• Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Contact
  • Log in
CCS Insight
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who We Serve
    • What We Do
    • Jobs
  • Research Areas
  • Blog
  • Events
  • Press
    • Company News
    • Media Coverage
    • Media Resources
  • Menu Menu
  • About
  • Research Areas
  • Blog
  • Events
  • Press
  • Contact Us

Tencent Joins the Elite $500 Billion Club

Approaches 1 Billion WeChat Users and Facebook’s Valuation

This week, Tencent reached a market capitalisation of $500 billion, becoming the first Chinese technology company to join an elite group currently dominated by US giants. Tencent is now approaching Facebook’s $522 billion valuation and is becoming a member of the half-a-trillion-dollar club that includes Apple, Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft.

Tencent’s core product is its messaging service WeChat, which has almost 1 billion monthly active users and more than 900 million daily active users. Started in 2011, WeChat began as a straightforward messaging app, but has since expanded to integrate a series of e-commerce services including banking, stock trading, taxi bookings and movie ticketing.

Since its founding in 1998, Tencent has grown to become one of the most influential companies in China, offering services that touch nearly every aspect of citizens’ lives almost on a daily basis. Although the Tencent brand is little known internationally beyond investor communities, the company dominates its home market, partly thanks to the Chinese government’s decision to ban Facebook.

Tencent’s services have limited usage outside China, but the company has been expanding abroad mainly through investments in large US technology companies including Snap, owner of messaging company Snapchat, electric car-maker Tesla, as well as a range of start-ups. It’s now one of the largest global investors, even outpacing venture capital firms such as Sequoia. It’s estimated to have backed close to 500 companies during the past decade.

Services such as WeChat and gaming have become Tencent’s cash cow, but the company’s longer-term strategy is to develop a range of technologies that increasingly drive users’ time and money to its services. Its ability to regularly add new features is an impressive feat given its size. Many companies slow down as they grow massive, allowing their scale to gum up the system. However, Tencent’s management has remained streamlined enough to successfully build out its services into new areas. For example, its entry into mobile payment services, despite coming late, allowed it to quickly expand to take 37 percent of the market, challenging Alibaba’s Alipay platform.

Tencent is big, now $500 billion big, but by all accounts it’s still a nimble company able to quickly stay on top of the latest trends. This shows through in its rate of growth: revenue grew 61 percent year-on-year in its most recent results, and has only dipped below 50 percent once in the last six quarters.

Raghu Gopal
Written by: Raghu Gopal
Posted on 24/11/2017
Share this Insight
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share by Mail
0 replies

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Subscribe to our blog

Make sure you don’t miss out on our fresh insights on topical news in the connected world.

Research areas

  • 5G
  • 5G Networks
  • Agenda Setters
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Business IoT
  • Developer Trends
  • Devices
  • Insight
  • Mobile Phones
  • Mobile World Congress (MWC)
  • Semiconductors
  • Services
  • Smart Home
  • Teardowns
  • Telecom Operators
  • Uncategorized
  • VR and AR
  • Wearables
  • Workplace Transformation

Links

  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms and Conditions

Follow us

  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn

© 2020 CCS Insight

The Age of Ultron Olympic Speed Trials
Scroll to top

This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.

OKLearn more

Cookie and Privacy Settings



How we use cookies

We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.

Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.

Essential Website Cookies

These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.

Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refuseing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.

We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.

We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.

Other external services

We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.

Google Webfont Settings:

Google Map Settings:

Google reCaptcha Settings:

Vimeo and Youtube video embeds:

Accept settingsHide notification only