Memo to the president of the company: WeChat
To Ma Huateng (Pony Ma) the Core Founder, Chief
Executive Officer and to Lau Chi Ping (Martin Lau) the President of Tencent
Holdings.
Recently I have analyzed the e-commerce feature of your app ‘WeChat’ and I must say that I was impressed by the availability and quality of the application. I believe you have a real winner here and that if you keep investing in ‘WeChat’ that it will one day evolve into a market share leader.
As a Chinese company you have already tapped into about 70 to 80% of the local market, which is none other than impressive. Nearly no other sector in mobile commerce can put these numbers forward. The only issue is the lack of foreign users of your application, for some reason it isn’t getting off the ground in the US and across Europe. The Asian market keeps on growing and is pretty much yours, but the West needs to be convinced to join the WeChat hype. This would probably helped if the US and European client had the same functionalities as the Chinese version, but also perhaps if you would be able to make an agreement with a widespread business in the West. For example think about an agreement with Korean based Samsung with which WeChat can be pre-installed on the device, this would greatly increase the foreign market share
Something that will have to change on the European and American market is the censorship. You simply can’t get away with this in these democratic countries where free speech is one of the most basic rights. So any kind of censorship will reflect very badly on the image of your company and on the app, however I am aware that it is unwise to go in against the Chinese government. And that’s why this can be overlooked, but only in the Chinese area nowhere else (this is a safety measure, because in the end consistency is the most important factor for every company).
On all other factors WeChat scores very highly in my opinion. It’s a quality app that is easy to use and uses a nice interface to keep in touch with your friends. There is no advertising or confronting people with messages they don’t want to see. Everything can be personalized and is constantly able to change. I believe you have a strong social network tool that is here to stay as long as you can keep up the quality of all your features people will get the word out and your popularity will rise all over the globe.
With kind regards,
Jean- Philippe Copers
Recently I have analyzed the e-commerce feature of your app ‘WeChat’ and I must say that I was impressed by the availability and quality of the application. I believe you have a real winner here and that if you keep investing in ‘WeChat’ that it will one day evolve into a market share leader.
As a Chinese company you have already tapped into about 70 to 80% of the local market, which is none other than impressive. Nearly no other sector in mobile commerce can put these numbers forward. The only issue is the lack of foreign users of your application, for some reason it isn’t getting off the ground in the US and across Europe. The Asian market keeps on growing and is pretty much yours, but the West needs to be convinced to join the WeChat hype. This would probably helped if the US and European client had the same functionalities as the Chinese version, but also perhaps if you would be able to make an agreement with a widespread business in the West. For example think about an agreement with Korean based Samsung with which WeChat can be pre-installed on the device, this would greatly increase the foreign market share
Something that will have to change on the European and American market is the censorship. You simply can’t get away with this in these democratic countries where free speech is one of the most basic rights. So any kind of censorship will reflect very badly on the image of your company and on the app, however I am aware that it is unwise to go in against the Chinese government. And that’s why this can be overlooked, but only in the Chinese area nowhere else (this is a safety measure, because in the end consistency is the most important factor for every company).
On all other factors WeChat scores very highly in my opinion. It’s a quality app that is easy to use and uses a nice interface to keep in touch with your friends. There is no advertising or confronting people with messages they don’t want to see. Everything can be personalized and is constantly able to change. I believe you have a strong social network tool that is here to stay as long as you can keep up the quality of all your features people will get the word out and your popularity will rise all over the globe.
With kind regards,
Jean- Philippe Copers