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BATX

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

BATX is an acronym standing for Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and Xiaomi, the four biggest[1] tech firms in China, often compared to GAMA (Google, Amazon, Meta (Facebook), Apple)[2] in the United States. BATX were some of the first tech companies started in the 2000s during the rise of the Chinese technology revolution and quickly became widely used among Chinese netizens. Notably after 2015, some other tech companies like Huawei, DiDi, JD, DJI and ByteDance have also become some of the up-and-coming biggest tech giants in the industry.[3][4]

List

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Name Revenue by 2018 Employees Headquarter Since CEO
Baidu $14,874 mm[5] 42,267[6] Beijing, China[5] 2000[7] Robin Yanhong Li[5]
Alibaba $38,898 mm[8] 101,958[9] Hangzhou, China[10] 1999[11] Jack Ma[11]
Tencent $312,694 mm[12] 54,309[13] Shenzhen, China[14] 1998[14] Ma Huateng[15]
Xiaomi $44,421 mm[16] 14,513[17] Beijing, China[18] 2010[18] Lei Jun[18]

History

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In 2000, under Chairman Jiang Zemin's instruction, China started the Golden Shield Project to manage the media and information flow within China, in an attempt to protect national security and limit the infiltration of Western propaganda.[19] Under the Golden Shield Project, many American tech companies such as Google, Facebook, Netflix, and the like were denied access into China from the Great Firewall due to their refusal to follow local data laws, while others, such as Microsoft and LinkedIn, were allowed.[20] At the same time, the population of Chinese netizens grew substantially since the introduction of internet in 1994.[19] By 2018, China contains a population of 800 million netizens, 98% of whom are mobile users.[21] Many Chinese tech companies flourished under this system, without competition from foreign businesses. BATX are a few of the earliest tech companies who saw the chance and began to occupy the internet market in the early ages of China's internet transformation.[2]

Influences

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Baidu

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Baidu logo

Baidu Search is the most popular search engine in China. Baidu is often contrasted with Google, which is the biggest search engine company founded in United States.[22] Google is banned in China. So Baidu provides an equivalent search experience for China's netizens.[23] Other than Baidu Search, Baidu also provides many different other products, such as Baidu Maps, Baidu Cloud, Baidu Tieba, Baidu Knows, and more, catered to different needs for Chinese netizens. Baidu accounts for 64.55% of the search engine market share in China,[24] and also is the third biggest search engine website in the world.[22]

Alibaba

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Alibaba Group logo

The Alibaba Group was first started as an e-commerce company in 1999 in Hangzhou, China. Since then, it has become a giant tech corporation, including branches like e-commerce, entertainment, online payment, cloud-computing, and AI technology. Its most famous C2C products are Taobao and Alipay, which are closely incorporated into every Chinese online shopping experience. In 2017, Taobao.com was the third most visited website in China after Baidu.com and QQ.com.[25] Taobao accounted for 58.2% of the e-commerce market share in China by 2018.[26]

Tencent

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Tencent logo

Tencent was first started by Ma Huateng as a social network platform. Most Chinese netizens came to know Tencent through its messaging platform QQ. Now, Tencent has developed many more areas of business, including social platform, entertainment, e-commerce, online payment, information services, and artificial intelligence.[27] WeChat, one of the most famous messaging apps from Tencent, had 169.6 million active monthly users in 2018.[28] WeChat is the third most commonly used messaging app worldwide in 2018, after WhatsApp and Messenger.[29] Tencent Entertainment is also the No.1 in the online gaming industry in the world by 2018, followed directly by Sony.

Xiaomi

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Xiaomi logo

Xiaomi, in contrast to the other three, focuses more on hardware technology like smartphones, home automation, smart TVs and other smart devices. Two thirds of Xiaomi's profit is generated by smartphone sales.[30] Xiaomi became the biggest smart phone maker in China in 2014 before plummeting down to fifth place in 2016.[30]

Other tech companies in China

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Although BATX has been a very popular acronym for people when referring to the biggest Chinese tech firms, there are also many other tech firms has picked up after 2010 and also became the leaders in their respective fields. On Forbes' 2019 Global 2000, 20 out of 184 tech companies on the list are from China.[31]

Huawei

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Huawei logo

Huawei became one of the most well known Chinese tech companies in the world by the 2010s.[32] Founded by Ren Zhengfei at 1987[33] at Shenzhen China, it focuses on information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and smart devices.[34] Huawei became the No.1 at Telecommunication network in the world by 2012 and launched its first 5G smartphone, Mate 20 X 5G in July 2019.[35] In 2018, Huawei generated revenue of 721,202 mm RMB of revenue, which is approximately 101,910.32 mm dollars.

