It also has a stake in Hollywood film distributor STX Entertainment, behind movies such as Bad Moms and All The Money in the World, while movie arm Tencent Pictures was a backer of blockbuster Kong: Skull Island. Tencent was a backer of the film Kong: Skull Island. ![]() In December, it even did an Amazon, which has gone real-world buying retailer Whole Foods, taking a stake in one of China’s largest supermarket chains, Yonghui Superstores. Tencent’s ambition to be an essential part of digital daily life means it holds a dizzyingly diverse range of interests including in Didi, China’s answer to Uber, the nation’s second biggest e-tailer JD.com and Hike, a messaging service popular in India. “It has payment systems, smart city offerings such as the ability to schedule appointments at a bank, a doctor, pay traffic fines or make visa applications and e-commerce.” “It is compared to What’s App or Facebook messenger but it is not really,” says Xiaofeng Wang, a Singapore-based analyst with Forrester. The WeChat eco-system is so broad it is almost like rolling most of the apps on a typical western user’s mobile phone into one. The business started in cramped Shenzhen offices in the late 1990s, swiftly developing a bad reputation for cloning digital products for the Chinese market, but it was the launch of WeChat in 2011 that supercharged the company’s strategy. Chinese users collectively spend 1.7bn hours a day on the company’s apps. Tencent swiftly introduced one-hour time limits for under-12s and two hours for 12- to 18-year-olds.Īnalysts estimate that Tencent digital services are used by more than two-thirds of the Chinese population. The risk of a government crackdown on one (or more) of Tencent’s golden geese – the company relies on gaming for more than 40% of total revenues – spurred jittery investors to wipe almost $18bn off its stock market value. It has proved so addictive in games-mad China that the government warned Tencent in an article in the state-owned People’s Daily last year saying it was “poison” and a “drug” that harms kids. ![]() Tencent also owns the most profitable game in the world, Honour of Kings, which makes about $1bn a quarter and has 200 million monthly players. It also owns the Los Angeles game-maker Riot, behind the huge League of Legends franchise, and has stakes in Gears of War maker Epic and Activision Blizzard, home to Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush Saga. Gamers play ‘World of Warcraft’ in Cologne, Germany. ![]() Tencent also cranked up its domination of mobile gaming, handing over $8.6bn for the Finnish company Supercell, maker of two of the biggest games in the world, Clash of Clans and Clash Royale. Tencent Music, which dwarfs efforts by Apple and Spotify in China, is expected to make a $10bn stock market listing this year. Thwarted but undeterred, late last year Ma took a 12% holding in Snapchat (he had made a small investment in 2013) in a busy year that also included buying 5% of Elon Musk’s electric car firm Tesla and swapping minority stakes in its music streaming business with Spotify. A panicked Mark Zuckerberg got wind of the move and swooped, tabling an enormous $19bn rival bid – by far Facebook’s biggest deal and more than twice the offer made by Tencent – to see off the threat. The company was close to a deal when talks had to be delayed so that Ma could undergo back surgery. In 2014, Tencent had been on the brink of buying What’sApp, which would have made it a global power player overnight. Late last year, Tencent became the first Chinese firm to pass the $500bn stock market valuation mark, supplanting Facebook as the world’s fifth biggest firm, a bittersweet moment for company co-founder Ma Huateng, 46, also known as “Pony” Ma.
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