Top 10 predictions for China's Internet in 2023

Under the epidemic, the uncertainty of the industry in the new year has been significantly reduced, so how will China's Internet develop in 2023? This article makes ten predictions about the Internet from ten aspects. Let's take a look.

It is interesting but not easy to predict the important events of China's Internet in the coming year, which started last year. (Last year's prediction results: Annual review of the top ten predictions for China's Internet in 2022) Where will China's Internet go in 2023?

Obviously, compared with the ups and downs of 2022, the uncertainty in the industry in the new year has been significantly reduced, the economy is expected to thaw, supervision has become more stable, the Sino-US audit storm has basically subsided, and pessimistic expectations have been significantly repaired.

Old rules: Every prediction is clear, which means we can verify whether it is accurate after 2023.

At the same time, I would like to emphasize again: compared with the specific results of the predictions, as practitioners in this industry, we should actually pay more attention to the logic and trends behind these predictions.

Let’s get started –

Prediction 1: Ant Group will complete its IPO in 2023

If it happens, Ant Group's IPO may become a landmark event for the technology industry in 2023.

It will further reduce the uncertainty caused by regulatory factors for domestic technology companies and bring more certain confidence to the market and investors.

There have been a lot of recent developments about Ant Group:

1. On November 7, Ant Group announced the completion of the adjustment of its corporate governance structure. After the adjustment, Jack Ma's voting rights dropped from 53.46% to about 6.2%, which means that he gave up the actual control over Ant Group. At the same time, the company also announced that it would strengthen its isolation from shareholder Alibaba Group.
2. On January 13, a relevant person in charge of the Central Bank revealed at a press conference that since November 2020, financial management departments have guided and urged 14 large platform companies including Ant Group to carry out rectification of some outstanding issues, and the rectification has basically been completed.
3. On January 10, Hangzhou Municipal Party Committee Secretary Liu Jie visited relevant companies to carry out a "big visit, big investigation, big service, and big problem solving" activity to investigate Ant Group.
4. On January 4, regulators approved Chongqing Ant Consumer Finance Co., Ltd. to increase its capital from 8 billion to 18.5 billion, which means that Ant Group can raise 10.5 billion yuan for its consumer department.

These are all positive signals for Ant Group. Since its IPO was suspended two years ago, Ant Group has undergone a long rectification process to meet regulatory requirements regarding financial and data security.

Over the past two years, in accordance with regulatory requirements, Ant Group has implemented many compliance actions in its payment, consumer finance, funds, insurance and other product lines. In particular, the shareholder structure of consumer finance has become more balanced after the capital increase.

Although we cannot confirm whether the final obstacle for Ant Group to restart its IPO has been completely cleared after completing the above actions.

But there is no doubt that these actions and signals currently appear relatively positive, and are moving in a positive direction that all parties would like to see.

Despite regulatory regulations on changes in actual controllers during listing, I still predict that Ant Group will complete its IPO in 2023.

I hope that Mr. Ma will write a memoir after retirement. The story of Ant from its founding to the suspension of its IPO and then its restart must be very exciting.

Additional prediction – Didi will be back on the market in 2023.

Prediction 2: Domestic listed Internet companies will launch at least one large language model similar to ChatGPT

Generative artificial intelligence represented by ChatGPT has shown amazing potential in 2022.

After years of preparation and practice, AIGC has evolved from a technical concept into large-scale application. According to preliminary estimates in a Goldman Sachs research report, by 2025, the proportion of data generated by AIGC will reach 10%.

Nvidia's StyleGAN model that can generate pictures in 2018, DeepMind's DVD-GAN model that can automatically generate continuous videos in 2019, and OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT in 2022 are three important nodes of AIGC at the application level.

Every time there is a new wave in Silicon Valley, there is always a domestic follower, and this time will obviously be no exception.

However, the progress of domestic AIGC at the product level is most likely to be launched by large Internet companies rather than startups.

