The number of peak simultaneous online users on QQ exceeded 200 million people.

According to the official account on Tencent Weibo, the number of peak simultaneous online users on QQ exceeded 200 million people in the night before last.

Official said that time was 21:11 on April 11th.

According to the latest reporting by Tencent, the largest number of peak simultaneous online users on QQ was about 180 million people in the fourth quarter of 2013. And it is said that the first time of the number exceeding 100 million was on March 5, 2010.

Recently on the web news or some social media, the topic is concentrated to WeChat. But QQ had 800 million monthly active users, and they also had 426 million smartphone monthly active users in the fourth quarter of 2014. The monthly active users of WeChat was 355 million people, so its number is still less than QQ in actuality.


The battle of the instant messenger market in China is heating up day by day, but it seems that the reign of Tencent in this market will still continue for a while.

I wonder if the company that can defeat Tencent will appear in this market in near future. Let's keep watching as ever.


Source => Official account on Tencent Weibo, Techweb

An ambush who will beat WeChat? LBS and Chat tool "MoMo" already got over 100 million registered users.

"MoMo" is an instant messenger apps that have the feature of closely linked with LBS function.

According to the news, that "MoMo" already got the more than 100 million users. "MoMo" started their service from Aug 2011, so it means that it took around 30 months to exceed 100 million users. It took the time about twice than WeChat, but it is the fact that it's valuable thing to get the 100 million users.

And the news also said that the active users of "MoMo" was 40 million people, and the registered users increase 1 million people each in every month.

And it seems that their business performance side is also satisfactory, they already got the second round investment on Oct 2012, and it is estimated that their enterprise value is about 100 million USD.


It's the first time that I explain about this "MoMo", so I would like to introduce briefly the summary of its function.

It seems that MoMo provides the service to Android, iPhone and Windows phone users now.

As I said above, the greatest feature of "MoMo" is the linkage with LBS functions, so the top page is the "people nearby" function that is similar with WeChat has.

And on the chat page, the user can directly send the location information to other users.

Of course, the user can send the text message, and also can send the pictures, emotion icon and so forth as same as WeChat.


And MoMo also has a lot of other functions that closely linked with the LBS function. For example, it is the nearby event information, the group function of going to the same hometown and so forth.

 

MoMo also have the social function like the "Moments" on WeChat.

Last time, I said that WeChat belongs the "social media service that directed inward". But it seems that this "MoMo" also has the elements of "social media service that directed outward".

As the competitor of WeChat, I have introduced Yixin or Laiwang on this blog. But Yixin said that their target is to get the 100 million registered users after 6 months later when their service started. But there is no official announcement about this till now. And about Laiwang, they said that their target is to get the 100 million registered users till the end of 2014.

As far as looking this situation, it may be also said that the greatest rival of WeChat is this "MoMo" at this stage. I would like to keep more attention to this "MoMo" from now on.


Well, this "MoMo" can be registered from out of China too.

So the person who can understand the Chinese menu, let's try it :)
* Unfortunately, it seems that "MoMo" does not support the language besides Chinese at this stage.


Source => 21CN tech, The official page of MoMo

Yixin (EasyChat) released the update version 2.0. The new version was added the no-charge call function.

Yixin (EasyChat) released the major update version 2.0, and they started to provide some interesting functions in this version.

The first is the no-charge call function by VoIP.

  

It's like the Skype, and it can make a call without any charge in the Yixin client. But at this time, it does not support outbound call like the Skype-out.

But I think that they will absolutely try to materialize its outbound service as a pay service. Because China Telecom side with this Yixin, and they have a lot of know-how in this area(the knowledge of billing method, operation method and so forth). It's their original advantage that their rival WeChat doesn't have.


The next is the LBS service like the Google Latitude.

The Yixin user can know the current location of their friends via this function. But of course, if you don't wish provide the information of own current location, you can set that your friend cannot know your current location.


The last is not the new function, but is the change of displaying method in the top page.

The official accounts on Yixin were independently displayed on the top page, but from this version, these official accounts are displayed all in one piece as the menu of "Official account" as same as WeChat.

