BEIJING — China’s major internet firms reported faster expansion in both revenue growth and R&D investment in the first four months, official data showed.

Chinese firms in the internet and related sectors, whose business revenue exceeded 5 million yuan ($724,071) last year, raked in 324.6 billion yuan from January to April, up 20.2 percent year-on-year, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

R&D investment in the sector rose 21.4 percent year-on-year to 13.4 billion yuan in the period.

Information services, the biggest contributor, making up 69 percent of the internet business revenue, raked in 224 billion yuan during the period, with outstanding growth of audio and video services.

Key application infrastructure including internet data centers, cloud services and cloud storage maintained rapid growth, as business revenue related to internet data services came in at 3.35 billion yuan, up 33.9 percent.

Guangdong, Shanghai and Beijing saw their internet business revenue up 13.3 percent, 35.7 percent and 15.9 percent respectively year-on-year in the first four months.