40m of WeChat’s 300m users live outside China

Yesterday at Boao Forum For Asia 2013, Tencent’s President Martin Lau revealed on stage that WeChat has over 40-million overseas users. That’s out of a total user-base of just over 300-million.

Echoing the thoughts of Tencent founder and CEO Pony Ma, Lau believes that mobile internet growth has given a chance for Chinese and Asian technology companies to put themselves onto the global stage. That also includes WeChat competitors, such as NHN Japan’s Line and Korean-made KakaoTalk which has 120-million and over 70-million worldwide users, respectively. Lau also claims that WeChat has topped the app store in Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia. For Malaysia and Indonesia, Lau said that WeChat has become the favorite smartphone application in the country.

Including China, WeChat has over 300-million users in total and has dedicated offices across the world, including Indonesia (a joint venture with MNC), the US and Thailand (via Sanook) to grow its user-base. Last year, Tencent generated US$7-billion in revenue with an operating profit of US$2.46-billion.

---

This article by Willis Wee originally appeared on Tech in Asia, a Burn Media publishing partner.