The reasons for the above conclusion are as follows:

First, AIGC itself is a high-threshold business. For example, the training room of Stable Diffusion, an AI painting platform, runs a cluster of 4,000 NVIDIA A100 GPUs, and its operating costs exceed US$50 million.

The success of OpenAI is largely based on the support of Microsoft's funding and computing resources.

Its financial and technical requirements directly discourage most startups.

Second, although domestic listed companies are also reducing costs and increasing efficiency, most companies have sufficient financial conditions and cash reserves, and will not become bottlenecks at the level of funds and computing resources.

More importantly, domestic Internet giants have very obvious advantages in data accumulation and technology reserves, and AIGC itself is a business with obvious commercial potential.

For example, Microsoft has already planned to apply OpenAI's related technologies to actual businesses such as search and Office software.

It has to be admitted that although domestic Internet companies still have a big gap with the forefront of Silicon Valley in terms of basic research, their combat effectiveness and execution capabilities are very strong in terms of transformation results and specific applications.

Therefore, in the context of the mobile Internet technology cycle reaching a bottleneck, large companies looking for the second curve will definitely participate in this wave of AIGC technology.

Based on this, I predict that by 2023, domestic listed Internet companies will launch at least one large-scale language model similar to ChatGPT.

Additional prediction: There will be at least one financing event exceeding US$100 million in the domestic AIGC field.

Prediction 3: Tencent’s advertising revenue will grow by more than 15% in 2023

Advertising is a barometer of the economy. Obviously, affected by the sluggish macro-economy, Tencent Advertising has been under obvious pressure in the past year.

But it is very likely that Tencent Advertising’s most difficult times have passed, and it is expected to return to the mean in 2023.

From a data perspective, Tencent's advertising revenue in Q3 still fell 5% year-on-year.

But from a segmented perspective, of the total advertising revenue of 21.5 billion in Q3, social and other advertising revenue only fell 1% to 18.9 billion, and media advertising revenue fell 26% to 2.6 billion.

In other words, the downward trend of social advertising, which accounted for the majority of the total in Q3 this year, has been clearly corrected.

The reason why we are optimistic about the improvement of Tencent’s advertising revenue is mainly based on the following four logics:

1. Macroeconomic recovery

Compared with the sluggish GDP growth and total retail sales of consumer goods in 2022, the overall economic performance in 2023 is expected to return to normal.

Statistics from multiple economies show that a country's advertising spending and its GDP growth rate are highly positively correlated, and the current penetration rate of online advertising in total advertising revenue has just exceeded 50%, which means that the substitution effect on offline advertising still exists.

Therefore, as a typical player in the online advertising field, Tencent Advertising will also benefit from macro improvements.

2. Low base in 2022

2022 is indeed a difficult year for Tencent Advertising. According to financial report data, its advertising revenue fell 16% in Q1, 18% in Q2, and 5% in Q3.

Obviously, 2022 is a low point in terms of base, which helps the growth rate in 2023 to show in the data.

3. The release of game licenses will bring additional bonuses

Many people think that Tencent itself is a gaming giant, and Tencent Advertising will not accept purchases from gaming advertisers. This is a stereotype.

In fact, the budget from game distribution is also an important part of Tencent advertising.

On December 28, 84 domestic game licenses were issued, the highest number of the year. At the same time, 44 international game licenses were issued, the first time since 2021.

It can be seen that game licenses have become normalized and there is a trend of gradual relaxation. Tencent Advertising is expected to benefit from the relaxation of licenses.

At the same time, the possible relaxation of supervision in industries such as education and real estate may also bring new supply benefits at the advertising level.

4. Video accounts are expected to create new supply

In his speech at the end of the year, Ma Huateng called Video Account "the hope of the entire company." It is obvious that he also has high hopes for the commercialization of Video Account.

