The size of China's business to customer (B2C) e-commerce market reached 162.4 billion yuan (26.66 billion U.S. dollars) in the third quarter 2013, a major tech industry analyst said on Tuesday.

The figure was a 3-percent quarter-to-quarter increase, and a 50-percent year-on-year increase compared to that of the corresponding period in 2012, according to a report released by Analysys International.

The B2C market, gradually narrowing its gap with the customer to customer (C2C) market, has covered 39 percent of the country's whole online retail market, said the report.

After several rounds of fierce price wars in the second quarter, China's e-commerce giants were active in expanding their new businesses by developing online financing enterprises and introducing multiple operations.

The report predicted that China's B2C market will grow robustly in the fourth quarter, when the major e-commerce enterprises will put much effort into the online to offline (O2O) market.