It may be a bad news for the person who would like to use Yixin for the marketing activity.


Well, its new version of Android was already released, and can download from their official site. And about its iPhone version, they said it is now under examination on the App Store of Apple.


As I explained before, I think Yixin should aim to the direction of total communication tool, and they should not aim to the same direction with WeChat. So I think this update is very meaningful and interesting.

I would like to keep the attention to their action as ever.


Source => The official page of Yixin, Ifeng

Yixin also started to provide its client for PC. But that function is restrictive at this time.

Their rival 'WeChat' have already provided its Web browser version as a PC client, but Yixin (EasyChat) also recently started to provide its PC client.

But this version is limited in the function as same as the Web browser version of WeChat now. For example, it supports only a part of the chatting function, and it doesn't support the function of using the social page, stamp, adding the new friend, voice chatting and so forth.

Its help page often uses the word of 'at this version', so we may be able to expect its upgrade. But basically, Yixin has focussed to the mobile solution, so I think that it will not bring the dramatic improvement.

So as same as the Web browser version of WeChat, it may be useful when we have to send a long message to the friend :)


Source => The official page of Yixin

Yixin expanded the campaign of providing the free data packet. All of Chinese mobile users have a chance to get 300MB data packets.

As I explained before, the own IM tool of Alibaba 'Laiwang' started to provide the free data packet to their users, but Yixin also expanded the similar campaign.

The target users of this campaign are not only included China Telecom users, but also is included China Mobile and China Unicom. But there are some different conditions between China Telecom users and other 2 careers to get this service.

China Telecom users only register Yixin, and then they can get 300MB free data packet. And if the user will post messages more than 5 times, then they can get 60MB free data packet every month. China Mobile and China Unicom users invite the 6 acquaintances to Yixin, and then they can get the 300MB free data packets. And they don't have the chance to get the 60MB gift every month.

It seems that there is not the limitation by area like the campaign of Alibaba.

Laiwang and Yixin started the similar campaign to get more users. Then how about WeChat is? It seems that the battle space of IM tool in China is not only the function field, but also was added the service field.

Let's keep watching their actions and the trend of this industry as ever.


Source => Official page of Yixin

Alibaba accelerated to promote their own IM tool 'Laiwang' again. They will give 2GB mobile packet to a part of users to promote it.

As I explained before, Alibaba strengthened to promote their own IM tool 'Laiwang'.

And recently, it seems that they accelerated its promotion again, they announced that they will give 2GB mobile packet to a part of their users.

To take this gift, users have to access this site and apply for.
* There is a limitation in this at this time, and the user who can get this gift is only as follows:

- China Unicom users in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Hunan.
- China Mobile users in Guandong


And on the other hand, Jack Ma repeatedly mentioned about 'Laiwang', and he also said that he is looking forward to battle with WeChat.

Furthermore, they will publish the management tool of the official account for their platform as same as WeChat or Yixin. It seems that they have not published its web site, but they already prepared it on the client side.

I can hardly imagine that Laiwang will close with WeChat as a common IM tool at this time, but Alibaba is the king of the EC market in China. So if they will focus to collaborate IM function and EC, then there may be a way.


Source => Tech Sina, Netease News-1, Netease News-2, TechWeb

The registered user of Yixin already exceeded 30 million people. Its main users are 16 to 25 years old.

Yixin (EasyChat)  got a good start, and they also continue to increase their users after that, but they officially reported their users already exceeded 30,000,000 people as of Oct. 28.

According to them, Yixin is mainly welcomed by young people, and actually 70 percent of their users are 16 to 25 years old (They are called post-85s or post-90s in China). And its daily active users are 28% of all, and over 32 million information is posted on there in a day.

The official said that they also continue to enhance its function, and at the same time they will also add the attractive new function. For example, they said that they will adopt the mobile payment function or games on their platform.

But I personally think this is an imitation of WeChat, so I think that they should choose the other way with WeChat, for example they recently adopted the international call function. Because they can utilize the infrastructure that China Telecom has.

In China, now Alibaba also strongly promotes their own IM tool 'Laiwang', and the largest electronics retail store in China 'Suning' also have a plan to provide their own IM tool 'Yunxin'. So we cannot take our eyes off of the future trend in this industry.