In fact, the commercialization of video accounts has accelerated significantly in 2022. In addition to the regular commercialization of concert live broadcasts, video account information flow advertising has also been launched, and at the end of the year it was announced that technical service fees would be charged.

In Tencent’s Q3 conference call, two important pieces of information about the video account were disclosed:

1. Management expects video account advertising revenue to reach 1 billion in Q4;
2. The ECPM of video account ads is higher than that of Moments ads;

What is the concept of 1 billion?

Tencent’s advertising revenue in Q3 was 21.5 billion, which means that in the first quarter just after its launch, advertising revenue from the video account contributed nearly 5% of its revenue.

Obviously, with the gradual relaxation of advertising Adsload, the advertising revenue potential of Video Account cannot be underestimated.

To sum up, I am cautiously optimistic about Tencent Advertising's performance in 2023, and I predict that the growth rate of Tencent Advertising's revenue in 2023 will not be less than 15%.

Additional forecast - Kuaishou e-commerce GMV will grow by more than 25% in 2023.

Prediction 4: Baidu’s Metaverse product XiRang will be shut down in 2023

I subjectively believe that Baidu's Xirang is a self-satisfaction product.

It has neither the UGC-centric architecture of Roblox, nor the VR-centric experience of Mata Horizon Worlds, nor even the pure and flexible social design of Jelly.

Xiran is a low-profile version of "Second Life", which was a product launched 16 years ago.

Its experience can be seen from its 2.3-point rating on the AppStore. In my actual experience, its 3D modeling is even on the same level as many web games.

This is not just my personal opinion. We can see a lot of similar comments from the AppStore reviews and Zhihu evaluations.

Today's Xiran's performance on the C-end is, in a sense, a ghost town, and it is almost impossible to bring a pleasant experience to ordinary users.

In response to this, Baidu explained that the Metaverse is a long-term project with a very long construction period, and for this reason it even came up with a negative version number.

Obviously, Baidu is not very confident about its product experience.

Therefore, we have focused on the B-side in the past year and carried out many online activities with many new brands.

In my opinion, the real marketing effectiveness of these brands in Greece is questionable.

The reason is that whether the B-end products built in Xirang can really work ultimately needs to be based on the real experience of C-end users, otherwise its value and effect will be castles in the air.

Many brands today are indeed willing to try new things, which can be considered as an exploration of the new model of the metaverse, so they do not pay much attention to the real ROI in the early stages.

However, if something cannot generate lasting value, the trial effect brought about by the new concept can only be a flower in the mirror or a moon in the water.

Castles in the air will eventually collapse.

In fact, 16 years ago, IBM, Dell and Reebok established virtual showrooms in Second Life.

The sophistication of its modeling is intuitively not much different from that of Xirang, but all this has not left any meaningful traces in the commercial field.

Dell's showroom in Second Life 16 years ago

I believe there are two types of business practices that are respectable:

The first category is the unknown exploration of technological boundaries and frontiers . Google's Google Glass, Microsoft's HoloLens, and Meta's Oculus belong to this category. Although they are not successful at present, such exploration is obviously valuable in promoting industrial progress.

The second category is to solve practical problems in reality in a down-to-earth manner , such as Redmi mobile phone, Baidu Knows, Xingsheng Youxuan, Universal WiFi Key, Sogou Input Method, etc. It is not high-end at all, but simple and crude, and directly solves the problem.

Unfortunately, however, Xirang does not belong to any of the above two categories. It is more like a piggyback product based on the popular concept of the metaverse.

Therefore, I predict that Xiran, an immature product, will be shut down in 2023.

Perhaps this is a better destination for it.

Additional forecast: Pico4's cumulative sales will exceed 500,000 units in 2023.

Prediction 5: Tik Tok encounters a major geopolitical impact in the United States

Although Tik Tok does not operate in China, its parent company is a Chinese Internet company, so Tik Tok falls into the broad category of Chinese Internet.

