03.07.2013

WeChat "breathes in the back" Kakao

The number of international subscribers of the Chinese “conversational” WeChat application has reached 70 million. About the present and future of the platform – in our material. 

Only in the morning we reported that the number of Kakao users exceeded 100 million, as the Chinese telecommunications company Tencent immediately reacted. She announced that the number of international subscribers of her mobile messenger WeChat has reached 70 million. 

For comparison, in China in January, the company has more than 300 million users. So in terms of the number of subscribers, it overtakes both Kakao and the Japanese Line platform, which had 150 million users in May. 

Why are we writing about some Chinese messenger? Good question.

Games will soon be available on the platform. This could seriously change the situation in the Chinese market and gaming platforms.

The fact is that in the Japanese and Korean markets, it is the platform applications that play a central role in promoting projects, with the help of which users exchange messages with each other. 

For example, from the Korean box office gaming top 10 for the App Store, six projects were published with the support of Kakao. The “hand” Line in the Japanese store is less obvious, but in Google Play out of 10 cash games – 4 are published by messenger.

And this is what the Korean box office gaming top 10 looks like on Google Play (App Annie)And it is clear that some market participants associate certain expectations with the arrival of games on WeChat.

Perhaps it is a departure from the wild fragmentation of the market and numerous stores, and after that, revenue growth from the Middle Kingdom. 

But the presence of gaming applications in WeChat is quite capable of not only increasing the attractiveness of the Chinese market, but also making Tencent one of the central Asian publishers. The company’s messenger positions are already very strong in Thailand, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore. And when games appear on it, these positions will only become more confident.

A source: pocketgamer.bizPhoto: www.senrining.com

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