China Internet Report 2018 (abacusnews.com)

At Rise Conference in Hong Kong on Tuesday, Abacus executive producer Ravi Hiranand, South China Morning Post technology editor Chua Kong Ho, and 500 Startups partner Edith Yeung presented China Internet Report 2018, highlighting the big names and wider trends shaping China's technology. The takeaway: China has nearly 3 times the number of internet users as the United States, and the gap will only widen: China has 772 million internet users, vastly more than the 292 million in the US. And there's still plenty of room to grow -- internet penetration is only at 55% in China, while in the US, it's 89%.

Beijing is China's unicorn capital: Some of China's biggest tech giants may have started in Shenzhen, but Beijing leads the way with 31 tech unicorns. (Shenzhen has just 11!)

China's internet giants are doing everything: From streaming video to self-driving cars, the big three (Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent) are present in almost every tech sector, either by investing in startups or by building it themselves.

Government policy continue to actively shape China's tech industry.

China's online shopping giants are going offline.

China loves short videos.

WeChat's mini-programs are cementing its place as China's virtual mobile operating system: Mini-programs, which are no bigger than 10 megabytes and running in the WeChat app are gaining ground -- WeChat now hosts 1 million mini-apps, and the number of people who use them daily is expected to reach 400 million.

China lags behind the US in AI, but the government wants to catch up -- soon.

China is making smart speakers but Chinese users aren't buying them: There are now over 100 smart speaker developers in the country (including all of the tech giants), but demand isn't there yet -- in 2017, only 350,000 smart speakers were sold in China, compared to 25 million in the US.

China is now the world's biggest gaming market: It accounts for more than aquarter of the world's total gaming revenue (the US is close behind in second). And it's dominated by two players: Tencent and NetEase, who jointly have over 60% market share in China.

Comments

Chinese don't buy smart speakers

[Opportunist]

That makes sense. If you live in a country where you have known that everyone and their dog is eavesdropping on you 24/7, you are wary of such trojan horses.

Only in countries where the population isn't used to a government that makes it their business to spy on you the people could possibly be gullible enough to buy such crap.

Re:who cares about China

[Karmashock]

Do you know how much cheaper china is than the US at this point?

Its marginal.

First because labor costs are decreasing in relevance as we automate.

Second because chinese labor costs have gone up.

Third because various things in china other than labor are more expensive than in the US.

Fourth because there are often unaccounted costs to doing business in china such as forced tech transfers, IP theft, etc that ultimately can erase all gains.

There is more... but that makes the point that it is more complicated and the cost of doing business in china is not that much cheaper than in the US.

And because I won't be believed and no one uses a search engine to inform themselves absent it getting jammed in their faces:
http://fortune.com/2015/06/26/...

China is replaceable in the US supply chain. We only used them because we are making a lot of things in other countries in east asia and china was a reasonable place to assemble things. Totally replaceable.

I know I know... lots of either clueless or politically motivated asshats running around running their mouths saying X or Y must be and the status quo is forever.

Think for yourselves.

Note the UK is also cheaper than Germany. Add that to your thinking on the Brexit discussions. ;)