People walk past a logo of China's e-commerce giant Alibaba in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province. (Xinhua/Wang Dingchang)

Official data shows steady expansion in both revenue and research and development (R&D) investment in China's major Internet companies in the first half of 2019.

BEIJING, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- China's major Internet firms reported steady expansion in both revenue and R&D investment in H1 of 2019, official data showed.

Companies boasting annual Internet and related services revenue of over 5 million yuan raked in 540.9 billion yuan (78.4 billion U.S. dollars) in H1, up 17.9 percent year-on-year, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

The pace picked up 0.6 percentage points from the first quarter, the MIIT said.

 A logo of China's Internet giant Tencent (Xinhua)

R&D investment in the sector registered a large jump by rising 29.4 percent year on year to 23 billion yuan in the period.

Revenues of information services, making up 68.5 percent of the Internet business revenue as the biggest contributor, surged 23 percent to 370.3 billion yuan during the period.

Guangdong, Shanghai and Beijing saw their Internet business revenues up 11.7 percent, 25.6 percent and 19.1 percent respectively year-on-year in H1.