Abstract

This case mainly addresses WeChat’s success in China and the problems in overseas. WeChat is developed by Tencent in January 2011 as a lightweight messaging application. In the four years since its birth as “Tencent App” in January 2011, WeChat has grown from a simple messaging app into a cultural phenomenon changing the social and economic behaviors in China in profound ways. Unlike any other messengers, core features of WeChat include WeChat Payment (innovating in mobile industry) and Official Accounts (revenue sources), all under its O2O business model. WeChat has 549 million monthly active users (MAU) all over the world as of Q1 2015. However, more than 90% of its users are based in China. Few people outside of China had ever heard of its service. The main challenge is whether the company could break out from its home market and provide the rest of the world something that its competitors could not.

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