As the competition between China and the United States continues to become increasingly fierce, Tik Tok is undoubtedly the most sensitive nerve, and the risk of geopolitical shocks it faces is gradually magnified.

Specifically, we understand it from three aspects:

First, from the official level of the United States, although the two-party struggle in the United States is very fierce, confronting China is one of the few united fronts of the two parties. In order to cater to voters, both camps are even trying their best to prove that they are the tougher side against China.

Therefore, Tik Tok, which has a strong presence in the game between China and the United States, is very likely to become the target of policy attacks by both parties.

Second, from the grassroots level in the United States, although Tik Tok is very popular at the user level, the real beneficiaries at the economic level are only small-scale KOLs. It is not known which hemisphere the majority of Tik Tok ordinary spectators in China are more likely to be incited by populism.

After all, no one wants to be labeled unpatriotic.

Don’t overestimate the stickiness of most users. Even if Tik Tok is gone, they will immediately turn to YouTube Short, Instagram and other replacement products. India, where Tik Tok was banned, is an example.

Third, from the perspective of American business competitors, companies such as Google, Mata, Netflix, Snap, etc. hate Tik Tok to the core because they cannot compete with Tik Tok no matter how hard they try.

Business in the United States has always been extremely realistic. If you cannot compete at the product level, then use other reasonable and legal means within the legal framework.

The luxurious lobbying teams of major Silicon Valley giants in Washington are no pushovers. They are looking for any possible loopholes and weaknesses of Tik Tok in an extremely professional manner, ready to launch a fatal blow to it at any time.

The recent incident in which Tik Tok checked the information of two journalists caused an uproar in the United States.

At the same time, there are capital forces from all sides playing repeated games behind the scenes. Many of ByteDance’s important investors come from the US capital market. They also have a significant influence on all parties in the United States, so they will never sit idly by.

In 2023, it is unlikely that Tik Tok, which has been walking on a tightrope, will be able to remain calm.

Therefore, I predict that Tik Tok will face a major geopolitical shock in the United States in 2023.

Of course, after the Trump ban incident that year, ByteDance’s ability and experience in dealing with complex situations are no longer what they used to be.

It can be expected that even if faced with a major shock, today’s ByteDance team will be more mature in its handling strategy than before.

Additional forecast: Alibaba’s overseas business revenue will grow by more than 20% in 2023.

Prediction 6: China’s smartphone sales will drop by at least 5% in 2023

Let’s first take a look at the global smartphone shipment data since 2011:

It can be seen that since 2016, the shipment volume of smartphones has basically been declining, and the decline rate is not small.

The main reasons for the decline are as follows:

1. Excess performance and less valuable innovation

From an objective point of view, despite the rapid development of smartphones over the past decade, their product form has not surpassed the iPhone 3G released in 2008 (this generation of iPhone first appeared App Store)

The development of smartphones over the past decade has been characterized by incremental innovation—faster performance, more powerful cameras, better screens, and larger sizes.

These updates are certainly meaningful, but the marginal improvements in experience are getting smaller and smaller.

My personal intuitive feeling is that after entering the 4G era around 2014, mainstream smartphones have already reached 90 points in terms of user experience, and the next eight years have been striving towards 100 points. Objectively speaking, the room for improvement is very limited.

2. Long replacement cycle

According to IDC statistics, the smartphone replacement cycle in China is expected to increase to 34 months.

There are two reasons why the replacement cycle of mobile phone consumers is getting longer and longer:

First of all, the optimization that can be intuitively perceived at the functional level mentioned above is limited. If you don’t compare the functions of a mobile phone bought three years ago and a new phone today carefully, there is not much difference in the experience, so mobile phone manufacturers can only modify the appearance to obtain intuitive differences.

Secondly, the economic downturn has dampened the enthusiasm of many consumers to change their phones.

