Tencent, China’s social and entertainment giant
An online entertainment giant in China, Tencent operates the hugely popular all-purpose app WeChat -- and the hit game Arena of Valor. It also owns the companies behind Clash of Clans and League of Legends.
EARLY BIRD
At that time, a young man named Pony Ma decided to pounce on the opportunity. He saw that, despite explosive growth, something was missing on the internet in China. While people in the rest of the world were communicating with each other through instant messaging services like AIM, there was nothing like that in his country.
Pony Ma, the tycoon behind China's social media and gaming giant Tencent
In 1998, Ma quit his job to found Tencent with a few friends. Their first product was the OICQ messenger, a near-replica of Israel’s ICQ -- later renamed QQ.
As expected, QQ spread rapidly in a massive country that was desperate to find an efficient way to connect its 1.3 billion people. As a pioneer, Tencent quickly fortified its dominance in online chat.
GOING MOBILE
Before the arrival of WeChat, people in China were texting each other through SMS, which charges per message. WeChat lets user dispense with their text messaging plan altogether and switch to online data.
But WeChat does much more than just texting. At first, it let users exchange voice messages, or shake their phones to connect with users nearby. Since then it’s grown to encompass almost every part of live in China: Today, people can share photos, order food, call a taxi, pay utility bills, and make a hospital appointment.
And if you’re wondering what happened to QQ, it still exists -- on both desktop and mobile -- but now targets mainly younger users.
GAMING GIANT
In China, WeChat is paramount. But outside the country, Tencent is mostly known for gaming.
League of Legends and Clash of Clans are made by California-based Riot Games and Finland’s Supercell -- but both are owned by the Chinese giant. Tencent also has a major stake in Activision Blizzard, the publisher of Call of Duty and Overwatch.
WHAT’S NEXT
But that’s not all. Tencent is already a music streaming heavyweight in China, running the country’s three most popular services: QQ Music, Kugou Music and Kuwo Music.
It’s also the sole online distributor of the big three western music labels: Universal Music, Sony Music, and Warner Music. Local rivals who wish to stream songs from those labels have to pay Tencent for the rights.
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