Silicon Valley Dominance Threatened By Growth Of Chinese Firms

The growth of China’s digital businesses is a genuine threat to Silicon Valley’s industry dominance, according to new research.

A report published by research and advisory firm Strategy Analytics revealed that four of the top 10 fastest growing firms are located within China.

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While Tencent and Baidu were the only non-US headquartered companies to make the world’s largest business list, based on digital revenue figures, China’s size and population means firms can begin challenging global businesses even without much international recognition.

Unsurprisingly, the report found that Google is still the company to beat, posting online revenue of $31.4 billion (£20 billion) for the first half of the year. Amazon came in second with figures of $10.3 billion, with Facebook sitting in third with $5.4 billion. Meanwhile, Chinese firm Tencent overtook Apple into fourth place and sits just behind Mark Zuckerberg’s firm, also reaching online revenue figures of $5.4 billion.

Chinese search engine Baidu moved up into sixth place, while the rest of the top ten is made up of Yahoo, Netflix, Yahoo Japan and Microsoft Online Services.

According to Michael Goodman, director of digital media for Strategy Analytics, US companies can no longer afford to ignore their Chinese competitors.

“A red-hot Chinese Internet market is challenging the historical dominance of US companies,” he said. “The big question, and the key threat to US global dominance, is whether they can translate this success outside China.”

Despite being relatively unknown outside of China, a number of businesses have been able to achieve major success, largely because there are approximately 2.5 times more Chinese people online compared to Americans.

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As a result, Chinese companies, including security software firm Qihoo and online media company Sina, alongside Baidu and Tencent, all made the top ten list of the world’s fastest growing digital companies.