When consumers are optimistic about the future, they may replace their mobile phones once every one or two years. However, when they are uncertain about the future, they are more likely to choose to replace the battery and continue using it for two years.

3. 5G is less perceived in terms of experience

As a new generation of mobile communication standard, 5G once brought optimistic expectations to the smartphone market.

However, despite the active deployment of 5G base stations by domestic operators, the country is relatively leading in 5G coverage.

But it turns out that from the perspective of experience, the upgrade from 4G to 5G is not as obvious as the upgrade from 3G to 4G. Many consumers even turn off 5G signals to save phone power.

It is the combination of the above three reasons that has caused global smartphone sales to reach a peak of 1.47 billion units in 2016 and never look back.

Foldable screens are the only growing category in the entire smartphone market and one of the few bright spots in the mobile phone market in recent years. However, the high prices of foldable screens have resulted in their current sales accounting for a very small share of the overall market.

Counterpoint predicts that the sales volume of foldable screen phones will reach 16 million units in 2022, but this is still a very small proportion compared to the overall data of more than 1.2 billion.

Therefore, in the short term, it is impossible to rely on the growth of foldable screens to drive the overall smartphone market.

From January to November 2022, the total shipments of mobile phones in the domestic market were 244 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 23.2%.

Although the decline in shipments is expected to improve in 2023 as the economy improves, it is still expected to be difficult to escape the downward cycle.

I predict that domestic mobile phone shipments will drop by at least 5% in 2023.

Additional forecast: Xiaomi's Internet business will grow by more than 15% in 2023.

Prediction 7: Xiaohongshu will have an IPO in 2023

That’s right, Xiaohongshu is one of the few bright spots in the sluggish Chinese internet in the past few years.

But its road to listing was full of ups and downs.

In early 2021, Yang Ruo, an investment banker from Citibank, joined Xiaohongshu as CFO, which was the most obvious signal that Xiaohongshu was launching an IPO.

However, in the past two years, the market has not waited for the news that this popular unicorn has successfully entered the capital market. Instead, the former CFO Yang Ruo left the company in mid-2022 after working for a year and a half.

Xiaohongshu's road to listing was not smooth due to both external and internal factors. Let's analyze them one by one:

1. External factors

It is no exaggeration to describe the external environment in 2022 as harsh. The United States' interest rate hike cycle and strict control of the epidemic at home have cast a shadow on the macro economy.

In particular, the risk of delisting of Chinese stocks caused by the audit scandal has made the capital market silent. If it goes public at that time, even Xiaohongshu, which has a dazzling growth, will inevitably find it difficult to get a fair valuation.

2. Internal factors

Although Xiaohongshu has been making great strides in terms of user data, its commercialization efficiency is full of uncertainties.

As a content community, its positioning is in some sense similar to that of Bilibili, Weibo and Zhihu, but the commercialization of the above three companies has not been successful in the past.

The core logic behind this is that compared to algorithm-distributed content products such as TikTok, community products naturally cede part of the traffic distribution rights to content producers.

On the commercial level, the platform is in a sense in a game relationship with KOLs. If Xiaohongshu also relies on matchmaking platforms like Bilibili's Huohuahuo, Weibo's Weimanzhi, and Zhihu's Cheese, then its gross profit margin will inevitably be low.

Xiaohongshu’s last round of financing in November 2021 was valued at US$20 billion, which is far higher than that of Weibo and Bilibili.

In the real capital market last year, the high valuation of US$20 billion obviously had requirements for its revenue scale, which also required Xiaohongshu to improve its commercialization efficiency and scale to a sufficient level.

However, this year, when we re-examine internal and external factors from a new perspective, there is another possibility.

First, the external environment has improved. The audit crisis has been resolved to a large extent. The CPI in the US market has entered a downward growth channel. The Federal Reserve is expected to end the interest rate hike cycle in the first half of this year, and the capital liquidity crisis is expected to be alleviated.

