Experts say industry standards urgently needed amid tough competition
Domestic navigation app AutoNavi, backed by Alibaba Group Holding, announced this weekend that it ranks No.1 in China's mobile mapping industry, drawing criticism from its major rival Baidu Inc's Baidu Maps.
Analysts said the dispute shows competition between Internet companies is increasingly fierce and industry standards are urgently needed.
Yu Yongfu, president of AutoNavi Holdings, announced Saturday that AutoNavi had become No.1 in the domestic mobile mapping industry, with its 29.8 million daily active users surpassing Baidu Maps' 28.1 million. Yu cited domestic data provider iResearch, the National Business Daily reported on Monday.
Hours later, Baidu Maps responded on its Sina Weibo account by saying that AutoNavi falsifies data. Baidu Maps announced that on October 1, the number of daily active users on its platform was 51.3 million, far surpassing the 28.9 million on AutoNavi, according to domestic data provider QuestMobile.
Yan Xiaojia, executive director of the Beijing-based Chinese Investment Data Institute, said the dispute between the two leading mobile mapping service providers comes as no surprise.
They may have commercial motives like improving the influence of their brands, Yan said.
The competition between Baidu Maps and AutoNavi dates back to August 2013, when they raced to announce they would provide their navigation services for free.
Conflicts over data among Internet companies show that authoritative data such as the number of daily active users has not emerged, Yan told the Global Times on Monday.
"Thanks to the development of smartphones, the mobile Internet industry has grown fast in China, but related policy, appropriate supervision and industry standards have not kept up with these new business models," he explained.
In 2015, about 620 million Chinese netizens used mobile phones to access the Internet, accounting for 90.1 percent of domestic netizens, according to a report released by the Internet Society of China (ISC) in September.
The real focus of competition between Baidu and Alibaba isn't mobile mapping services, which is a "generic" service that is only a tool, said Liu Dingding, an independent industry analyst, noting that what they look to is the potential consumer market.
"The mapping services of these two Internet giants are linked to a wide range of sectors including restaurants, supermarkets and entertainment, which is crucial for producing promising online-to-offline (O2O) services. This is the focus of their competition," Liu told the Global Times on Monday.
Recent years saw increased competition among Internet companies, experts noted.
"Baidu and Alibaba compete in almost all business segments such as O2O, e-commerce and video," Liu said, noting they will also battle each other in the fields of big data and artificial intelligence.
In addition to fierce competition among Internet giants, small Internet firms are catching up and battling each other in small market segments, Yan noted.
According to the top 100 Chinese Internet companies list announced by the ISC in July, new Internet companies invest in sectors including sports, travel and media.
Orderly competition is helpful to the development of the Internet industry and the establishment of industry standards, according to Yan.
He said more and more Internet companies are cooperating with each other to reduce competition.
More than 1,100 financing cases were carried out in China's Internet industry in 2015, with deals valued at $28.6 billion, up 316.3 percent year-on-year, according to the report by ISC.
