HANGZHOU (Nov 2): Alibaba Group Holding Ltd quarterly sales and earnings beat expectations as growth in cloud computing services bolstered an e-commerce business that continues to defy a slowing Chinese economy. Revenue at China’s biggest operator of online shopping malls rose 55% to 34.3 billion yuan, the company said on Wednesday. Core commerce revenue rose 41% to 28.5 billion yuan while sales from the new digital media and entertainment division quadrupled to 3.6 billion yuan. The cloud unit’s revenue leapt 130% to 1.5 billion yuan in the quarter, the company said. The company is moving into untapped rural markets, exploring areas abroad and investing in new sources of income from online media to cloud computing.

Source: The Edge Markets November 02, 2016 12:19 UTC