Source => Netease IT, CNFOL

Alibaba will also enter the battle of the IM market in China. They have a plan to collaborate with China Mobile.

WeChat already have about 500 million users, and Yixin also got the good start last week. So the IM market in China is becoming more and more hot, but it seems that Alibaba, who is the giant of the EC market in China, also would like to enter this battle by re-promoting their IM tool 'Laiwang'.

There are the two verifications for this.

1. Alibaba CEO sent the internal email to start the bounty system of using 'Laiwang' to the all of staff last week.
According to the leak, their bounty system is for encouraging to use 'Laiwang' to their staff, and it is said that the most potent person can get 100,000 RMB (= 16,210USD) bonus.

2. Alibaba started to consult with China Mobile the chance of collaboration in this market.
According to the insider, Alibaba recently started to consult the possibility of collaboration with China Mobile by this 'Laiwang', and it may be that they would like to follow the success of Yixin.


Alibaba already acquired 18% share of Sina Weibo on April, and they already started to accelerate their social media solutions. But they may would like to get the killer tool of IM to accelerate more this area, so I think that its action is very natural.

But its Sina Weibo also have their IM tool 'Meyou', and a company that Sina invested before also recently publish the IM tool 'WeMeet'.

Alibaba and Sina will go to the each way in this area, or also will have the collaboration as same as Weibo... We have to continue watching their actions as ever.


Source => TechWeb, BiaNews

Yixin still have some problem, but it was a good turnout. In 24 hours after publishing, Yixin got more than a million users.

Last time, I introduced about 'Yixin' that is co-produced IM tool by China Telecom and Netease.

According to their official information, it made a good start just after its publishing, and Yixin got more than a million users in 24 hours.

And Yixin got the 1st ranking of social category in the App store that night, and it also got the 2nd ranking in all of free apps on there.

About the other number, there were more than 300,000 pictures in its social feature, and there were 1 million times SMS sending, and there were 400,000 times voicemail communications.

Actually, some user said that its voice quality is much better than WeChat, and my friends or colleagues also said that it seems it's better than WeChat.

As I said last time, they have a target that they will get more than 100 million users in the six months, but they announced a new target that they will get more than 10 million users till the end of this month.

But on the other hand, it's true that Yixin has a lot of trouble with registration, SMS communication, voicemail and so forth. About these troubles, they promised to solve as soon as possible on their official account of Sina Weibo.

There are some mortifying things other than these troubles. It's the registration from the oversea. Now there are some difficulties in the registration from oversea as follows:

- iOS version of Yixin cannot download from out of China.

*It seems that there is the regional limitation.

- The registration of Yixin is needed the mobile phone number of China.

- The menu of Yixin supports only simplified Chinese now.

*In the app store, they wrote that it supports English and simplified Chines, but actually it seems it doesn't support.

About the Android version of it, you can download its apk file from their official site, but there are still remains the problem of registration and its menu.

About this, there is nothing for it but to wait their correspondence.

According to the news, the stock price of Netease increased 20% compared to before publishing Yixin. It can be said that their start dash was successful, so let's watch their action and the market response from now on too.

Source => DF Daily, Netease economy

The number of WeChat monthly active users is 236 million people.

Tencent also published the performance reporting in the second quarter today.

You can download from here (PDF) its full version, but I would like to introduce some numbers that related to their social media area.

They announced that WeChat monthly active users is 235.8 million people, and this number increased 176.8% compared to the YoY.

Tencent recently does not officially publish the actual user numbers, but it is said that the number of WeChat registered users are more than 400 million people. This means their monthly active user rate is about 60%.

60% are high or low? According to a news, their rival LINE has about 90% of monthly active users rate. So it may be said that it's a little bit low.

Tencent CEO Ma said in this report that Tencent will continue to focus on the mobile solutions from now on too, and they recognize that WeChat will play a central role not only in the domestic market but also the oversea market.

WeChat has more than 70 million oversea users now, but their rival LINE already has more than 100 million oversea users. So firstly they have to catch LINE, and also have to increase the rate of active users.

