Little-known in wide circles, the company, and meanwhile it gets up surprising "tricks" of business development not only in China, but for a long time and in the world scene. If a couple of months ago I talked about the issue, will Apple or Amazon become the first company with a market capitalization of a trillion dollars? The new participant is theoretically also able to surprise us.
Because Tencent recently bypassed Facebook and became the 5th most expensive company in the world. At the same time very rigidly entered competition and in the local market with Alibaba (having got a share of the largest network of supermarkets in China, JD holding and the logistic company). Protectionism in action, when Chinese high-tech giants displace competitors not only in their market, but very soon can surpass many in foreign markets.
And how it all began when in 1999 Ma Huateng (Pony Ma) with resourceful friends from the "student campus" cloned the idea of the famous Israeli messaging service ICQ, releasing its program OICQ for Chinese youth. I remember how in a couple of years in the Russian segment of the Internet it was possible to download localized enthusiasts version of QQ (renamed after a series of trials) with a memorable design "winking penguin" :)
Active growth of Tencent revenue began after the games market and the launch of payment for many services created by the internal currency QQ Coins, when it was more profitable to replenish the balance and purchase everything for virtual coins. Money was made on almost everything, on every detail, because of hundreds of thousands of microtransactions Tencent owned "free millions", opening wide opportunities for investment (copying successful business ideas and developing them on the local market).
Who knew that even then it was necessary to prepare for the purchase of shares of Tencent and their rate on mobile applications financial performance of the company will surprise even experts.
Today Tencent invests not only in blockchain technologies, unmanned vehicles and artificial intelligence, but also in medical diagnostics in order to prolong human life to 120 years. In recent years Alibaba and Tencent with their payment applications have already reached the world level, when even in some European online stores I meet the possibility of payment through Alipay and TenPay (with a rather low commission compared to the same PayPal or Amazon Payments).
About the Asian region and say no, users of the digital wallet from Alibaba for more than half a billion, and the application Tencent does not give up, numbering about 400 million active wallets (which are rapidly replacing both cash and cards in China). And taking into account Tencent's plans to integrate a huge number of their online services into offline, direct confrontation with Alibaba is inevitable.
Yes, both companies need more data, analyzing which they will be able to learn all the habits of users, and therefore calculate the model of behavior (for the future development of the sales rate of anything). But only whether this want to know? The leaders of the Chinese techno-giants do not hide the fact that they support the state program of the Chinese government to collect and analyze data.
Curious, is this the price of foreign trade policy to support local business? Or the desire of corporations to know everything about us?
A few years ago, while communicating through WeChat with relatives who moved to China, I did not attach any importance to Tencent, and now all 3 platforms for communication of the most populated country are under its control:
Strange, when Tencent compared with the Russian holding Mail.ru they are no longer in the "weight category". Wechat messenger is now rapidly catching up with the leaders in the number of users, and sometimes bypasses them in functionality. The Chinese do not need other applications at all, because WeChat is scaled to the platform, when there is no need to install another application, new features appear inside the platform.
Although I do not use all the functionality, now it is more like a kind of operating system, and in China, through WeChat already make an appointment to see a doctor, pay for purchases, find parking, manage accounts, make appointments, travel, receive some public services, and more.
It is interesting to know whether Tencent will be able to "enter the world" as successfully as in China, because it was easier to reach its audience in conditions of limited state competition. Yes, and the format of replacing individual applications on the platform "all in one" is no longer a novelty, Facebook and other companies have adopted a successful experience.
So tell me then, that copying ideas is bad when Pony MA, Martin Lau, starting as a clone of ICQ, built an Empire (more than 500 independent from each other company) are able to become the richest corporation in the world!