BEIJING, July 29 -- China's software and information technology service industry maintained double-digit growth in terms of revenue and profits in the first half of the year (H1), official data showed.

The combined revenue of this sector came in at 5.52 trillion yuan (about 773.78 billion U.S. dollars) in the period, surging 14.2 percent year on year, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Total profits of companies in the sector reached 617 billion yuan, up 10.4 percent from the same period last year.

Specifically, the revenue of cloud computing and big data services soared 16.5 percent year on year to 551.5 billion yuan, and that of e-commerce platform services went up 6.1 percent year on year to 476.2 billion yuan in the same period.

The data also showed that revenue generated from information security products and services stood at 85.6 billion yuan, rising 10.8 percent from the same period in 2022.