The figures, from market research company Canalys, show that spending was $2.2 billion higher than in the fourth quarter of 2019 and $740 million above the third quarter.
Canalys chief analyst Matthew Ball said: “Remote learning and working, as well as gaming, streaming and e-commerce and other online services were key areas driving consumption of cloud infrastructure service in China throughout 2020.”
Canalys’s figures (see picture) show that Alibaba Cloud had a 40.3% market share in the fourth quarter, well ahead of Huawei, which was in second position with 17.4% and Tencent with 14.9%: the three companies between them had 72.6% of the market.
Ball said: “Cloud service providers also played a pivotal role in developing digital services to support organisations in overcoming challenges caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.”
He added: “These relationships will lead to large transformation projects.”
This year “consumption of cloud services will maintain robust growth”, said Ball, “driven by continued expansion of online services and digitalisation of processes and operations within enterprises and government organisations.”
