Alibaba Battles Tencent For Office App Users

Alibaba and Tencent go head to head to get the larger market share of Chinese office app users.

The two Chinese internet giants, Alibaba Group Holdings Limited and Tencent Holdings, are once again battling for the larger domestic market share. The Wall Street Journal reported that the main battle in office communications domain in China started when Tencent came up with its new app called Qiye Weixin or Enterprise WeChat.

The new Enterprise version of WeChat will allow Tencent to protect its successful WeChat franchise. It will also repel a threat from the Chinese e-commerce leader as it is currently struggling to make its mark in the same domain.

The new app from Tencent Holdings offers a different platform to Chinese people that can help them to separate work and life. This is an annoying issue which has been ignited by WeChat itself. Alibaba Group is known as the king of the Chinese e-commerce market and holds a major 80% or more market share in China. But it has little or no success with messaging and social networking apps. The online retailer launched DingTalk last year to try its luck. DingTalk was an office oriented app which could ‘return focus to work’ of the Chinese.

Alibaba also posted online videos last week to show how Tencent WeChat has become a source of distraction, stress, and unpunctual-ness at a workplace. The rivalry between both parties is getting intense, as neither of them wants the other to take a lead in any field. China’s tech sector is emerging which will soon prove to be a big market.

Alibaba and Tencent want to take on each other in every field and business software currently is an evolving market. As of now, both of the services offered by Alibaba and Tencent are free for customers but analysts think that these apps can create a strong revenue stream in the times to come.

Now going back to the video Alibaba posted that portrayed a negative image on the usage of WeChat app. It is true to some extent that WeChat does distract the Chinese as it is the most common and used message and social networking app in the country. Globally, users prefer WhatsApp for such purposes but in China, WhatsApp has no presence. 

WeChat controls and dominates the messaging domain. It currently has 697 million active users hence it plays a vital role in both work and life of a Chinese consumer. According to a government survey released in April, 87% users check WeChat more than 10 times in a day.

China is known as a country that does not use email services quite often. WeChat has managed to become an integral tool for companies used for internet as well as external communications.