The development and integration stage

2011

The dispute between Qihoo 360 and Tencent triggered wide discussions on the openness of the Internet, shifting the pattern from competition to both competition and cooperation. China's leading Internet companies such as Baidu, Tencent and Sina successively announced their open platform strategy, and a new open form thus took shape. Relying on their tremendous user base and platform advantage, Internet giants recruited application developers to their platforms, which was a win-win move since platforms provided user resources for applications and applications delivered good services to platforms. "Coexistence and win-win" and "ecosphere" became the buzzwords of the year.

The burgeoning microblog and WeChat services ushered in the age of instant dissemination, and became a new way of social mobilization; group buying websites burned substantial cash to growth; and Internet financial products started to go on the market. A series of emerging industries set to be hotpots in the upcoming years began to sprout in this year. "Social", "Local" and "Mobile" become the new directions of Internet marketing the Internet started to influence offline society.

In 2011, third-party payment licenses were granted for the first time by Chinese authorities, signifying that the online payment industry, the basis of e-commerce, officially became legal and will be subject to standard administration in the future. In the process of payment company registration, review and licensing, the authorities began to give attention to the VIE structure (Variable Interest Entities) of Internet companies.

The password breach incident at the end of 2011 threw a shadow on cyber security. In this incident, a mass of data of CSDN, Tianya, YY and other Internet products were confirmed to get leaked. As many netizens were accustomed to using the same e-mail address and password for different websites, the breach had exerted far-reaching impacts, arousing netizens' attention to data security of websites.

By the end of 2011, China had 513 million Internet users, of which the number of mobile phone Internet users reached 356 million.

According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), by the end of 2011, there were 128 million 3G users in China, an increase of 81.37 million, and the number of 3G base stations reached 814,000. In addition, the three operators (China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile) had accelerated the construction of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN). By the end of 2011, more than three million of wireless access points (AP) had been deployed across China.