The shift to mobile Internet is “putting a lot of pressure on traditional retailers and banks to offer a better service,” said Ben Cavender, an analyst for China Market Research Group, a consulting firm in Shanghai.
The fiercest competition is among a trio of giants that dominate China's Internet: Alibaba Group in e-commerce, Tencent Holdings in games and Baidu Inc. in search.
Since the start of last year, they have spent more than $7 billion to create or acquire e-commerce, social networking and other mobile services. The flurry of deals is also bringing them into head-to-head competition with each other for the first time.
“These three used to be like three mountains in the Chinese Internet business. But now they have to get into a major war against each other,” said Bing-Sheng Teng, a specialist in corporate strategy at the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing.
The three are little known outside China. But that is likely to change. Alibaba filed Tuesday for a U.S. initial public offering that analysts say might raise up to $20 billion and be among the biggest IPOs ever.
The rise of e-commerce in China gave millions of households wider access to clothes, books and consumer electronics in a society that in the 1980s still required ration tickets for some supermarket items. That was aided by Alibaba's launch of an online payment system, Alipay, which filled the gap for the shoppers who lacked credit cards. The company launched retail website Taobao in 2003.
