Tencent has revealed that it is expecting difficulty in the expansion of its WeChat messaging app. The company's CEO, Pony Ma, said during a speech at the World Internet Conference that Tencent would find it “very hard” to expand overseas, “unless [it could] offer a wholly different customer experience”. He added that the problems were likely to occur in markets that were dominated by Line or WhatsApp, due to social apps being “basically all alike”. WhatsApp is the world's most popular messaging app with over 1 billion users globally, whilst WeChat falls some way behind with 650 million users, although this does make it China's leading messaging app. However, WeChat allows users to shop both online and offline, find news stories, pay bills, and much more. Because of these highly successful extra features, Ma has said he is still aiming to grow the app across the world, and expects Tencent to see more success in gaming and the Internet of Things.Â
