You know you have a killer product when you have irked some of the biggest companies in the world. Welcome to Tencent, China’s version of Facebook, MSN Messenger, Zynga and Blizzard Entertainment all rolled into one. Its Weixin (we chat) application, which allows users to chat and message each other via a smartphone for free, had amassed almost 200m users by the end of March – a threefold increase from a year ago. Little wonder China’s giant mobile phone operators complain of lost revenues. Tencent’s shareholders are not upset, however. Shares have gained 350 per cent in the past five years against a one-tenth fall in the benchmark Hang Seng index.
當你使某些全球規模最大的公司感到煩惱時，你就知道自己擁有了一款殺手級產品。歡迎來到騰訊(Tencent)——中國版本的Facebook、MSN Messenger、Zynga和暴雪娛樂(Blizzard Entertainment)的集合體。騰訊開發的微信(Weixin)應用允許用戶通過智能手機免費實現語音以及短訊聊天，截至今年3月底已經積累了近2億的用戶——較一年以前增長了三倍。因此中國的主要移動通訊運營商抱怨自身收入下降也就不足為奇了。但騰訊公司的股東并沒有因此感到不安。過去五年中，該公司的股價累計上漲了350%，而同期作為基準的恒生指數(Hang Seng index)則下跌了十分之一。