Secondly, the domestic economy is expected to return to normal after the epidemic is relaxed , and the advertising market, which is Xiaohongshu’s core source of income, is also expected to recover. Xiaohongshu itself is also expected to relax the previously strictly restricted advertising Adsload to improve its own revenue scale.

Objectively speaking, targets like Xiaohongshu that have high growth, barriers and long-term value are still scarce in the current capital market.

In addition, as a super unicorn that has already reached the E round of financing, some of Xiaohongshu's investors must also have the desire to exit.

Therefore, I predict that in 2023, Xiaohongshu will overcome difficulties and enter the capital market.

Additional prediction: Bilibili achieves its user data target: monthly active users will exceed 400 million in 2023.

Prediction 8: Ctrip’s revenue growth will exceed 50% in 2023

As the leading domestic OTT platform, the relaxation of the epidemic situation is a blessing in disguise for Ctrip.

The past three years have been difficult for Ctrip. Industry insiders probably won’t forget the scene of Liang Jianzhang’s live broadcast in disguise at the beginning of the epidemic.

Although Ctrip's performance turned from negative to positive in Q3 2022, increasing by 28%, due to the 32% year-on-year decline in revenue in Q2, Ctrip's overall revenue in 2022 is expected to be difficult to increase significantly compared to 2021.

But for Ctrip, the worst moment has passed, and 2023 will be a year of growth with extremely high certainty.

The easing of the epidemic is beneficial to both Ctrip’s domestic and international businesses.

The data tells it all——

After the release of the "New Ten Measures" in China, the instant search volume for air tickets on Ctrip soared by 160%, and the search volume for air tickets on the eve of the Spring Festival soared to the highest point in three years.

Ctrip recently released the "2023 Spring Festival Tourism Market Forecast Report", which shows that the number of bookings for tourism products during the Spring Festival increased by 45% year-on-year, and per capita travel expenditure increased by 53% year-on-year.

That’s right, the suppressed domestic tourism demand will be significantly released in 2023, so Ctrip’s revenue is expected to see a significant increase in 2023.

Of course, from another perspective, we must consider the impact of the three-year epidemic on overall consumer confidence. Therefore, it is unlikely that Ctrip’s revenue will directly return to the pre-epidemic level of 2019.

Let’s take a look at Ctrip’s revenue scale over the past three years - the revenue was 35.7 billion in 2019, which was halved to 18.3 billion in 2020, 20 billion in 2021, and is expected to be around 20 billion in 2022.

Therefore, I estimate that Ctrip's revenue will grow by 50% to around 30 billion in 2023.

Additional forecast: Pinduoduo's revenue growth will exceed 35% in 2023.

Prediction 9: At least one of Alibaba and Tencent will start making XR hardware in 2023

Many years later, when we look back at the technology industry in 2023, there is a high probability that we will find that it will be an important year in the history of technology.

There’s only one reason—Apple will release its first consumer headset this year.

Although according to current industry revelations, the high price of the headset will lock the consumers of its first-generation product into a smaller group.

But looking at past history, Apple has a magical power - teaching the industry how to make the first consumer product.

With the improvement of power consumption performance of mobile chips, the maturity of MicroLED screens and the application of new light field technology, the next generation of XR headset products that are truly for ordinary consumers is being nurtured.

This is likely to be a big opportunity for the technology industry.

As industry leaders of huge scale, Alibaba and Tencent must find the next big opportunity in order to avoid being left out of the table in the next cycle.

Although Meta and Microsoft's losses in hardware have discouraged many Internet companies from making hardware themselves, for the leading giants, the cost of missing out on the next big opportunity is unbearable.

Tencent has actually already made a lot of arrangements in the XR infrastructure. It is an investor in Epic, the parent company of Unreal Engine, and Roblox, the first stock in the Metaverse. Its gaming division has explored a variety of "true Internet" technologies including virtual humans, and it also established a special XR department in June last year.

