When condom maker Durex wants to send an intimate message to customers in China, it uses a homegrown instant messaging platform called WeChat (微信), which has taken the country by storm in just three years.
WeChat — known as weixin, or micro-message in Chinese — has similarities to WhatsApp, the Silicon Valley start-up that Facebook bought for US$19 billion last month.
Now the chief executive of its parent company hopes the service can go global, branding it China’s “most hopeful product for internationalization” — but concerns about cybersecurity could hamper its ambitions.
WeChat is more versatile than WhatsApp, allowing its more than 300 million users to send text, photos, videos and voice messages over smartphones, find each other by shaking their devices — a common dating technique — and even book and pay for taxis.
Its popularity has gone beyond individuals, with corporations and even the government using the application developed by Chinese Internet giant Tencent for their internal and public communications.
Since the WhatsApp deal was announced, Hong Kong-listed Tencent’s (騰訊) shares have risen 9.4 percent, giving it a market capitalization of US$150 billion, approaching Facebook’s US$180 billion.
“WeChat is an extremely people-friendly platform, something consumers frequently use every day,” said Fay Zhao, senior brand manager for Durex, which has asked its 200,000 followers to transmit “love stories” over WeChat in its latest campaign.
Analysts say WeChat has eroded the popularity of another form of Chinese social media — microblogs or weibo — which have been hurt by a government crackdown on content and users.
WeChat is now the country’s second-most popular instant messaging tool on mobile devices, according to consultancy Analysys International — behind the venerable QQ platform, launched in 1999 and also owned by Tencent — and is unlikely to be dislodged.
“WeChat, as a ‘killer app’ of Tencent on mobile Internet, has experienced a rapid increase in its user base since it commercialized in 2013,” consultancy Analysys International said in a research report last month, referring to when it started charging for some services.
WeChat is free to use, but charges for products such as emoticons and special features in games.
To retain users, WeChat has introduced new services alongside basic communication, including gaming, online payments and the taxi booking service.
Tencent acquired a 20 percent stake in Chinese restaurant listing platform Dianping.com last month and started offering dining coupons through WeChat.
Its latest deal, announced this week, sees Tencent take a 15 percent stake in Chinese online direct sales company JD.com, in a bid to better compete with e-commerce giant Alibaba (阿里巴巴).
Tencent founder and chief executive officer Pony Ma (馬化騰) is putting high hopes on expanding WeChat abroad, budgeting US$200 million for overseas marketing last year and hiring football superstar Lionel Messi for advertisements.
However, global concerns about cybersecurity could put a damper on its ambitions, while some Western users might have concerns over Internet security and the protection of personal data with WeChat, analysts said.
Other global players include Japan’s Line, with more than 300 million registered users, and South Korea’s Kakao Talk with more than 100 million, which together dominate other Asian markets.
“There are already some well-established instant messaging products in the global market ... forming a natural barrier for the internationalization of WeChat,” Analysys International analyst Dong Xu said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained