Tencent’s WeChat hits 200m users, doubles in six months

Over at the China Internet Conference earlier today, Pony Ma, CEO and co-founder of Tencent (HKG:0700) took to the stage to talk about all things mobile. He began by pointing out that mobile internet users have surpassed PC internet users in China.

Referring to Tencent’s data, he shared that today, more than half of the users on QQ, the company’s huge IM service, are accessing it via mobile phones. Furthermore, he noted that Weixin (aka WeChat to international users), its Whatsapp-style messaging app, hit 100 million users in March earlier this year. That’s old news, of course — but in the six months since then it has doubled to a whopping 200-million users.

Onstage, Ma sang the praises of the new mobile wave in China and urges entrepreneurs to take advantage of it. He said:

Mobile is great because it sticks to users whenever they go. Unlike PCs, mobile also has location features which bring about new industries such as O2O (online to offline) services. (note: translation is mine/unofficial)

WeChat really has some crazy location-related (LBS) figures as well. Ma says that in a day, WeChat generates more than 700-million location-based activities each day! Ma then went on to say that WeChat is now open for developers to leverage on its platform and hopes that all apps (even competing ones) can collaborate to provide a better experience for mobile users.

This article by Willis Wee originally appeared on Tech in Asia and is republished with its permission.