China’s internet and related service enterprises reported revenue of 956 billion yuan in 2018, up 20.3 percent year-on-year, the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said on Feb. 1.

Last year, China’s internet and related service industries maintained rapid growth. Thanks to the facilitation of the Internet of things, big data, cloud computing and capital power, the internet industry witnessed continuous expansion and new opportunities such as sharing economy, digital payment and cross-border e-commerce.

The industry invested a total of 49 billion yuan in R&D last year, 19 percent more than that in 2017. Nearly one-third of all internet enterprises increased their input in this regard.

Chinese internet enterprises collected revenue of 859.4 billion yuan by offering information services, 366.7 billion yuan of which came from e-commerce platforms. Online games witnessed a revenue of 194.8 billion yuan, up 17.8 percent year-on-year.

By the end of Dec. 2018, Chinese internet firms had deployed a total of 1.41 million servers, up 31.8 percent since the same period in 2017.

Additionally, the number of mobile internet applications also witnessed stable growth. 420,000 new apps were launched in 2018, bringing the total up to 4.49 million. The number of apps launched on Chinese third-party app stores stood at 2.68 million, while those on Apple’s Chinese App Store stood at around 1.81 million.