Internet access in China for 20 years： Internet applications are booming.

Keywords: Personal Internet application information, online entertainment, interactive participation in business transactions

China has been fully connected to the Internet for 20 years, and the use of various Internet applications by netizens has been continuously enriched. On the one hand, it is the development of the Internet that drives the business model to change constantly, and various innovative applications emerge in an endless stream; On the other hand, the Internet has penetrated deeply into the lives of netizens, and the Internet has already changed from a recreational tool for netizens to an indispensable part of daily work and life.

Throughout the use of various applications by netizens from 1999 to 2014, in different development periods of the Internet, the types of applications welcomed by netizens are also different. On the whole, the use level of interactive participation and information acquisition applications by netizens has remained high; With the rapid development of online games, entertainment applications quickly rose to a high level, but after 2007, they showed a steady and declining trend; Business transaction applications have been heating up rapidly since 2005. By 2014, nearly half of netizens had used the Internet for shopping, payment and other activities.

　Figure 1999-2014 penetration rate of various Internet applications [information acquisition applications include online news and search engines; Online entertainment applications include online music, online games, online videos and online literature; Interactive participation applications include instant messaging, e-mail, blogs, personal spaces, forums /BBS, microblogs and social networking sites; Business transaction applications include online shopping, online payment, travel booking, online banking and group buying. ]

Before 2004, it was the initial stage of the development of personal Internet applications, and the structures of various Internet applications were stable. The interactive and participatory applications represented by instant messaging, e-mail, free personal homepage space and forums /BBS had the highest utilization rate. BBS is popular because people who have access to the Internet are concentrated in colleges and universities. E-mail has become a popular application in the case of limited bandwidth. Internet entertainment applications, limited by the richness of Internet content and the speed limit, have not yet shown the vitality of development. Only word online games have become popular, and some board games have begun to sprout. During this period, the Internet business model is still being explored and established, and the application of business transactions has just sprouted.

From 2004 to 2007, personal Internet applications entered a stage of rapid development. Web2.0 technology with self-organizing and personalized features, such as blogs, podcasts and RSS, made netizens become important providers and disseminators of Internet content. The Internet transmitted information from the initial website to netizens in one direction, and developed into the interaction between netizens and websites, with the form from text-based to more abundant forms such as images and videos. During this period, the application of online entertainment increased most significantly, and the leisure and entertainment needs of netizens were released. The popularity of online games increased from 18.1% in 2002 to 59.3% in 2007, and the online music increased from 13.4% to 86.6%. After 2004, the online video exploded, and the usage rate soared from 2.2% to 76.9%, which made the fixed broadband construction effective and effective.

Since 2008, all segments have witnessed rapid development, with the compound annual growth rate of online recruitment, online education, online travel service, online games, instant messaging and online music market all above double digits. At the same time, the personal internet application structure began to change from entertainment to business. Online entertainment has faded out of the development pattern of Internet applications. Online music, online games and online literature have entered a bottleneck period of development, and only online video has continued to rise slowly. The e-commerce market is booming, and the scale of users of e-commerce applications such as shopping, payment, online banking and group buying has increased substantially as a whole. Since 2011, Taobao has created the "Double Eleven" sales miracle for three consecutive years, opening a new consumption era of online shopping for all. According to a survey conducted by CNNIC, the proportion of online shopping expenses of netizens in the total expenses increased rapidly from 2011 to 2013, which were 10.32%, 13.12% and 17.76% respectively. In 2010, the upsurge of online to offline emerged, and the group buying market flourished. After explosive growth, it returned to rationality and gradually formed a mature business model, which brought new growth points to traditional offline consumer markets such as accommodation, restaurants and cinemas. As a non-standard category, travel booking products are integrated into the Internet, which has spawned a number of excellent online travel booking companies such as Ctrip, Tongcheng and Qunar. In 2013, Internet finance became a hot spot, and the "catfish effect" triggered by Yu ‘ebao had a huge impact on the traditional financial industry, pushing traditional finance to embrace the Internet faster. All in all,During this period, the commercial characteristics of the Internet in China have been continuously enhanced, and the value of the Internet as an economic platform has been continuously highlighted. The development of the e-commerce market in China has won the attention of the whole world. Not only has the online retail market become the world’s largest in scale, but its influence is far from being limited to the development of the Internet industry itself, and it has brought profound changes to society, culture, economy and politics.

Gao Shuang, analyst of China Internet Network Information Center