Information spending tilts to services

Chinese consumers and government entities will spend more money on information services than products for the first time in 2018, according to the report released on Friday by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.

"Information consumption is expected to hit 2.6 trillion yuan ($402 billion) in 2018, and the figure for product consumption will be 2.4 trillion yuan," said Lu Chuncong, director of the Policy and Economic Research Institute at CAICT, a think tank affiliated with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Hitting 5 trillion yuan in 2018, China's spending on information consumption is expected to grow 11 percent year-on-year, as government institutes and consumers buy more technology-enabled products and services, the report said.