Pony Ma sets out Tencent’s industrial internet ambitions as it looks to China’s future economy

Chinese internet giant Tencent, which operates the country’s dominant social media platform WeChat with over one billion monthly active users, is now looking beyond consumers to the huge potential of the industrial internet – where it aims to support the digital transformation of China’s economy.

Tencent wants to enable greater connectivity across Chinese industry, leveraging the capabilities and expertise it has built to serve the billion-plus users of its consumer-facing platforms, enhancing products and services, Tencent CEO and founder Pony Ma Huateng wrote in an open letter on Wednesday ahead of its global partner conference in the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing, Jiangsu.

“Tencent has always been talking about how to connect people with other people, objects and services. It became clear to us that if objects and services are not fully digitalised, the connection between them and people cannot be improved,” Ma wrote in the letter.

“We believe that the first stage of the mobile internet, the consumer internet, is drawing to a close and the second stage, the industrial internet, is kicking off. With the digitalisation process ongoing, the main battlefield of the mobile Internet has moved from the consumer internet to the industrial internet,” Ma wrote.

Companies looking to reap the benefits of smart retailing and smart manufacturing – which involves leveraging fast and high-capacity internet connections, big data capabilities and sensors that allow devices to ‘talk’ to one another – will need to work with internet companies to unlock the immense potential of the industrial internet, said the low profile Ma.