DiDi

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DIDI logo

DiDi Chuxing is the most popular taxi hailing service app in China. In 2018, there were over 30 million rides being used on DiDi each day.[36] DiDi is available in more than 400 cities in China and has over 550 million users.[36] DiDi accounted for 71.4% of the taxi hailing service share in China in 2018.[37]

DJI

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DJI logo

DJI is a private Shenzhen-based technology firm which is the leading consumer and industrial unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) manufacturer today, holding a 76% market share worldwide as of August 2021. Their products are sold worldwide and include the Phantom and Mavic camera drone series, the Osmo camera and gimbal series, the DJI FPV series of first person racing drones, the Ronin series of camera gimbals, as well as the RoboMaster series of educational robots.[38]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Biggest Chinese tech companies: From Alibaba and Huawei to Tencent". NS Business. 4 February 2019. Retrieved 15 October 2019.
  2. ^ a b Chen, James. "BATX Stocks". Investopedia. Retrieved 17 October 2019.
  3. ^ Hooker, Lucy; Palumbo, Daniele (20 May 2019). "Why Huawei matters in five charts". Retrieved 15 October 2019.
  4. ^ "Top 7 Chinese Tech Companies". www.chinawhisper.com. 20 January 2017. Retrieved 23 October 2019.
  5. ^ a b c "Financial Reports". Baidu Inc. Retrieved 15 October 2019.
  6. ^ "China: Baidu employees 2018". Statista. Retrieved 15 October 2019.
  7. ^ "Company Overview". Baidu Inc. Retrieved 15 October 2019.
  8. ^ "Alibaba Group". www.alibabagroup.com. Retrieved 15 October 2019.
  9. ^ "Alibaba: number of employees 2019". Statista. Retrieved 15 October 2019.
  10. ^ "Alibaba Group". www.alibabagroup.com. Retrieved 15 October 2019.
  11. ^ a b "Alibaba Group". www.alibabagroup.com. Retrieved 15 October 2019.
  12. ^ "Tencent" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 July 2019. Retrieved 15 October 2019.
  13. ^ "Tencent: number of employees 2018". Statista. Retrieved 15 October 2019.
  14. ^ a b "Tencent 腾讯 - Home". www.tencent.com. Retrieved 15 October 2019.
  15. ^ "Ma Huateng". Forbes. Retrieved 15 October 2019.
  16. ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 14 April 2019. Retrieved 16 October 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  17. ^ "Do You Know How Many Employees Has Xiaomi?". XiaomiToday. 22 May 2018. Archived from the original on 16 October 2019. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
  18. ^ a b c Xiaomi Company Profile. https://craft.co/xiaomi
  19. ^ a b "» The Great Firewall of China: Background Torfox". Archived from the original on 5 May 2008. Retrieved 17 October 2019.
  20. ^ Chew, Wei Chun (12 January 2019). "How It Works: Great Firewall of China". Medium. Retrieved 17 October 2019.
  21. ^ McCarthy, Niall. "China Now Boasts More Than 800 Million Internet Users And 98% Of Them Are Mobile [Infographic]". Forbes. Retrieved 17 October 2019.
  22. ^ a b Forsey, Caroline. "The Top 7 Search Engines, Ranked by Popularity". blog.hubspot.com. Retrieved 22 October 2019.
  23. ^ Seth, Shobhit. "Baidu vs. Google: What's the Difference?". Investopedia. Retrieved 17 October 2019.
  24. ^ "Baidu search engine market share in China May 2019". Market Me China®. 10 June 2019. Retrieved 22 October 2019.
  25. ^ "The Success of Taobao on the Chinese Internet - Daxue Consulting". daxueconsulting.com. 28 July 2017. Retrieved 22 October 2019.
  26. ^ "Infographic: Alibaba continues to lead retail e-commerce sales in China in 2018". Statista Infographics. Retrieved 22 October 2019.
  27. ^ "Tencent 腾讯 - Products & Services". www.tencent.com. Retrieved 22 October 2019.
  28. ^ Huang, Echo (19 August 2019). "Charted: WeChat's astronomical growth abroad". Quartz. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
  29. ^ Kim, Larry (20 September 2018). "The Top 7 Messenger Apps in the World". Inc.com. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
  30. ^ a b Delventhal, Shoshanna. "How Xiaomi Makes Money: Selling Smartphones and Connected Devices". Investopedia. Retrieved 22 October 2019.
  31. ^ Ponciano, Jonathan. "The Largest Technology Companies In 2019: Apple Reigns As Smartphones Slip And Cloud Services Thrive". Forbes. Retrieved 22 October 2019.
  32. ^ "How Huawei became the world's No 1 telecoms gear supplier". South China Morning Post. 18 February 2019. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
  33. ^ "Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. SuccessStory". successstory.com. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
  34. ^ "About Huawei". huawei. Retrieved 22 October 2019.
  35. ^ Porter, Jon (12 July 2019). "Huawei's first 5G phone is launching this month". The Verge. Retrieved 22 October 2019.
  36. ^ a b "25 Amazing DIDI facts and statistics". expandedramblings. 9 September 2019. Retrieved 22 October 2019.
  37. ^ Markets, Research and. "Chinese Ride Sharing Market 2017-2018 & 2025: Major Players are Didi, Dida, AA Pinche, Laihui, and Tiantian". www.prnewswire.com (Press release). Retrieved 22 October 2019.
  38. ^ "DJI Drones and Handheld Products - DJI". DJI Official. Retrieved 5 November 2021.