In the second half of 2024, the overall market size of public cloud services (IaaS/PaaS/SaaS) in China was $24.11 billion.
The Zhitong Finance App learned that the latest report released by the International Data Corporation (IDC) shows that in the second half of 2024, the overall market size of public cloud services (IaaS/PaaS/SaaS) in China was 24.11 billion US dollars. Among them, the IaaS market size was 13.21 billion US dollars, up 14.4% year on year, up 11.3% month on month; PaaS market size was 4.37 billion US dollars, up 20.3% year on year, up 12.2% month on month. Looking at the IaaS+PaaS market, the US dollar increased 15.8% year-on-year and 11.5% month-on-month in the second half of 2024. The year-on-year and month-on-month growth rate of China's public cloud market both returned to double-digit growth. The market recovery trend is obvious. The strong strength of Internet cloud vendors on the AI circuit is an important driving force for market recovery.
In the second half of 2024, the IT-related market is still affected by the large environment of cost reduction and efficiency, and corporate budget spending tends to be cautious. In this context, China's public cloud market, on the one hand, undertakes the digital and intelligent transformation needs of enterprises and maintains rapid iteration in the fields of cloud transformation, AI innovation, and data accumulation; on the other hand, it is moving forward under pressure in the fields of resource integration, R&D investment, and supply chain support.
AI computing power has become one of the core forces driving changes in the cloud infrastructure market. The infrastructure computing power market for public cloud vendors is growing rapidly, while driving the development of general computing resources and online storage markets. Faced with the uncertainty of the domestic and foreign computing power resource supply chain, domestic cloud vendors are speeding up the deployment of computing power resources and actively exploring domestic alternatives. The gradual implementation of AI applications also provides confidence support for long-term strategic planning of computing power resources.
The big AI model drives the continuous upgrading of PaaS products such as big data. In the process of upgrading and applying large models, enterprises showed geometric growth in data scale, and requirements such as technical complexity and compliance requirements became prominent, prompting big data products to iterate in the direction of more efficient, smarter and more standard, and discussions on upgrading the enterprise platform layer architecture towards the big model gradually increased, effectively increasing PaaS market activity.
AI agents actually penetrate the industry scene. The application form of intelligent devices continues to evolve in the direction of multi-modal and cross-field collaboration, placing higher demands on the performance of the platform layer and infrastructure layer. As the “last mile” barrier to AI applications is gradually broken down, the richness of SaaS scenarios has been further enhanced, effectively feeding back the development of the public cloud PaaS and IaaS markets.
Furthermore, driven by the wave of Chinese enterprises going overseas, China's public cloud has accelerated the layout of the international market and is showing a multi-dimensional development trend. Leading cloud service providers rely on technical advantages and operational experience accumulated domestically to increase asset investment in hot regions such as Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, forming differentiated competitive advantages in fields such as compliance consulting, data docking, and intelligent ecology. The market growth rate is higher than the domestic public cloud market, and China's public cloud overseas market has entered a new stage of rapid development.
Market pattern
Public cloud IaaS market in the second half of 2024
Alibaba (09988), Huawei, China Telecom (601728.SH), China Mobile (600941.SH), and Tencent (00700) ranked in the top five markets, with a combined market share of 69.8%, and concentration decreased 1.0% year over year. The demand for internationalization of enterprises continues to be released, helping cloud vendors to rapidly expand the overseas market. Extensive construction of computing power resources has also diluted the top five market shares to a certain extent, and market concentration has once again declined slightly.
Public cloud PaaS market in the second half of 2024
Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei, AWS, and China Telecom ranked in the top 5 of the market, with a combined market share of 64.3%, and concentration decreased 0.9% year over year. The rapid development of AI models has provided a second growth curve and a new track for many PaaS cloud service providers, which has scattered the top five market concentrations to a certain extent.
Market characteristics: Judging from the market pattern, different types of cloud vendors show differentiated competitiveness.
internet background cloud vendor
Forward-looking layout in fields such as computing power services, large model applications, and Chinese enterprises going overseas. Alibaba Cloud has increased investment in R&D, making comprehensive efforts in the fields of Tongyi series of large models and AI infrastructure, and the market share and year-on-year growth rate have increased significantly; Tencent Cloud has strengthened collaboration in the fields of IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS to integrate superior capabilities such as cloud security, enterprise WeChat, and collaborative office to create a balanced basic platform for public cloud market development; Baidu Smart Cloud continues to break through AI software and hardware infrastructure to provide efficient IaaS support for the development of AI platforms and big models; AWS remains leading the way in the fields of Chinese enterprises going overseas and cross-border enterprises entering the cloud in China, especially in automobile manufacturing, gaming, etc. The competitiveness of retail and other segments is prominent; Microsoft Azure is deeply integrated with Open AI to build an intelligent technology foundation for Chinese companies to go overseas.
Non-internet background cloud vendors
It focuses on software and hardware collaborative R&D and compatibility optimization, and has been widely praised by the industry in the fields of network performance, storage efficiency, domestic innovation, and intelligent computing cloud. Relying on Shengteng's ecosystem and localization advantages, HUAWEI CLOUD achieved rapid revenue growth, and quickly opened up a situation in overseas markets with the help of Huawei's global brand effects and years of accumulation in the communications field; China Telecom Tianyi Cloud deeply cultivated the domestic intelligent computing cloud service market and completed many R&D technology attacks; Mobile Cloud used the “cloud network integration” strategy to explore central state-owned enterprises and the sinking market, and the total revenue value broke through the 100 billion mark for the first time in 2024; Unicom Cloud strengthened its computing power investment strategy, upgraded its product and service system, and successfully secured international events such as the Asian East Asia Conference.
Cui Tingting, research manager of IDC's China Enterprise Research Department, said that in the second half of 2024, the growth rate of China's public cloud market picked up, and diversified market opportunities exploded. Entering 2025, under the guidance of national policies, computing power construction and AI empowerment have become the focus of IT development strategies. Leading cloud vendors and cloud service providers have introduced AI infrastructure investment plans one after another to actively expand the computing power ecosystem. In the future, the integration and upgrading of AI models and big data products will become the main driving force for the future development of China's public cloud market, promoting healthy market development.
