BEIJING, Sept. 11 -- China's live-streaming platforms will face tougher competition in specialized services as user scale expansion alone can not bring sustainable business growth, an industry report said.

This year, China's live-streaming users are expected to exceed 500 million, and by 2020, the number may rise to 524 million. The annual growth rate, however, is expected to slow from 9.9 percent this year to 4.6 percent in 2020, according to the report of iiMedia Research, a Chinese firm specialized in data analysis service for new economic industries.

The sluggish user expansion will force industry players to specialize their services and sharpen their commercialization capability, said the report.

Analysts with iiMedia Research looked to 5G technology to transform the live-streaming industry with improved visual effects and smoother interaction, thanks to better connectivity as a result of wider bandwidth.

The technology will re-define the industry as live-streaming service providers develop new contents and ways of interaction along with technical optimization, they said.

The report also mentioned the rising momentum of live-streaming e-commerce, saying that more than half of platform users surveyed have watched live ads in which celebrities promoted commodities.

Two out of five users surveyed by the research firm said they would occasionally buy what was promoted, with female users more willing to make purchases. Clothes are the most popular products followed by jewelry and cosmetics, and together they accounted for more than 60 percent of users' preferred purchases.

The research firm said that about 54.6 percent of the respondents have been attracted by the entertainment shows independently produced by live-streaming platforms, which indicates the necessity to cultivate competitiveness through content production.

The bulk of live-streaming platforms' revenues have rested on user rewards and advertisements, the report said. More gold remains to be dug out in specialized sectors such as entertainment, live games, education and e-commerce, as user demands are getting more sophisticated, iiMedia analysts said.