Survey: Tencent, Baidu and Alibaba monopolize Internet market
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Chinalabs.com (a web research consultancy) published the report Survey on Monopoly of Websites in China on Feb. 17 that points out that websites in China have apparently gained an oligopoly.
Websites Tencent, Baidu and Alibaba rank number one in their respective fields.
At present, there are primarily four monopolistic fields, which include search engines, instant messaging, e-commerce and third-party payments. The report shows that a monopoly has been formed on the Internet market. By the end of 2010, the total market value of these three websites reached $77.4 billion, accounting for 70 percent of total market value of listed internet companies in China.
According to the survey, in the third quarter of 2010, Tencent accounted for 76 percent of the instant messaging field. In its financial statement of 2009, Tencent’s total income was 12.44 billion yuan, which accounted for 7 percent of the total income of all websites in China. In the search engine field, Baidu ranks No.1, accounting for 72 percent. In the B2B (business to business) e-commerce field, Alibaba accounts for 54 percent. In addition, Taobao and Alipay, sub companies of Alibaba, respectively account for 95 percent in C2C (consumer to consumer) e-commerce and 71 percent in third-party payment.
Fang Xingdong, the founder of Chinalabs.com, said it’s sad if those websites have abandoned the spirit of equality, freedom and openness and added that the existing anti-monopoly laws need to be perfected to ensure complete public supervision while promoting real competition on the Internet market.
Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba had no response as of Feb. 18 to the report.
