WeChat still holds a leading position in Chinese IM industry this year, but several emerging rivals are poised to attract users and snap up market share.
Alibaba promotes Laiwangaggressively bothinternally and externally with a wild wish of30% of the market. Net Ease and China telecom partnered up to launch EasyChat, which supports calls withboth landline and mobile lines , a feature missed in WeChat.
Registered users
The users of IM tools recorded metric growth this year led by WeChat which now registered more than600 million users, with more than 100 million overseas and 271.9 million monthly active users in Q3 2013.
Location-based social app Momo has registered 80 million useres and 13 million daily active users after two years and three months of development.
EasyChat announced more than 30 million registered users.
Alibaba’s Laiwang recorded 10 million users as of November with daily active users surged 500% MOM .
In addition to the abovementioned mainstream IM tools, Shanda developed one named Youni. Sina injected funding in WeMeet , a similar app headed by former Sina Weibo lead. Online retailor JD released IM tool Dongdong for individual customers.
Cooperation with Telecos
With the booming demands for data service, free data will be an effective selling point to attract users. Major players of the industry competed to offer free data service via cooperation with telecom carriers.
On the other hand, telecom carriers are willing to take part in such cooperation, because they want to integrate various contents into their business and provide corresponding preferential programs, which enable them to share revenues with OTT services.
WeChatpartnered upwithGuangdong Branch of China Unicom this July to release WeChat Wo SIM card, which featureslow-budget data plan.
Veteran tech company NetEase joined the competition with EasyChat , partnering with carrier China Telecom, and offer services other players otherwise cannot do without backing from a carrier.
Mobile Game
WeChat hopped on the mobile gaming bandwagon by launching a number of WeChat-based mobile games. Momo followed the suit .
Source: TechNode
