Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft typically battle for the top spot among public cloud providers in market reports, and new fourth-quarter data from Synergy Research Group (SRG) on the Asia-Pacific (APAC) market found those two giants were indeed among the largest across the broader region. Except for China, where the leading six public cloud providers are all local companies.

Across APAC, AWS was the largest cloud provider based on revenue generated during the fourth quarter last year. Alibaba was second followed by Microsoft in third.

The Chinese market is dominated by local companies Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, Sinnet-AWS, China Telecom, and China Unicom. In China’s case, being bigger than the rest plays to its advantage in positioning three Chinese firms in the top six among regional cloud providers.

As for Japan, which has long been considered a technology powerhouse and often at the forefront of innovation and adoption, local companies Fujitsu, NTT, and Softbank made the top six in that country behind AWS and Microsoft. It’s worth mentioning that Fujitsu ranked third coming in ahead of Google.

Excluding China and Japan, AWS, Microsoft, and Google topped the leaderboard in the rest of the countries followed by Alibaba, IBM, and South Korean firm Naver.

“Putting China to one side, this speaks to the truly global nature of the cloud market,” said John Dinsdale, a chief analyst and research director at Synergy Research Group. “To become one of the leaders requires global presence, technology smarts, a brand name that plays well in all countries, extremely deep pockets, a long-term focus, and total commitment from senior management.”

The growing presence of hyperscale cloud providers in big data, analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and IoT has continued to gain traction among enterprises and governments in the region. Against that backdrop, China is forecast to account for nearly one-third of the overall APAC cloud computing market by 2023, according to a report from GlobalData late last year.

The report indicates that China, Japan, and India will continue to drive the cloud computing market in the APAC region and account for two-thirds of the overall region’s cloud computing market in 2023. The next biggest markets in the region are South Korea, Australia, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

“Taking into account the favorable regulatory landscape, growing adoption of cloud by enterprises, and the emergence of local cloud powerhouses such as Alibaba, Tencent, and China Telecom will drive the market growth in the country,” said Sunil Kumar Verma, lead Information and Communication Technology analyst at GlobalData.