Asian countries are being dominated by mobile messaging apps. These apps are now showing their strength not only in local markets but also internationally. WeChat, the mobile messaging platform from the Chinese tech giant Tencent, has announced that its global overseas user count has reached 50 million registered users (News Source: Tech In Asia).
The mobile messaging service with over 300 million users recently announced that it has 190 million active users each month. These latest active user figures come at a notable time when WhatsApp claimed to be larger than Twitter. During the All ThingsD Dive Into Mobile conference, WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum stated that with 200 million active users, the app handles an average of 8 billion incoming and 12 million outgoing messages daily.
But then the recent figures don’t highlight the active numbers on the app across the borders of China. And the numbers are not a bigger threat to other competing apps like Line, WhatsApp. WhatsApp has a more international dominance and Line approximately has 105M registered users outside of Japan out of its 150M base.
In fact Line has been working on its international expansion and it is aiming China and US. It has also started working on censoring specific keywords on its China specific service. A move that is quite obvious in order to do business in China otherwise one has to be prepared to feel the burn. Last year, Sina Weibo, a Twiter like service had to suffer a similar action from the Chinese government when its commenting system was shut down for three days after it was adjudged to have been slow in responding to coup speculation that had emerged on its platform.
The Indian push by WeChat
Nevertheless, the international numbers of WeChat has to be credited to its ongoing push in the Indian market along with the markets like Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Indonesia. To target the Indian youth, WeChat had integrated with recent Bollywood movies and endorsed latest Bollywood heartthrobs Parineeti Chopra and Varun Dhawan.
The marketing initiatives have been broadened in the country as the app will have to compete with home grown players like Bharti Softbank’s app Hike which has crossed 5 million users globally and Nimbuzz, which claims to have 150 million users. Partnership with Cafe Coffee Day, Big Bazaar, Goibibo, Yahoo Cricket, Tradus and Santa Banta have been made but a monetization model has to be still put in place, commented Dennis Hau, GM, international business group at Tencent, while speaking to TOI.
“We will first look to get as many users as possible and then move on to getting commercial alliances in place,” added Hau, who is also interested in tying up with telecom operators for bundled services going forward. A move that was recently endorsed by Hike which has partnered with Nokia to preload the messaging app on selected devices such as Lumia 510, Lumia 720 and all Nokia Asha full touch phones sold in India. WhatsApp had also recently partnered with Asha 201 to have a dedicated WhatsApp button on the handset.