Late to the party, WeChat (微信), China’s biggest Internet-based mobile messaging platform, is scrambling to get a piece of the action in the booming African market.
The move is leading South African-Chinese joint venture WeChat Africa down a fiercely competitive path, as Facebook Inc’s WhatsApp is already part of the social media fabric in most African countries.
Africa is not often the scene of battles between tech giants, but the outcome could help determine who can turn the exponential growth in online messaging services into profits.
WeChat stands at a major disadvantage, as WhatsApp is used far more widely, making users naturally reluctant to choose a rival service.
However, WeChat is betting an array of services that include money transfers, prepaid electricity and airtime purchases and its experience in selling products to lower-income users in the villages of China might loosen the Silicon Valley grip.
“That’s at the heart of the story for us, because we knew that we were late to the market compared with other instant messaging apps and so we realized that focusing on chat services was not the most practical way to get to market,” WeChat Africa head Brett Loubser said.
Launched in Africa in 2013 by China’s Internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊) and 34 percent shareholder South African e-commerce and media group Naspers Ltd, WeChat Africa is a rare south-south corporate partnership to expand on the continent.
The joint venture is facing an uphill battle in taking on WhatsApp, which offers free text, picture and video messages and whose adoption in big African markets, such as South Africa, was lightning-fast, because texts over a telephone network are still expensive.
A study by World Wide Worx, a Johannesburg-based consultancy, showed WhatsApp had more than 10 million users in South Africa last year, compared with more than 5 million for WeChat.
However, WhatsApp has no immediate plans to make money out of the service in Africa, Facebook Africa head Nunu Ntshingila said.
“At this point in time, we are not at the stage where we are looking at monetizing WhatsApp,” Ntshingila said.
“That’s in a three-year time frame, because right now the focus is on two big apps, which are Facebook and Messenger,” she said.
Ntshingila said WhatsApp is the No. 1 messaging platform in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya.
Although there are no reliable statistics on the number of mobile phone owners who use either WhatsApp or WeChat on the rest of the continent, there are parts of Africa where WeChat is almost unknown, whereas WhatsApp is everywhere from Namibia to Niger.
“I used to have a WeChat account, but I deleted it, because you will find virtually nobody to chat. With WhatsApp, there are no complications, it’s simple and all my friends use it,” said Nkululeko Mabuza, a 24-year-old social worker in Tzaneen, a large town 400km north of Johannesburg.
Loubser said WeChat is all about making it easier for users, with a suite of features to order takeout, shop online, search for jobs and transfer money without having to leave the interface.
“We looked very carefully at what the platform can achieve beyond just messaging, because people use products when there’s value for them,” he said.
Late last year, WeChat launched mobile money services, or WeChat Wallet, which allows users to store bank cards and withdraw cash at the automated teller machines of a partner, Standard Bank of South Africa Ltd.
Earlier this month WeChat partnered with Stuff, the world’s best-selling gadget and technology magazine, and a unit of household goods retailer Steinhoff International Holdings NV to launch a payment feature that allows WeChat Wallet users to scan a barcode alongside a product in the magazine.
Riding on Naspers’ pay-TV monopoly across Africa, WeChat can also be used to cast votes for popular reality shows such as Idols and Big Brother.
DOLLAR CHALLENGE: BRICS countries’ growing share of global GDP threatens the US dollar’s dominance, which some member states seek to displace for world trade US president-elect Donald Trump on Saturday threatened 100 percent tariffs against a bloc of nine nations if they act to undermine the US dollar. His threat was directed at countries in the so-called BRICS alliance, which consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Turkey, Azerbaijan and Malaysia have applied to become members and several other countries have expressed interest in joining. While the US dollar is by far the most-used currency in global business and has survived past challenges to its preeminence, members of the alliance and other developing nations say they are fed
LIMITED MEASURES: The proposed restrictions on Chinese chip exports are weaker than previously considered, following lobbying by major US firms, sources said US President Joe Biden’s administration is weighing additional curbs on sales of semiconductor equipment and artificial intelligence (AI) memory chips to China that would escalate the US crackdown on Beijing’s tech ambitions, but stop short of some stricter measures previously considered, said sources familiar with the matter. The restrictions could be unveiled as soon as next week, said the sources, who emphasized that the timing and contours of the rules have changed several times, and that nothing is final until they are published. The measures follow months of deliberations by US officials, negotiations with allies in Japan and the Netherlands, and
Qualcomm Inc’s interest in pursuing an acquisition of Intel Corp has cooled, people familiar with the matter said, upending what would have likely been one of the largest technology deals of all time. The complexities associated with acquiring all of Intel has made a deal less attractive to Qualcomm, said some of the people, asking not to be identified discussing confidential matters. It is always possible Qualcomm looks at pieces of Intel instead or rekindles its interest later, they added. Representatives for Qualcomm and Intel declined to comment. Qualcomm made a preliminary approach to Intel on a possible takeover, Bloomberg News and other media
Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) yesterday said it expects any impact of new tariffs from US president-elect Donald Trump to hit the company less than its rivals, citing its global manufacturing footprint. Young Liu (劉揚偉), chairman of the contract manufacturer and key Apple Inc supplier, told reporters after a forum in Taipei that it saw the primary impact of any fresh tariffs falling on its clients because its business model is based on contract manufacturing. “Clients may decide to shift production locations, but looking at Foxconn’s global footprint, we are ahead. As a result, the impact on us is likely smaller compared to
RSS