IDC: China's retail cloud market will reach RMB 13.5 billion in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 12.4%

The Zhitong Finance App learned that the latest “China Retail Cloud Market Share, 2025” report released by International Data Corporation (IDC) shows that in 2025, China's retail cloud market reached 13.5 billion yuan, an increase of 12.4% over the previous year. The overall competitive pattern remains stable. Alibaba (09988), Tencent (00700), and AWS rank in the top three in the market. Leading vendors maintain leadership with customer base, infrastructure, and industry service capabilities, and the overall market shows obvious centralized characteristics.

By market, the infrastructure market size was 7.6 billion yuan, up 11.2% year on year, showing a competitive pattern of “one super strong”. Alibaba ranked first with a share of 37.5%, and Tencent, Huawei, and AWS formed the second tier; the solution market size was 5.9 billion yuan, up 13.9% year over year, and competition was relatively diverse. Tencent ranked first with a 23.4% market share, followed by Alibaba and AWS, while manufacturers such as Weimeng, Yum, and Shiji Retail formed differentiated competition in segments such as store SaaS, membership marketing, and retail industry applications. Overall, new entrants have yet to have a clear impact on the existing market pattern, while leading manufacturers continue to strengthen their capabilities in AI, data platforms, and industry solutions to further consolidate their competitive advantage, and the overall market competition pattern remains stable.

Operational pressure, business complexity, and deepening AI applications form the triple variables of market growth

Judging from the growth logic, changes in the retail cloud market in 2025 are mainly driven by three variables: operating pressure, business complexity, and deepening AI applications. First, consumption growth has slowed and price competition has intensified, making enterprises pay more attention to operating indicators such as out-of-stock rate, loss, inventory turnover, contract execution success rate, and labor efficiency, and technology investment has begun to shift from system construction to efficiency improvement; secondly, instant retail, omni-channel operation, and store digitalization have increased the synergy complexity between inventory, orders, delivery and equipment, driving the growth in demand for real-time data, cloud-side collaboration, and distributed infrastructure; finally, AI has begun to enter controllable scenarios such as customer service knowledge retrieval, product information generation, business analysis, demand forecasting, and store inspection, etc., and gradually moved towards intelligent procurement guidance and intelligent shopping Replenishment and supply chain coordination. This has led to a clear structural shift: infrastructure is still the largest component of the market, but the solutions market is growing faster, and added value is migrating from underlying resources to data, platforms, and business applications.

From procurement systems to procurement results, retail customers are beginning to redefine the value of technology

Judging from customer needs and procurement logic, retail companies are shifting from “procurement systems” to “procurement results.” Large enterprises pay more attention to open architectures, deep integration and multi-cloud collaboration; medium-sized chains pay more attention to standardized products, industry templates, and implementation efficiency; and small and medium enterprises pay more attention to cost, ease of use, and speed of deployment. Despite differences in demand, procurement logic is converging: a technology project needs to answer three questions — what problem to solve, what metrics to improve, and how long can it be verified. Therefore, suppliers need to provide combined capabilities in a closed loop around specific businesses such as inventory and fulfillment, store operations, member operations, and supply chains, and improve large-scale delivery efficiency through “pilot-reproduction-replication”. For AI projects, priority should be given to choosing processes with clear rules, mature data, and traceable results, and controlling risks through permissions, thresholds, and manual review.

Chen Qijin, senior analyst of cloud computing products at IDC China, said that the retail cloud market is entering a stage of structural growth centered on business value. As IT investment in retail enterprises gradually shifts from infrastructure construction to operational efficiency and business innovation, the future focus of competition among cloud vendors will gradually shift from simple resource supply capabilities to solving real business problems and forming quantifiable operating benefits through collaboration between cloud infrastructure, data, AI, and industry applications. For suppliers, focusing on high-value business scenarios, strengthening industry performance, establishing replicable delivery systems, and deeply embedding AI capabilities into existing business processes will be the key to driving the continuous growth of the retail cloud market and increasing the value of existing customers.