Although the previous acquisition of Black Shark Technology was blocked and there have been recent reports of adjustments to the XR department, I believe that Tencent’s XR exploration will not stop there.

Alibaba has been planning for the XR field for a long time. As early as 2016, Alibaba launched a VR shopping project and invested in the US AR unicorn Magic Leap. Alibaba DAMO Academy established an XR laboratory and invested in AR startup Nreal last year. Alibaba itself also has a hardware department including Tmall Genie.

The reason why Alibaba and Tencent are more likely to start making hardware is that:

XR is an integrated technology that combines software and hardware to a much higher degree than mobile phones. The exploration of many businesses and technologies cannot be separated from the cooperation and support of hardware.

It is hard for us to imagine that Alibaba and Tencent’s attempts and layouts in XR will eventually be put on the shelves and run on Pico’s hardware.

Therefore, I predict that at least one of Alibaba and Tencent will start making XR hardware in 2023.

The specific form is most likely to be the acquisition of a startup company in the industry.

Additional prediction: Domestic XR startups will receive at least one round of financing exceeding US$50 million.

Prediction 10: The number of new monthly active users of mobile Internet will not exceed 10 million in 2023

For the industry, many of the above predictions have a lot of optimistic logic.

But every practitioner in the industry must have a clear understanding——

This cautiously optimistic expectation is relative to the severe downturn in the industry last year. In other words, it only means that it is unlikely that the situation will get worse in 2023, and it does not mean that the industry can return to its previous high-spirited state.

After all, the general logic that the mobile Internet technology cycle is approaching its end has not changed. The transition from consumer Internet to industrial Internet is slow, and the next round of technological innovation is still in the making.

Therefore, for today's Internet industry, whether it is the large cycle determined by technology or the small cycle determined by investment, it may still be in the new normal of slight growth in the next few years.

Based on the above logic, I am not optimistic about the basic data of mobile Internet in 2023.

An important reason behind this is that the strict epidemic prevention and control in the past three years has, in a sense, been a process of accelerating the onlineization of the entire nation, which has objectively promoted the excessive growth of online time and degree of digitalization.

A simple example is that the strict inspection of health codes in the past three years has actually caused many elderly people who did not have a mobile phone to have to buy one, and to upgrade from their original feature phones to smartphones. This increase cannot be ignored.

The logic that the epidemic has accelerated onlineization can be verified at the data level.

According to data from QuestMobile, before the pandemic, the number of new monthly mobile users in 2019 was only 7.04 million, while in 2020 the number of new users increased to 13.05 million, and in 2021 it increased to 12.26 million. From January to September 2022, the number of new users has reached 15.31 million.

It is obvious that compared with 2019 before the epidemic, the three years of anti-epidemic efforts have significantly accelerated the growth of mobile users.

In fact, data at the user time level also has a similar acceleration effect.

However, under the premise of the overall stock game in the mobile Internet, this high base of premature over-release will lower the subsequent growth rate.

Based on this, I predict that the number of new monthly active users of mobile Internet in 2023 will not exceed 10 million.

Additional forecast: In 2023, the average domestic mobile Internet usage time per person will decline for the first time.

Well, these are Wei Xi’s top ten predictions for China’s Internet in 2023.

It is clear that this year's forecasts show more positive certainty than last year's widespread pessimism.

That widely circulated saying - "Last year was the worst year in the past decade, but it may be the best year in the next decade."

There is a high probability of encountering bugs in 2023, and industry practitioners are also happy to see such bugs.

Prediction itself is a very difficult thing, but it is also interesting and necessary enough. In fact, any practitioner in this industry makes decisions based on his judgment and prediction of the future.

Thousands of ships pass by the sunken boat, and thousands of trees bloom in front of the dead tree.

Looking forward to a bright future for China’s Internet in 2023.

Author: Wei Xi; Public account: Wei Xi Zhibei (ID: weixizhibei).