Alibaba’s headquarters in Hangzhou, East China’s Zhejiang Province Photo: IC

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holdings on Friday reported better-than-expected core financial figures for the fiscal year 2020 that ended on March 31, with its cloud computing services arm becoming the largest in the Asia-Pacific region.

The company's net income reached 149.26 billion yuan ($21.08 billion) over the last fiscal year, a jump from 87.6 billion yuan in fiscal year 2019, according to the company's financial results.

Meanwhile, the company achieved a historic milestone of $1 trillion in gross merchandise volume (GMV) during the same period, with its annual active consumer base totaling 960 million globally.

Alibaba Cloud computing revenue skyrocketed 62 percent year-on-year in the 2020 fiscal year to 40.02 billion yuan, mainly driven by increased revenue from both its public cloud and hybrid cloud businesses.

Alibaba Cloud is the largest cloud computing service provider in the Asia Pacific region, according to leading research and advisory company Gartner.

In its latest estimate, Morgan Stanley raised the market valuation of Alibaba Cloud to $77 billion, media reports said. That makes it rank No.4 among listed Chinese internet companies, and double the valuation of Baidu.

Despite Alibaba Cloud's rapid year-on-year growth, it still lags behind major international player Amazon Web Services (AWS), which accounts for about one-third of the global market. Microsoft Azure has a global market share of 17.6 percent and Google Cloud has 6 percent, according to industry estimates.

It's worth noting that Alibaba Cloud has boomed since the outbreak of COVID-19, as people have been forced to stay inside. According to data the company sent to the Global Times, about 200 million workers from over 10 million domestic enterprises use Alibaba Cloud-backed enterprise communication platform Dingtalk and about 50 million students use the app for distance classes.

Liu Gang, director of the Nankai Institute of Economics and chief economist at the Chinese Institute of New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Strategies, told the Global Times in a recent interview that Alibaba Cloud is expected to overtake AWS in five years, as industrial internet breakthroughs backed by 5G may first take place in China.

Huawei Wireless Product Line Vice President Gan Bin said Tuesday that 200,000 5G bases have been built in China, and the total number is expected to reach 800,000 by the end of 2020, covering 340 cities across China.

Global Times