By the way, I also would like to introduce the number that is related other social media services.

- The number of IM monthly active users were 818.5 million people, and this number increased 4.5 compared to YoY.

- Peak simultaneous online IM user accounts were 173.2 million people, and this number increased 4.0% compared to YoY.

- The number of Qzone monthly active users were 626.4 million people, and this number increased 4.8% compared to YoY.

I explained before that Tencent dominates more than 65% of mobile instant messenger market in China. But looking this report, I recognized the power of Tencent in Chinese social media market again.

Source => The performance reporting by Tencent (PDF)

Tencent dominates more than 65% of mobile instant messenger market in China. The king of IM tool "QQ" is still keeping the top position.

As I explained many times, "Instant Messenger (Chat)" is the most popular internet service in China. According to the recent report by CNNIC, the utilization of chat tool is 84.2% in China, and the hottest chat tool "WeChat" is expected to have more than 500 million users soon.

And it is the most popular for mobile users, and CNNIC said that the utilization of mobile instant messenger is 85.7% as of the end of June.
In a situation like that, Eguan published the market share of mobile instant messenger service in China as follows.

QQ (Tencent)                    38.07%
WeChat (Tencent)           27.97%
Feixin (China Mobile)     18.37%
Yiliao (China Telecom)     4.98%
MSN (Microsoft China)    3.80%
Wangwang (Taobao)         2.38%
Miliao (Xiaomi)                   1.43%

Other     3.00%




The above picture is the market share of the total registered number of mobile instant messenger users.

Recently, WeChat has been the hottest topic in the news related to internet services in China, but the king of IM tool "QQ" is still keeping the top position in this market. As I said above, WeChat is expected to have more than 500 million users soon, but it is said that QQ already has more than 700 million users totally, and a most of QQ users are using mobile devices.


The next picture is the market share of its active users.

QQ (Tencent)                     42.54%
WeChat (Tencent)            23.38%
Feixin (China Mobile)      17.65%
Yiliao (China Telecom)      6.76%
Wangwang (Taobao)         3.07%
MSN (Microsoft China)     2.53%
Miliao (Xiaomi)                   1.08%

Other     2.99%




There are not so much differences with the market share of total users in the ranking, but there is an interesting result.

The difference in the market share between QQ and WeChat is more than the difference of total users. What was this?

Actually, WeChat is rapidly increasing their "registered" users, but I also feel that a lot of people are still usually using QQ more than WeChat. Especially, in the business scene, in the provincial city, the user of the earlier 80's or 70's and so forth.

So I think that these factors are may be reflected as a result.

Anyway, it's a surprising thing that Tencent (QQ + WeChat) is dominating more than 65% of this market.


Well, mobile internet is the hottest topic and the hottest industry in China now, and furthermore mobile instant messenger is one of the hottest among them. We have to continue watching the trend of this as before.


Source => Eguan

How to use the Web browser version of WeChat.

I guess that almost WeChat users are usually using it by their mobile devices. But do you know there is its Web browser version?

For using it, at first, we have to click the "Web WeChat" in the home page of mobile WeChat, and click the "Start" button after that.

And the next, we have to access the page of its Web version from your PC, and capture the QR code to the mobile device to login.

After successfully capturing the QR code, we can find the page on the mobile devices as follows, so we have to click the "OK" button to start using its Web browser version.

After that, if there is no problem, you can start to use the web version of WeChat on your PC as following picture.

To end the web version, you have to click the "Web WeChat" button on your mobile device.

This Web version is suitable to input the long message and so forth, but the feature of Web version is less than mobile version.

- It doesn't support the moments feature
- It doesn't support the feature of searching the new user
...


As I introduced before, Tencent defines WeChat as a mobile communication tool, so it may there is no update or improvement for the Web version.

But as I said above, it may be useful to input the long message and so forth. :)


Source => Web version of WeChat

The biggest Chinese SNS "Renren" have 280 million registered users. And they started to provide own chat tool "Tongxueshuo".

Renren is the one of biggest SNS provider in China, and they got the high popularity in the recent research as I introduced before. And according to a report, Renren have 280 million registered users as of the end of March.

