WeChat started cleaning up the fallacious official accounts. Many official accounts were canceled their "V" mark.

Many companies or groups have already registered their corporate accounts on WeChat to make a marketing to the Chinese market, and many of them already got a "V" mark (* It means VIP).

But on the other hand, a lot of fallacious official accounts are existing as same as Weibo. So Tencent executed a countermeasure as follows.

One day, a user receives a system notification, but this notification said as follows:

Your accounts will lose the "V" mark soon: Between your account information and its name is quite differences, so please update the information or change the account name, and after that please re-apply to get a "V" mark.



Actually, the fallacious users on WeChat is increasing day by day. So Tencent has to clean up them to keep the soundness on their service.

Similar problem also occurred on Weibo in 2010 or 2011.
And each Weibo provider has also executed many countermeasures. This problem is unavoidable thing in the development of services.


Let's keep watching the action of this as ever.


Source => Sohu IT, MyDrivers.com

The gallery of TV commercials that Tencent provides for overseas. Their overseas users already exceeded 50 million people.

As I explained before, WeChat formally entered into the Indian market, but they will also establish the subsidiary in Malaysia to enter this market soon.

According to them, WeChat already has one million users in Malaysia, but they already started to provide the TV commercial of the Malaysian version for expanding their users there as follows.


The other version is here.

They mainly are promoting the "Hold-to-Talk" feature as same as the Indian version, but the whole style of this commercial have the clear difference with Indian version.


Now WeChat is provided to the various countries, but let's check the TV commercials that are provided in each country.

- Thailand


- Indonesia


- Philippine

Other version -1 ; Other version -2

- Hong Kong


- Taiwan


- Overseas (It seems that this TV commercial is not for the specific country.)


It's very interesting that there are many various versions by each country, isn't it?


Now WeChat has over 50 million overseas users, but their rival "LINE" has about 105 million overseas users. And LINE already entered into the Chinese market, so we have to keep watching their battle in China and overseas as before.


Source => China Daily

The ad revenue of Sina Weibo was 18.8 million USD, and 34% of them were from mobile ad.

Sina published the performance reporting in the first quarter few days ago, but some number of Sina Weibo was also become clear with this.

The total revenue of Sina Weibo was 25.8 million USD in the first quarter, but this detail is as follows:

Advertising --- 18.8 million USD (34% of them were from mobile ad.)
Revenue share from Game --- 5 million USD
Professional service (Weibo Club) --- 2 million USD

About 73% of their revenue were from advertising, but this reporting emphasized that their revenue of besides ad was rapidly increasing. I think that this phrase includes their will or wish to expand the revenue from that area.


By the way, how much does the revenue of Sina Weibo contribute to all revenue of Sina now? This answer is as follows:

Ad revenue from portal site     59.9%

Ad revenue from Weibo             14.9%

Revenue from Mobile services  12.6%

Service revenue from Weibo        5.6%
(*This means "Game" and "Professional Service")

Other      5.8%




This graph said that the total revenue of Sina Weibo contributed about 20% to the all revenue of Sina. Sina is now mainly focusing on the Weibo business, but it can be said that this graph proved the result that Sina Weibo made a certain contribution.

Alibaba joined the Sina Weibo team last month, but which action will they execute together from now on? Let's keep attention to their action as before.


Source => china.com, iResearch, Performance reporting by Sina

WeChat formally entered into the Indian market. They already started the TV commercial.

As I reported before, there is a certain number of WeChat users in India, but WeChat formally entered into the Indian market to expand its users a few days ago.

Tencent held an opening event in Mumbai, and they announced that a lot of Indian companies already made the official accounts on WeChat for their marketing activity.


And Tencent already started the TV commercial in India as follows:

Tencent nominated Mr. Varun Dhawan and Ms. Parineeti Chopra as the image character of WeChat in India, and they appeared on the above commercial, and also attended the opening event.

As they referred in that commercial, it seems that Tencent will mainly promote the voice chat feature "Hold-to-Talk" in India.


According to the presentation by WeAreSocial, social media users in India were 60,545,120 people as of November 2011.

Its penetration was only 5% now, but its growth rate is 52% in a year.
And according to the other source, the number of mobile users in India is now 862.62 million people, but the rate of 3G user is only 10%.


