Chinese Companies Now Account for 40% of the APAC Public Cloud Market

RENO, NV, May 23, 2019

New Q1 data from Synergy Research Group shows that Chinese cloud providers are featuring strongly in the ranking of leading cloud providers in the APAC region. While Amazon maintains its number one position in the region, three of the top six are Chinese companies. Alibaba, Tencent and Sinnet are all firmly entrenched in the regional leadership table while Baidu lies just outside the top six. In aggregate Chinese cloud providers now have a 40% share of the APAC public cloud market. The strong showing of the Chinese companies is thanks primarily to their standing in their home market. Outside of the US, China is unique in that it is the only country whose cloud market is totally dominated by local companies. The top six in China are all local cloud providers, with Huawei and Kingsoft also featuring in the top ten. In the rest of the APAC region the top three companies mirror the worldwide leadership ranking of Amazon, Microsoft and Google. But the Chinese firms are making an impact here too. Alibaba has firmly established itself in several APAC countries and is now the fourth largest public cloud provider in the APAC-excluding-China region. Tencent has also started to move beyond its home market.

Public IaaS and PaaS are the most prominent segments of the cloud infrastructure services market and account for the bulk of the revenues, with the balance coming from managed or hosted private cloud services. Within public cloud the APAC region does not yet account for a third of the worldwide market but it is growing much more rapidly than either the North American or EMEA regional markets. Within the APAC region, China is by far the largest country market and is also growing much faster than the rest of the region.

“While China remains a very tough proposition for the world’s largest cloud providers, who are all US-headquartered firms, the Chinese cloud providers are riding on the back of huge growth in their local cloud market,” said John Dinsdale, a Chief Analyst and Research Director at Synergy Research Group. “Language, cultural and business barriers will cause some of those Chinese companies to remain tightly focused on their home market, but others are determined to become major players on the global stage. Putting China to one side, in the rest of the world Alibaba is already the seventh largest player in public IaaS and PaaS markets.”