The past decade of mobile Internet: The old rich are still here, the new rich are here, and the world is no longer just BAT

In 2009, 3G networks (third generation mobile communications) began to be used on a large scale, and mobile phones could access the Internet, ushering in the era of mobile Internet.

From 2009 to 2019, whether we like it or not, the wheel of history has passed for ten years. How the Internet industry has experienced ups and downs in the past decade has been frozen in history.

In the past decade, we have witnessed a qualitative leap from 2G to 4G, the creation of mobile Internet, and the explosive growth of various mobile apps... affecting every aspect of people's lives.

Mobile payment, mobile shopping, instant messaging, big data, etc., all of these now seem commonplace and not surprising, but looking back, there are too many disruptions worth recalling.

3G and 4G make mobile Internet a success

If the Internet world is measured in units of 10 years, then the decade from 2009 to 2019 is the era of smartphones and mobile Internet; 2000-2009 is the era of (PC) Internet, and 1990-1999 is the era of (non-connected) personal computers.

In the 1G (first generation mobile communications) and 2G (second generation mobile communications) eras, mobile phones only solved the problem of voice calls between people.

In the 3G era, mobile phones can be used to make calls and surf the Internet, which is the mobile Internet. It has created a new application scenario. For a long time, no one knew what mobile Internet could be used for and what its killer application was.

In fact, the 3G standard was passed as early as 2000. China promised to use 3G in the 2008 Olympic Games, and then 3G was first launched in Beijing, but it was not fully commercialized nationwide until 2009, when no applications appeared.

2010 is truly the first year of mobile Internet.

At 3 a.m. on March 23, Google announced that it would transfer its search service in China from the mainland to Hong Kong. This was like an earthquake in the Chinese Internet world, and Baidu no longer had any competitors in the Chinese mainland market.

On January 1 of the same year, Taobao changed its homepage. Its registered users reached 370 million, and its online products reached 800 million. The transaction volume of B2C business represented by Taobao Mall quadrupled in 2010, and Taobao's peak daily transaction volume reached 1.95 billion yuan, which means that Taobao has replaced B2B as Alibaba's new growth point.

Also in 2010, after the 3Q war, the cross-platform chat application Kik was officially launched. Within two weeks of its release, the number of registered users exceeded 1 million.

Tencent's Zhang Xiaolong realized that the mobile Internet would produce new instant messaging tools that could pose a disruptive threat to QQ, and suggested that Ma Huateng also make a product similar to Kik.

In the same year, the "WeChat" project was officially launched, and WeChat was launched in 2011.

Lei Jun, who believes that speed is invincible, also released MiTalk on December 10, 2010. It was the first software in China to imitate Kik, but ultimately failed to defeat the up-and-coming WeChat.

At this point, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent have respectively controlled the three most important entrances to the Internet. The formation and solidification of a concept is not a one-day job, and it is difficult to find the original definer of BAT. Probably from the end of 2009 to the beginning of 2011, they had become the recognized three giants of China's Internet.

The commercial use of 4G network in 2013 laid the foundation for the subsequent rise of mobile Internet. Without the increase in network speed, there would be no development of mobile Internet, and there would be no video calls or QR code payment. The millisecond-level delay makes the scenes in these science fiction films a reality.

In particular, the emergence of mobile payment has allowed Chinese people to enter the mobile payment era ahead of time.

Our mobile payments are more than just simple payments. They can also be used for shared bicycles, shared power banks, self-service vending machines... Without the popularization of mobile payments, these entrepreneurial opportunities would not exist at all.

Mobile Internet companies are growing explosively

If the upgrade of communication networks made mobile Internet possible, then the emergence of Apple mobile phone and APP store by Steve Jobs in 2007 redefined mobile Internet.

At the same time, with the support of 3G in 2010 and 4G communication networks in 2013, mobile Internet companies have developed rapidly like a rocket.

At present, the number of mobile phone users in China has exceeded 1.4 billion and maintained a steady and rapid growth. The net increase in the number of mobile applications that can be monitored in the market alone is 420,000, and the total number has reached 4.49 million.

Among them, there are more than 2.68 million apps in my country's local third-party app stores, and about 1.81 million mobile apps in the Apple Store (China). All of this reflects that mobile Internet has penetrated into every aspect of users' daily use.

Consumption and entertainment, transportation, education and medical care, which are closely related to people's lives, have since been connected by this small mobile phone. Mobile applications such as Taobao, WeChat, and Meituan have become tools frequently used by young people.

The rapid development of mobile Internet has created unprecedented business models such as social networking, e-commerce, video, group buying, taxi-hailing, live streaming, and knowledge payment.

