Tencent scraps WeChat global expansion plans despite strong profits

Chinese internet powerhouse Tencent is taking a step back on the aggressive international expansion of WeChat, its popular social mobile-messaging application known as Weixin in China.

That move, however, is expected to help Tencent accelerate the transformation of WeChat into a bigger online platform for products and services, which would make it a more potent operation to build up overseas.

Shenzhen-based Tencent, Asia’s second-largest internet company after Alibaba Group, revealed that change in strategy yesterday after reporting a 50 per cent increase in fourth-quarter net profit, driven by significant growth in revenue from smartphone games through its Mobile QQ and Weixin platforms.

Pony Ma Huateng, the chairman and chief executive of Tencent, said that the company's goals this year included investments to improve delivery of online-to-offline (O2O) services to users through its highly used mobile platforms and expanding its nascent mobile advertising business.

Tencent operates the biggest China-based mobile social networks, with 576 million monthly active users on Mobile QQ last quarter and 500 million on the combined Weixin and international WeChat platforms in the same period.

The majority of Weixin and WeChat users are found in mainland China, Hong Kong and several countries in Southeast Asia, according to Tencent.