Cloud infrastructure services spending in China rose 8 percent in Q3 2022 to $7.8 billion, says Canalys report.
China’s cloud infrastructure services spending accounts for 12 percent of overall global cloud spend. The annual growth rate in Cloud spending in China has slowed for three consecutive quarters, now, for the first time, falling below 10 percent.
The top four players in China’s cloud market are Alibaba Cloud, Huawei Cloud, Tencent Cloud and Baidu Cloud.
Changes are taking place in the competitive landscape and customer structure in China’s Cloud market. Carriers like China Telecom are making investments and gaining share in the cloud services market by taking advantage of infrastructure costs and breadth of coverage.
“Around 60 percent of the top three cloud vendors’ customers in the global cloud services market come from traditional verticals,” said Canalys Research Analyst Yi Zhang. “In the next phase, we predict the Chinese cloud market will be driven by enterprise customers from traditional verticals.”
Alibaba Cloud led the cloud infrastructure services market in China in Q3 2022 with 36 percent share, growing 4 percent. It is the first time Alibaba Cloud fell to single-digit growth. Growth was mainly driven by renewal execution.
Alibaba Cloud has experienced customer demand from the automotive and electronic industries. In July 2022, Alibaba Cloud launched a service center in Portugal, the first outside China, to capitalize on the growing digitalization in EMEA. Alibaba Cloud is planning two other service centers in Mexico and Kuala Lumpur to penetrate the North American and Southeast Asian markets.
Huawei Cloud has achieved 19 percent share of the Cloud market in China and was the second-largest cloud service provider in Q3 2022. Huawei Cloud launched some small-scale general solutions, targeting SMB customers with low IT budgets and cloud consumption, resulting into significant growth in revenue from SMBs.
Huawei Cloud’s partner program announced in April helped reaching in 41,000 partners into Huawei Cloud’s channel ecosystem. Huawei Cloud launched new data centers in Indonesia and Ireland and announced a $145 million investment in Ireland, its first data center in Europe.
Tencent Cloud has 16 percent share in the Chinese cloud market in Q3 2022. Tencent Cloud has started scaling back loss-making projects and focusing on profitability. Tencent Cloud announced a joint venture with China Unicom, engaging CDN business and edge cloud business.
Baidu AI Cloud has 9 percent share of the market and growing by 12 percent yearly. Baidu Cloud gained a foothold in some traditional industry verticals, namely manufacturing, energy, and transportation. Its smart mobility solution has been adopted by 63 cities, a significant increase in coverage, compared to 24 cities a year ago.
