About IT168

IT168

IT168, published at it168.com, is a Beijing consumer-technology news and product portal founded in 1999. It publishes IT news, product reviews, prices and buying guides for computers, phones and digital products, and it has long ranked among China's established IT verticals alongside Zhongguancun Online (ZOL) and PConline. IT168 belongs to the first generation of Chinese technology websites: it was founded in the year China's internet industry took off, and it helped define the genre of the Chinese IT product portal — a publication organised around what technology costs, how it performs and whether readers should buy it.

That genre mattered enormously in the 2000s, when China's consumers bought computers, cameras and phones in vast numbers and turned to specialist portals to compare specifications and prices before purchasing, often in the electronics malls of Beijing's Zhongguancun and its equivalents across the country. IT168 was one of the handful of names those buyers learned, and it remains an active news and product publication today.

Identity and history

IT168 is identified in Chinese IT-portal histories as a Beijing portal founded in 1999, publishing IT news, reviews, prices and buying guides. Its early standing is documented in industry data: a Hong Kong-listed portal group's prospectus, citing iResearch figures for 2006, ranked the leading vertical IT portals by IT-product advertising revenue, and IT168 appeared in that company — seventh among the verticals listed, alongside ZOL, Yesky, PCPOP and PChome. Advertising revenue was the economic engine of the portal era, and a place in that table marks IT168 as one of the recognised national IT verticals of the period.

The portal's role in consumer research is documented independently as well. A 2011 study of online information influence in China, produced for the marketing industry, listed IT168 among the most important specialist price-comparison and product websites used by Chinese consumers — named by 23 percent of respondents in its survey, in the company of PConline and PChome. Studies of mobile-phone purchasing likewise treat IT168's forums and channels as standing sources that researchers mine for consumer sentiment, alongside ZOL and other verticals.

What IT168 publishes

IT168's content follows the classic structure of the Chinese IT vertical. News coverage reports the technology industry's daily developments — product launches, company moves and industry data — with the portal's stories cited internationally when they break news: in 2014, for example, MacRumors and other international Apple-watching publications picked up an IT168 report on the camera specifications of Apple's forthcoming iPhone 6, crediting the Chinese site as the source of supply-chain information. That citation pattern — Western tech media treating IT168 as a source on Chinese supply-chain reporting — reflects the portal's position inside the industry it covers.

Around the news sits the product apparatus that defines the genre: product databases and channels for computers, phones and digital devices; reviews and tests; price information to help readers compare what products cost; and buying guides that interpret specifications for consumers. Forums and community features, a standard part of the Chinese portal model, give readers a place to discuss products — the IT168 forums appear in academic work as a recognised venue of Chinese consumer discussion.

The portal era in Chinese technology media

IT168's history is part of a larger story. In the late 1990s and 2000s, China's technology publishing moved online earlier and faster than in many markets, because the country's PC and mobile adoption was exploding and its print IT press could not carry the volume of product information buyers wanted. Vertical portals — IT168 in Beijing, PConline and PChome in the south and east, ZOL in Zhongguancun — became the reference works of the world's largest technology market, funded by vendor advertising and read by tens of millions of buyers.

The genre's influence on buying behaviour was measurable. Industry studies of the period found consumers naming the specialist portals — PConline, PChome, IT168, ZOL — as their most important sources for product and price information, ahead of general media. IT168's founding in 1999 places it at the very start of that era, before smartphones, when the products at stake were desktop PCs, laptops, MP3 players and digital cameras, and the portal grew with each successive product wave.

Beijing and the Zhongguancun context

IT168 is a Beijing publication, and Beijing shaped the genre it works in. The capital's Zhongguancun district — China's original technology hub, dense with electronics malls, distributors and startups — was the physical marketplace that the IT portals served digitally: buyers researched online, then bought in the malls or, increasingly, ordered online. A Beijing portal stood close to that trade, to the vendors' China headquarters and launches, and to the capital's concentration of technology journalists.

The portal's news is still filed from that vantage point. Supply-chain reporting of the kind that drew international citation, and launch coverage of the products Chinese consumers buy first in the capital's market, reflect a newsroom working inside China's technology trade rather than observing it from outside.

Position among China's IT verticals

IT168's peer set is specific. ZOL, founded in Zhongguancun, became the largest of the product portals; PConline, part of the Guangzhou-based Pacific Online group, led the verticals in advertising revenue in the iResearch figures; Yesky and PCPOP were the other recognised names of the portal era. IT168 stands in that company as one of the surviving independents of the first generation — still publishing news, reviews, prices and guides under its own name more than two decades after its founding.

The competitive context has changed around it: e-commerce platforms now carry their own reviews and prices, manufacturers publish directly, and social and video platforms compete for technology attention. The verticals' remaining strength is the one IT168 was built on — organised, comparable product information and editorial testing under a publication's own name, in a market where buyers still research before they spend.

Readers and how the site is used

IT168's readers are technology buyers and enthusiasts: consumers comparing computers, phones and digital products before purchase; IT professionals following industry news; and the trade itself, watching launches, prices and competitors. Its forums serve the enthusiast layer of that audience, and its product and price information serves the practical layer — readers who arrive with a purchase in mind and leave with a shortlist.

Researchers form a third audience. Because IT168 has published consumer discussion and product coverage continuously since the portal era, its pages are used as data by academics studying Chinese consumer behaviour, product sentiment and the diffusion of technology brands — a secondary role that testifies to the site's scale and longevity.

Regulation and standing

As a Chinese online publication, IT168 operates within the country's framework for internet information services, including the internet news information service licensing system administered by the Cyberspace Administration of China, under which online news provision is licensed and supervised at national and provincial level. Its identification in Chinese IT-portal histories and directories as an established Beijing vertical dating from 1999 records its standing within that system and within the industry it covers.

Why IT168 matters

IT168 matters as a survivor and a representative of China's first technology-media generation. Founded in Beijing in 1999, ranked among the leading IT verticals in the portal era's industry data, cited internationally as a source on the supply chain, and still publishing news, reviews, prices and buying guides today, it embodies the model that taught China's consumers to research technology online. In a directory of Chinese online news, it stands for the product portal — the genre that connected the world's largest technology market to the people buying in it.