doubled compared with the same period last year. It is expected that the total volume of telecommunications business will increase by about 16% year-on-year, and the revenue of software and information technology services will increase by about 13% year-on-year.

Zou Xiaoxiang said that the Internet business has played an important role in meeting the needs of the people's lives, and the income of Internet business, especially in the field of life services and online sales, has achieved a substantial increase, with a year-on-year increase of 19.2% and 33.5% respectively. According to Alibaba's Q2 FY2024 results announcement, Taobao app users achieved healthy year-on-year organic growth, with a significant increase in the time spent watching short video content, while the number of Ele.me transaction users increased, the per capita purchase frequency increased, and both food and non-meal delivery orders achieved double-digit year-on-year growth.

The steady growth of the Internet industry has added momentum to the high-quality development of the digital economy. Zou Xiaoxiang believes that since the beginning of this year, one of the highlights of the development of the Internet industry in mainland China is the continuous exploration and innovation of the data element market, the continuous expansion of the scale of the big data industry, the significant improvement of the innovation ability of digital industrialization, the acceleration of industrial digital transformation, and the acceleration of digitalization into the all-round and full-chain penetration of the economy and society.

Large-scale model technology is sought after

"Internet enterprises provide technology, platforms and other support to promote the integration of data and reality, and are the bridge between the new generation of information technology such as artificial intelligence and cloud computing and engineering implementation, connecting technology research and development and landing applications. Zou Xiaoxiang said that Internet enterprises and traditional enterprises to strengthen cooperation, the use of information technology to solve the pain points and difficulties in the production and operation activities of traditional industries, accelerate the digital transformation of traditional industries, and give full play to the multiplication effect of information technology.

"This has brought new development opportunities to Internet companies. For example, they can make full use of their advantages to explore new application scenarios, expand the scope of production and operation, and achieve long-term stable growth, especially when large-scale model technology is applied to agriculture, manufacturing and other fields, which will greatly improve the efficiency of the industry and generate the demand for various solutions. Zou Xiaoxiang said.

Since the beginning of this year, large-scale model technology has become a popular research direction in the Internet industry. According to statistics, there are currently more than 200 enterprises in mainland China engaged in the development of large-scale model technology. In August, Baidu Wenxin Yiyan model was opened to the whole society, and soon after Tencent's mixed yuan model was publicly unveiled, almost at the same time, Alibaba Cloud announced that users can log in to the official website of Tongyi Qianwen to experience, and enterprise users can call Tongyi Qianwen API (application programming interface) through Alibaba Cloud.

Within a few months, some Internet enterprise models have achieved rapid development. For example, Tongyi Qianwen has open-sourced four large language models with 1.8 billion, 7 billion, 14 billion, and 72 billion parameters, as well as two multimodal large models for visual understanding and audio understanding, which have attracted the attention of small and medium-sized enterprises and individual developers, and have given birth to more than 150 new applications. The number of users of Wenxin Yiyan has reached 70 million, covering 4,300 scenarios.

"The emergence of new technologies and new applications will bring about an influx of capital, and effective competition will inevitably lead to bubbles. However, as the market pattern tends to stabilize and the technology application continues to be standardized, the large model will achieve more mature applications in intelligent customer service, chatbots, medical care, education, etc. Zou Xiaoxiang said.

Invest in emerging technologies

Technological progress is inseparable from continuous investment in research and development. It should be noted that in the first 10 months, Internet enterprises above designated size in the mainland invested a total of 75.48 billion yuan in R&D, a year-on-year decrease of 2.6%, although the decline narrowed, but still continued to decline. According to Zou Xiaoxiang's analysis, the current world economic growth momentum is insufficient, unstable and uncertain factors are increasing, and mainland Internet companies have also been affected to a certain extent. It should also be noted that in the past three years, the R&D expenses of enterprises have maintained a growth trend, and this decline is only a short-term phenomenon. At the same time, Internet companies continue to increase investment in emerging technologies in an attempt to seize new technology application markets. The innovation capability of mainland Internet enterprises has not weakened, but has entered a new period of technological and business adjustment. With the implementation of new technologies and applications, the mainland Internet industry will once again usher in a period of development.

"Our continued investment in AI has laid the foundation for technology and product innovation, and we will continue to prioritize investments in AI, especially generative AI and foundational models, with an unwavering focus on efficiency and strategic resource allocation," said Luo Rong, Baidu's chief financial officer. ”

According to the latest financial report of Tencent Holdings, Tencent has invested more than 47.6 billion yuan in R&D during the year, and as of the end of September, Tencent has published more than 69,000 patent applications and granted more than 35,000 patents in major countries and regions around the world. "We are investing heavily in AI models to give new features to our products. We will not only position our leading AI capabilities as a multiplier for our own business development, but also enable them to create value for our enterprise customers and society as a whole. Tencent Chairman and CEO Pony Ma said.

"We will maintain long-term focus and high-intensity investment in the core business to ensure that the product closely follows the iterative evolution of user needs and maintains long-term competitiveness. Not long ago, at the quarterly earnings analyst call, Alibaba Group CEO Wu Yongming released a firm development signal: the business that meets the needs of users and the trend of AI-driven change will be the first priority, and for the future-oriented innovative products, we will adhere to the long-term principle of resolute investment, and take the three-year evaluation and inspection cycle as the evaluation and inspection cycle to cultivate new businesses and new momentum for Alibaba for the future. (Li Pengda)

Source: Economic Daily