Recruiting in China

Gets big boost from mobile Internet services

Internet giant Tencent Holdings has become the company with the highest market value in Asia at HK$1.99 trillion ($255.8 billion), overtaking domestic rival Alibaba Group Holding and many time-honored brands in China, media reports said Monday.

It is also the first time that Tencent surpassed China Mobile, which is valued at $254 billion, to become the top company in Asia, domestic news portal -wallstreetcn.com noted.

Alibaba ranked third at $250.2 billion, followed by South Korea-based tech company Samsung Electronics Co at $229.4 billion, according to the report.

"Tencent's market value is based on its current and previous good financial situation, which is driven by the company's core businesses including advertisements, games, e-commerce and financial services," Li Chengdong, a Beijing-based independent e-commerce strategy -analyst, told the Global Times on Monday.

Tencent's first-half revenue reached 67.7 billion yuan ($10.21 billion), up 48 percent year-on-year, said the financial report released by the company on August 17.

Gross profit rose 40 percent year-on-year to 39 billion yuan, the report showed.

Tencent has benefited from China's fast-developing mobile Internet industry, which tops the world with 700 million to 800 million users, noted Liu Dingding, an Beijing-based independent industry analyst.

Li said that Tencent has a large base of active users who spend a long time on its products such as online chat tools QQ and WeChat, which makes its products unique in the era of mobile Internet.

Apart from its robust mobile game business, the growth of Tencent has been fueled by other activities such as video, digital reading, music, streaming media and Web ads, domestic news portal lanjinger.com reported Monday, citing an industry study from JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Tencent's mobile game revenue will approach 40 billion yuan in 2016, up 89 percent year-on-year, the JPMorgan report said.

It also forecast that the revenue of Tencent's social network will increase 30 percent this year and 25 percent in 2017.

"Tencent's WeChat business also reported a great performance in recent months," Liu told the Global Times on Monday.

For WeChat, including Chinese version Weixin, monthly active users reached 806 million in the first half of 2016, up 34 percent year-on-year, said Tencent's interim report.

Weixin further penetrated into communication scenarios at work, with more than 20 million registered users of -Weixin enterprise accounts, which facilitate internal office automation operations, the report noted.

"The company will continue to boost such businesses as WeChat, cloud computing and big data," Liu said.

Tencent has much scope for growth in businesses like finance and e-commerce, experts noted.

"Tencent has become the biggest shareholder of JD.com Inc and will join forces with jd.com to further develop its e-commerce business, posing tougher competition for Alibaba," Liu said.