But in a sense, it can be said that a low penetration is a big chance for frontiers. WeChat already totally have almost 400 million users and 50 million overseas users now.

India may become the key place for them.


Source => PCONLINE,  thinkdigit, indiatimes

The sales numbers of smartphone in China were 75.28 million units in the first quarter, and 83.5% of sales numbers were smartphone.

According to the report by Eguan, the sales numbers of smartphone in China were 75.28 million units in the first quarter. And it is 83.5% of whole mobile phone sales number, and it increased 141.5% compared to the last year.


According to the report by Gartner, the sales numbers of smartphone in the worldwide were 210.04 million units in the first quarter, so it can be said that one-third of smartphone were sold in China...

And according the report by MIIT, the annual sales numbers of smartphone were 258 million units, but it seems that its number will easily exceed 300 million units in this year.



And the following picture is the market share of each vendor in the first quarter.

Samsung    17.3%
Lenovo        13.1%
Coolpad      10.3%
Huawei        10.1%
ZTE                6.9%
Apple             6.4%
K-touch        4.3%
Gionee          3.8%
HTC               3.1%
OPPO            2.9%






Samsung got 17.0% market share, and they kept the top position in Chinese smartphone market, but Motorola and Nokia couldn't ranked in at this time.

HTC also downed their ranking compared to a few years ago, and it can be said that "replacing the old with the new" was  evidently occurred in Chinese smartphone market.



Xiaomi also has the chance of ranking in the top 10 vendors, and a lot of the other vendors also have the chance of it in future.

I'm also looking forward to watch the trend of this market from now on.


Source => Eguan

Facishare published the business version of WeChat. Is this a sign that the ESN market will accelerate in China again?

As you know, WeChat is the one of most popular communication tools in China. And many companies already use it as a marketing tool to develop the Chinese market.

And this time, Facishare started to provide the business version of WeChat.

    




This word of "business version" means that it is used as a corporate internal system like the enterprise social networking(ESN) tool.


Well, why isn't it provided by Tencent, but is provided by Facishare?


Tencent has provided the business version of QQ "Biz QQ" for a long time, they were seeking the business partner of it to accelerate its business. And the end of March, they targeted some companies as an its business partner, but it seems that Facishare was the one of them.

And on the other hand, Facishare is a company of providing ESN system in China, and they were invested from IDG last year as the series A.

QQ has over 800 million active users per a month, and actually people in China use it as a business communication tool. But the business version of QQ is not so popular compared to the generic QQ.

So Tencent was (is) seeking the business partner to accelerate the BtoB market, and it seems that this business version of WeChat is the next step of the business collaboration.


As I explained before, the ESN market is becoming gradually hot in China. And according to the report by CCW Research, the market scale of ESN increased 246% compared to the last year in 2012. And some researcher said that 2013 will become the year that the ESN market is dramatically growing in China.

How will they progress from now on? Let's keep attention to them as ever.


Source => Sina Weibo, 21CN, 21cbh

Tencent published the performance reporting of the first quarter. The active users of WeChat increased to 194.4 million people.

Tencent published the performance reporting of the first quarter this week.

That summary is as follows:

- Gross income  13.55 billion RMB (= 2.18 billion USD)
* It increased 40.4% compared to the last year, and increased 11.5% compared to the last quarter.

- Profit  4.07 billion RMB (= 0.66 billion USD)
* It increased 37.4% compared to the last year, and increased 17.3% compared to the last quarter.


- Instant messenger "QQ" has 825.4 million active users per a month.
* It increased 9.8% compared to the last year, and increased 3.4% compared to the last quarter.
- Peak simultaneous online users of QQ were 173.0 million people.
* It increased 3.3% compared to the last year, and decreased 1.9% compared to the last quarter.


- WeChat has 194.4 million active users.
* It increased 228.4% compared to the last year, and increased 23.1% compared to the last quarter.

- Qzone has 611 million active users.
* It increased 5.9% compared to the last year, and increased 1.4% compared to the last quarter.

The number of Tencent Weibo did not exist in this report.



Tencent still continues to accelerate the overseas deployment of Wechat , but Tencent formally started to provide WeChat to Indian market.

The registered users of WeChat will exceed 400 million people soon, but it seems that the favorable of WeChat continues for the time being.


Source => TechWeb, The performance reporting by Tencent