By January 23, 2007, the total number of registered users of Ali software had topped 20 million, sources from Alibaba said.

According to Alibaba, from 2003 to 2006 6.4 million members have emerged from the Alibaba B2B; from 2004 to January 2007, there have been 11.5 million members from Taobao C2C; from February 2006 until now, the number of online CRM users has reached 2 million; during the testing period of Ali software products with three versions (foreign trade version, internal trade version and online shop CEO version), users have topped 100,000.

Data provided by the UFIDA Software Company, one of the leading providers of management software solutions and service in Asia, shows that by the end of 2006, UFIDA has owned over 800 large corporate users. After 10 years of efforts to focus on the training of Chinese large corporate users, UFIDA has occupied a first place ranking in the traditional software industry. The chairman of UFIDA said in an interview after the press conference of the establishment of Ali software, "China's software industry will undoubtedly be transferred from a traditional model to SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) and we're also thinking about this. Ma Yun and I are good friends, so I'm concerned about the development of Ali software." (Ma Yun is the founder, chairman and CEO of Alibaba.)

Insiders say that as the software industry relates with economy, the "Matthew Effect" cannot be avoided. The "Matthew Effect" states that one's accomplishments and reputation tend to snowball and those with meager accomplishments in the field have greater difficulty competing. The fact that Alibaba entered the e-commerce software industry and its registered users topped 20 million is actually the reflection of the "Matthew Effect". This will undoubtedly aggravate the difficulties of minor software corporations. However, as for the overall situation of China's software industry, it will accelerate the optimization and integration of the industry. The "Matthew Effect" will also be reflected in the service quality of the software industry.

Meanwhile, Alibaba also announced that Aliwangwan has become the most valuable real time communication tool for users, each of which has an average amount of RMB 615 in transaction each day. In addition to this, the number of online users on Aliwangwang has exceeded a million, close to that in China of MSN. In regards to the competitive pattern, Tencent is recognized as the first; MSN ranks the second, with online users numbering 2 million; Aliwangwang ranks the third.

The general manager of Ali Software Wang Tao states, "Online trading through instant communication tools has become the first choice for the e-commerce users on Alibaba. Meanwhile, users have a stronger demand for professional instant communication tools in business. The transaction volume each day on Aliwangwang is almost RMB 500 million."