Tencent and NHN are 'credible threats' says Ovum
- After gaining a foothold in several Asian markets, China’s Tencent and South Korea’s NHN are eyeing other massive markets
- Ovum sees each groups as ‘a reputable hazard’ in most markets they enter
INDEPENDENT telecoms analyst corporation Ovum has positioned China’s Tencent and South Korea’s NHN at the radar, as both businesses look to extend past their domestic place.
Categorised as massive Asian over-the-pinnacle (OTT) service players, each brands have leveraged upon their social messaging platforms to advantage extensive consumer bases in several Asian markets and have plans to goal other massive markets, together with the US.
As of Sept 2012, Tencent’s Wechat (referred to as Weixin in China) had a user base of over 200 million customers, whilst NHN’s Line had over 60 million customers.
Better recognized for its messaging, virtual gaming, and social networking offerings, Ovum consumer analyst Mark Ranson stated that Tencent is taking a long-term view with Wechat, steadily building a huge consumer base earlier than focusing extra closely on monetization.
“Tencent is aware of from enjoy that building scale and loyalty among users is the important thing to lengthy-time period profitability inside the fee-delivered services (VAS) marketplace and with a market capitalization of about US$61.5bil, it may definitely find the money for to attend,” he said.
Ranson delivered that Tencent’s deliberate Wechat virtual recreation center is in all likelihood to be the fine possibility to create considerable sales from the provider.
Having had much success within the fixed-line Internet carrier marketplace, NHN generates maximum of its revenues in Korea and Japan, with its Naver web search provider and Hangame online game portal being its biggest sales streams.
According to Ovum, the agency sees its Line messaging application as key to improving its cellular platform commercial enterprise and creating growth through coming into new markets. It also sees digital games as valuable to its monetization strategy for Line.
Ranson said that both groups had been built in large part on sales generated from constant network online game offerings, and are clearly making plans to amplify in this fulfillment in the less mature mobile recreation marketplace.
“Tencent and NHN’s modern and destiny competitors should be aware that the corporations’ information in online gaming and the monetization of online content, blended with their strong price range, will make each gamers credible threats in maximum markets they enter,” he delivered.
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