User distribution map of area in China

East China : 31%

(Shanghai, Jiangsi, Zhejiang...)

South China : 17%

(Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi...)

North China : 15%

(Beijing, Hebei, Tianjin...)

Middle China : 12%

(Henan, Hubei, Hunan...)

Southwest China : 9%

(Sichuan, Chongqing, Guizhou...)

Northwest China : 7%

(Shaanxi, Qinghai, Gansu...)

And they have 110 million PC active users and 26 million mobile active users.

The ratio of male to female - 56% : 44%

User distribution by age:

90's or later     45%

80's                    35%

70's or earlier  20%

Next is the utilization rate by each mobile devices.

Android have 55.6% share, and they won the first place. But it seems that this share does not include access by feature phone, and it's not counted access to WAP page.

The next picture is the list of corporate accounts in Renren.

According to this report, there are 150,000 corporate accounts in Renren, and the user checks the 3 corporate pages daily on average.

The next picture is the summary of posting in a day.

The summary of daily post:

[Tweet]

From PC - 15.8 million times

From Mobile - 13.2 million times

[Picture]

From PC - 12.3 million times

From Mobile - 5.2 million times

[Diary]

From PC - 0.78 million times

From Mobile - 0.47 million times

The last picture is the data of tweet with location information.

According to this report, there are 1.7 million posts that include the location information daily in Renren, and its cumulative number is over 700 million posts.

Well, they recently started to provide the their own chat tools "Tongxueshuo".

 

It seems that this chat tool focuses to have the communication in the same university, and this user has to register their college before they start to use this.

* And they didn't support that users register the foreign college yet.

I would like to keep the attentions about the trend of Chinese SNS as same as WeChat or Weibo as ever.

Source => Sina Weibo, CNII

Tencent updated the login page of WeChat public platform and the case studies.

As I explained before, WeChat have a management platform(PPoW) for the official accounts, but recently its login page was updated as follows.

Last time, I explained that the oversea users of WeChat already exceeded 40 million people, but the image of this login page looks like to suggest that Tencent will accelerate overseas advance.

There is no update in the page of after login at this time. But there are some new features compared to my last explanation, so I would like to explain them.

As the above picture, the feature of "Advanced Settings" was added the right end of menu. And on the "Advanced Settings", users can manage auto reply feature and customize the menu of display screen of WeChat. And users can also demand to become its developer to refer the APIs of WeChat PPoW.


And at the same time, the case studies on this page was also updated.

They introduce 5 case studies on there, and China Southern Airline leverages WeChat to reply automatically the flight information, the weather in the each place and so forth to their users.

And Evernote is also leveraging WeChat, they makes WeChat user easily share the information in WeChat to each Evernote accounts.


Recently, the official account on WeChat is more and more increasing, but I would like to continue introducing the interesting case studies as ever.


Source => Public Platform of WeChat(PPoW)

Oversea users of WeChat already exceeded 40 million people. They also published the translation page to accelerate localization to each languages.

WeChat already started to make inroads into foreign markets. And as I explained before, a lot of countries started to use their WeChat.

And recently, they announced that oversea users of WeChat already exceeded 40 million people. According to the news, the whole number of WeChat users were 312 million people, so it follows that the rate of oversea users are about 13%.

According to the news, their rival, LINE, have over 60 million users in foreign country, so it can be said that WeChat lags behind to LINE at the moment.

But they also published the translation page to accelerate localization to each languages.

Actually, this is a volunteer based efforts by frenetic their fans. WeChat team said:

WeChat is looking for help from our users around the world to improve localization in the app. You can help us with your expertise in Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malaysian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese, or one of many more languages we support.

Volunteers can login to this page by Facebook or Google account. And after login, we can find the English sentence that WeChat team would like us to translate.

I tried to translate from English to Japanese :)

Each services or products should have many frenetic fans, so I think this is very interesting efforts. Would you try this?

Well, I think that we have to keep watching the two things about WeChat as ever. One of them is "WeChat will be changed to the paid service?", and another one is this "overseas deployment". Let's keep watching.

Source => TechWeb