Table of contents:

About the author(s):

Description:

Annual Report on China’s Mobile Internet Development (2020) is a collective effort by the researchers and experts from the Institute of People’s Daily Online as well as other research branches of government, industry and academia. It is a comprehensive review of development pertaining to China’s mobile internet during 2019. It summarizes the characteristics, points of emphasis as well as highlights. Furthermore, it is also a collection of relevant research results.
The report is divided into five major sections: The General Report, Overall Reports, Industry Reports, Market Reports and Special Reports.
The General Report points out that China entered the era of 5G in 2019. In 2019, 5G, artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies for mobile internet achieved further development in the perspectives of both scope and depth, promoting the transformation and upgrading of mobile internet from consumer internet to industrial internet. Mobile internet consumption and content were showing a “double sinking” trend. New forms of business such as live streaming marketing became new growth drivers. The policies and regulations on the governance of the network information content ecology and personal information protection were adjusted as called for. The intensification and standardization of the mobile government services accelerated. Mobile internet played a positive role in winning the battle against poverty. The cyberspace was imbued with positive energy. In 2020, mobile internet is an essential infrastructure to contain COVID-19 in China. 5G network construction and the expansion of its application are providing a great force of traction for “new infrastructure construction”. The mobile consumption is going through an explosive growth while the new models and new industries are emerging. 5G is promoting industrial digitization and upgrade, accelerating the construction of digital government and smart city and manifesting the value of data elements of mobile internet continuously.
The Overall Reports section points out that China has consolidated the construction of new rules and systems for mobile internet in 2019, such as state governance, network security, content management and industrial development. Special campaigns were launched in the fields of juvenile protection, personal information protection, network ecological governance, e-commerce industry. Mobile internet exerted a great influence in accomplishing the task of poverty alleviation in China. The E-commerce poverty reduction measure promoted local industrial development. Mobile internet also improved rural governance, cyberculture and equalization of public services in poor areas. The role of mobile internet in promoting the transformation of social governance mode unblocked public service channels and stimulated the vitality of digital economy. Under the background of the gradual realization of ‘inclusive connection’ of mobile internet, the self-media users in rural area triggered their own cultural consciousness and the shift of life styles, crystalizing the changes in space and time. 2019 was entitled a historic turning point in term of the first year of 5G commercialization, the 50th anniversary of the birth of internet, the intensified China-US confrontation in the area of high-tech and the COVID-19 epidemic. 2020 is a watershed for human socioeconomic development as well as a new era for the development of the mobile internet and the opening of the next decade.
The Industry Reports section points out that in 2019, the construction of China’s broadband mobile network kept a steady growth. The quality of network was constantly improved. The mobile traffic flow was growing rapidly.In 2019, the core technology of mobile terminal hardware has entered the productization stage. Artificial intelligence has gradually become the basic technology of the mobile internet. Microkernel operating systems have attracted attention. Folding screen, night shot, super video stabilization, AI, 5G and other technologies have become the focus of market. Mobile internet not only promoted the transformation of the real economy, such as manufacturing, retail and payment, but also promoted the development of government online service, social e-commerce and pan-entertainment industries.With the cooperation between the industry, universities and research institutes, China’s industrial internet developed from a widespreading concept to a number of applications in practice, forming a great interaction of strategic guidance, planning guidance, policy support, technological innovation, and industrial promotion. In 2019, mobile APPs accelerated innovation and upgrading, promoting the rapid growth of information service consumption.
The Market Reports section points out that in 2019 globalization and mobilizaition were two keywords of electronic game in China. More attention was paid to innovation, nivestment, finanxing, social responsibility and brand. New technologies such as 5G and cloud empowered mobile game. With a better experience of human-computer interation and the development of 5G and IoT, smart speakers introduced in a new traffic competition. Technology became a new engine for the development of tourism. Many smart cultural tourism Apps and lean management systems have emerged，forming a new model and format for the integration of technology and tourism. The content industry evolved to mobile internet content entrepreneurship, the major hot topics of content monetization process in 2019 included short videos dominating, consumer market sinking, content creation popularization, content e-commerce and live e-commerce, the payment of knowledge and going global. Live streaming marketing became a new trend of mobile e-commerce, showing great potentialities in sinking market expansion and rural revitalization. China’s mobile internet fraud has taken on a new trend in 2019, there was a pressing need to build AI-enabled anti-fraud architecture and coalition, forming a joint defense-control mechanism for the whole industry.
The Special Reports section points out that in the context of further improvement of global policy environment, application and standardization of blockchain, the development of blockchain infrastructure, especially general infrastructure, has made a series of progresses in 2019. With the continuous impication of new generation artificial intelligence programs, the intelligent industry has changed the traditional industry ecology. Generally the intelligent industry demonstrated three important trends and basic development logics. In recent years, there were some problems such as illegal access to person-specific information, data leakage, data abuse etc., Mobile Apps were the worst-hit area. The media will play an important role in guiding the popularization of 5G new services and will become the first field in 5G construction. The construction of personal information protection system with Chinese characteristics was accelerated. The focus of mobile Internet copyright protection were online video, online games, artificial intelligence products, etc. It was necessary to force the establishment of the internet copyright protection mechanism of segmented industry, increasing the protection of mobile internet copyright and introducing relevant judicial rules and industry copyright protection norms. Aiming to mitigate the characteristics and potential risks, it was necessary to put forward protection countermeasures such as the establishment of the “child-friendly” concept, the cultivation of civic literacy in the digital age and setting digital role models for the juveniles. The mobile platform saw more cyber attacks in 2019, calling for improvement of personal security awareness, regular operating system updates and application of security patches, strengthening the security of mobile community.
The Appendix lists notable and significant events of China’s mobile internet in 2019.