BEIJING, Sept. 11 -- China's live-streaming platforms will face tougher competition in specialized services as user scale expansion alone can not bring sustainable business growth, an industry report said.
This year, China's live-streaming users are expected to exceed 500 million, and by 2020, the number may rise to 524 million. The annual growth rate, however, is expected to slow from 9.9 percent this year to 4.6 percent in 2020, according to the report of iiMedia Research, a Chinese firm specialized in data analysis service for new economic industries.
The sluggish user expansion will force industry players to specialize their services and sharpen their commercialization capability, said the report.
Analysts with iiMedia Research looked to 5G technology to transform the live-streaming industry with improved visual effects and smoother interaction, thanks to better connectivity as a result of wider bandwidth.