(Yicai Global) May 21 -- The number of Tencent Video's paid users reached 89 million at the end of March. 

In a mere one year their ranks grew from 43 million to 82 million, but user growth has stalled in the past six months, Sun Zhonghuai, vice president of Shenzhen-based Tencent Holdings and chief executive of Tencent Penguin Pictures announced today, the Shanghai Securities News reported.

For Tencent Video to gain 100 million paid users is only a matter of time, but Sun frets despite the booming data, he said at the Tencent Global Digital Ecosystem Summit today in Kunming, capital of China's southwestern Yunnan province.

The headcount of Tencent's video arm's paid users only grew by 7 million in the past six months, Sun noted. Data on daily and monthly active users of Tencent's platform and other video services' all show steady rather than explosive growth.

Advertising growth is also stalling in the sector, Sun said, predicting it will fall to 19 percent this year from 37 percent in 2016. This shows the market becoming ever more saturated, so acquiring new users is becoming even more difficult, and keeping them will cost more. Competition within the sector will also get more savage.

"We can really feel that today's users are becoming more and more mature in all respects," he said.

Tencent will attend more to content segmentation when dealing with high traffic, Sun stated, adding niche content will loom ever larger, warning those consuming it must not be overlooked.

Fifth-generation wireless network technology will smash through the ceiling the field seems to have hit up against and create new future demand, Sun predicted.

Editor: Ben Armour