China's internet and related sectors maintained steady growth in the first half of 2019, with the total business revenue reaching 540.9 billion yuan (about 78.6 U.S. dollars), a year-on-year increase of 17.9 percent, official data showed Tuesday. 

The growth rate is down by five percentage points from the same period last year, but still 0.6 percentage points faster than that in the first quarter, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information (MIIT). 

Notably, the R&D investment made by the companies from January to June expanded significantly by 29.4 percent year-on-year to 23 billion yuan, which is seven percentage points higher than that in the first quarter.  

Information services including online music and video, games, news information and other online reading services were the largest revenue contributor. Their combined revenue reached 370.3 billion yuan, up 23 percent from last year, accounting for 68.5 percent of the total.  

The exceptional growth of internet data services is another highlight. Driven by the deepening of “Internet+” and the continuous improvement of information levels in various industries, key application infrastructures such as internet data centers and cloud services have expanded rapidly. In the first half year, revenues made by internet enterprises from data services surged by 34.2 percent year on year, a growth rate well above the average.  

Guangdong Province, Shanghai, Beijing, Zhejiang Province and Jiangsu Province were the top five on the chart in terms of internet business revenue, accounting collectively for 88.2 percent of the total.