Messenger service WeChat breaks mark of one billion accounts
The smartphone app WeChat, which is ubiquitous especially in China, has broken through the symbolic mark of one billion accounts. This was announced by the head of WeChat parent Tencent, Pony Ma, on Monday on the sidelines of the National People's Congress in Beijing.
This means that WeChat has passed a "crucial" threshold in terms of monthly active users.
A company spokesperson qualified to the AFP news agency that this was the number of total registered users. Nevertheless, exceeding the mark shows the extent to which WeChat is gaining new users.
In September, Tencent had reported that the number of users was 980 million - 16 percent more than the year before. Facebook has around 2.1 billion monthly active users, WhatsApp around 1.5 .
WeChat was initially launched as a pure messenger service. In the meantime, however, the service combines numerous other functions in one app, including popular games and a payment function that is widely used in China.
With a stock market value of over 500 billion dollars, the Chinese Internet giant Tencent is one of the five most valuable companies in the world. (SDA)
