Tencent and Alibaba top China's Internet company market share

Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. are the biggest listed Chinese Internet companies, taking over 50 percent of total market share of listed Chinese Internet companies, according to China's online industry overseer, the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).

Listed Chinese Internet companies now total 91, and are worth more than 5.4 trillion yuan (785.3 billion US dollars), a report published by the CNNIC said Sunday.

Among these Internet companies, those listed in America had the highest market share, accounting for 55.7 percent, while Hong Kong made up 29.7 percent, and Shenzhen and Shanghai bourses took up 14.6 percent.

Not only Internet companies Tencent and e-commerce giant Alibaba took up a large percentage of market share, their main Internet platforms such as QQ, WeChat and Taobao were also the most popular APPs among Chinese people.

The report said the most popular type of mobile APP for Chinese online mobile users was instant messaging, and among that, the most popular APP was WeChat, followed by QQ. Online shopping application Alibaba's Taobao came third, with China's dominant search engine Baidu and Alibaba's mobile wallet Alipay following that.

Hao Liyang, analyst of CNNIC said he thought that both opportunities and challenges lay ahead for China's Internet market.

As Chinese Internet development shifts into a "maturity phase," the rate of increase is now remaining at rather saturated phase, because the advantage of gaining users due to a large population is actually making an exit, Hao said. More developing countries such as India are breaking out and their netizens are increasing rapidly.

"The development of China's Internet industry still needs to find a breaking point in order to grasp the opportunity of globalization," Hao said.