Specifically, mobile application types can be divided into more than a dozen categories, including tools, shopping, photography, education, travel, food, life, weather, medical care, music, etc. There are many subdivided demands under each category, and any demand can give birth to tens or millions of APPs.

From 2009 to 2019, the mobile Internet achieved remarkable results throughout the year. Especially with the continuous deepening of big data services, Internet companies can provide consumers with personalized, customized and diversified information services more accurately. In addition, the pace of upgrading of user consumption needs has accelerated, and new demands in the fields of culture, entertainment, sports and health have been stimulated. The number and revenue of various Internet applications have steadily increased. The Internet information service revenue for the whole year was 859.4 billion yuan, an increase of 20.7% over the previous year, accounting for nearly 90% of the Internet business revenue.

The number of downloads of various applications exceeded 100 billion times in 2018. As of the end of December 2018, the cumulative number of distributions by third-party app stores exceeded 1.8 trillion times.

The download volumes of games, system tools, video and audio playback, and social communication applications exceeded 200 billion times, reaching 309.9 billion times, 303.7 billion times, 235.8 billion times, and 201.2 billion times, respectively.

The download volume of daily tools, life services, Internet finance, and e-commerce applications exceeded 100 billion times, namely 130.1 billion times, 118.9 billion times, 106.7 billion times, and 101.9 times respectively. Other applications with a total download volume of more than 50 billion times include information reading applications and theme wallpaper applications.

Among them, the most eye-catching achievement is that the audio and video playback category, that is, the video business is entering the fast lane. The blowout in the number of users has made the user scale of leading enterprises exceed 500 million.

Whether it is BAT or short video companies under Douyin and Douyu, by building short video marketing business platforms, they have provided a large number of short video marketing monetization opportunities from a new perspective, and the revenue growth rate of key companies has exceeded 50%.

It has to be said that the opportunities and challenges brought about by the development of mobile Internet have given new vitality to companies as large as Apple, Google, Tencent, and Alibaba, as well as as small as Meitu XiuXiu, Moji Weather, and Xiaohongshu.

More importantly, in the past decade, the Internet has changed the lives of every ordinary person, making the world smaller, society more connected, and personal life freer and more convenient.

BAT is no longer the only player in the Internet industry

The explosive development of mobile Internet has also given rise to a large number of new elites.

The BAT triangle structure of China's Internet world has been firmly in power for nearly a decade. Although the two AT giants are now more powerful, their brilliance cannot overshadow the dazzling brilliance of the small giants. In fact, the small giants are far more fearless, more courageous, and more international than their predecessors.

Technology and Internet companies within 10 years, including Toutiao (2012), Kuaishou (2011), Xiaomi (2010), Meituan (2010), Didi (2012), Pinduoduo (2015), etc., were all established and grew after 2010. They have more dimensional topics: products, technology, business, competition, entrepreneurship, founders, capital, mergers and acquisitions...

Toutiao, Meituan and Didi, collectively known as TMD, have Meituan as China's third largest Internet listed company. Didi Chuxing once ranked among the top global private companies with a valuation of US$56 billion. ByteDance is currently valued at US$80 billion.

Among them, ByteDance's valuation of US$80 billion exceeds that of Meituan and JD.com, which were in the same echelon before, and is second only to Ant Financial, which was valued at US$160 billion in the latest round of financing. With US$80 billion, it will also be the fifth largest Internet company in China after BAT and Ant Financial.

Among the top eight Chinese Internet listed companies with a market value of more than 200 billion yuan (RMB), three were founded in the last 10 years, and the youngest, Pinduoduo, was founded only four years ago.

Note: The top eight Chinese Internet listed companies are ranked from smallest to largest in terms of market capitalization. Data is as of January 6, 2020.

It can be clearly seen that currently the first echelon of China's Internet only includes: Alibaba and Tencent; the second echelon includes: Ant Financial, ByteDance, Meituan Dianping, JD.com, Didi, Pinduoduo, Baidu, NetEase and Xiaomi, etc.; there are many other third echelons that are not listed one by one.

In the past decade, mobile Internet has rapidly and comprehensively intervened and changed people's daily lives. Fortune Chinese website selected eight companies that have changed the lives of Chinese people in the past decade. The top two are Meituan Dianping and Didi, and WeChat ranks third.

In the past decade, the market value of Internet companies has exceeded that of real estate, China Mobile, and the three oil companies, making this industry feel for the first time how important and indispensable it is, and how it has an increasingly deeper relationship with everyone.