Tencent Holdings Limited (Chinese: ????????; pinyin: Téngxùn Kòngg? Y?uxiàn G?ngs?; literally: "Soaring information"; SEHK: 700) is a Chinese technology and investment holding conglomerate whose subsidiaries provide various Internet-related services, products and technology both in China and globally. Its twin-skyscrapers headquarters Tencent Seafront Towers (also known as Tencent Binhai Mansion) are based in Nanshan District, Shenzhen, and has received several awards for its architecture.
Tencent is the world's biggest investment corporation, one of the largest Internet and technology companies, as well as the largest and most valuable gaming and social media company in the world. Its many services include social network, music, web portals, e-commerce, mobile games, internet services, payment systems, smartphones, and multiplayer online games, which are all among the world's biggest and most successful in their respective categories. Offerings in China include the well-known instant messenger Tencent QQ and one of the largest web portals, QQ.com. Its mobile chat service WeChat has helped bolster Tencent's continued expansion into smartphone services, and has been credited as one of the world's most powerful apps. It also owns majority of China's music services (Tencent Music Entertainment), with more than 700 million active users and 120 million paying subscribers, the world's largest and most profitable.
As of November 2017, the company has a market cap of US$534 billion (HK$4.17 trillion), and is Asia's most valuable company (Saudi Aramco has not been listed), with continued revenue growth, massive user base and investments into new areas. It maintained an exceedingly high buy rating of 98% from stock watchers, credited to its bullish outlook. On 20 November 2017, it became the first Asian company to cross the US$500 billion valuation mark, and has also surpassed Facebook to become the world's most valuable social media company, while joining the ranks of the top 5 biggest firms in the world alongside Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon. Tencent has been credited as one of the world's most innovative companies by numerous media and firms, such as Boston Consulting Group.
Tencent controls hundreds of subsidiaries and associates in numerous industries and areas, creating a broad portfolio of ownerships and investment across a diverse range of businesses including e-commerce, retail, video gaming, softwares, virtual reality, ride-sharing, banking, financial services, fintech, consumer technology, computer technology, automobile, film production, movie ticketing, music production, space technology, natural resources, smartphones, big data, agriculture, medical services, cloud computing, social media, IT, advertising, streaming media, artificial intelligence, robotics, UAVs, food delivery, courier services, e-book, internet services, education and renewable energy. It is one of the most active investment corporations in the world, with recent focus on start-ups within Asia's burgeoning tech scene.
The company employs more than 7000 active Chinese Communist Party members, 60 percent of which in leading technical positions throughout the firm, accounting for roughly 23 percent of its total work force.
Video Tencent
History
1998-2010: Founding and growth
Tencent was founded by Ma Huateng, Zhang Zhidong, Xu Chenye, Chen Yidan and Zeng Liqing in November 1998 as Tencent Inc. Incorporated in the Cayman Islands, initial funding was provided to it by venture capitalists. In February 1999, Tencent's iconic messenger product OICQ released. Shortly after, Tencent had its name changed to QQ; this was said to be due to a lawsuit threat from ICQ and its owner AOL. The company remained unprofitable for the first three years. South African media company Naspers purchased a 46.5% share of Tencent in 2001. (As of 2014, it owns 34%.) Tencent Holding Ltd was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on 16 June 2004, and it was added as a Hang Seng Index Constituent Stock in 2008. The company originally derived income solely from advertising and premium users of QQ, who pay monthly fees to receive added extras. But by 2005, charging for use of QQ mobile, its cellular value-added service, and licensing its iconic penguin character, which could be found on snack food and clothing, had also become income generators. By 2008, Tencent was seeing profit growth from the sale of virtual goods. While Tencent's services have included online gaming since 2004, around 2007-2008 it rapidly increased its offerings by licensing games. While least two, CrossFire and Dungeon Fighter Online, were originally produced by South Korean game developers, Tencent now makes its own games.
2011-2014: Early investments
On February 18, 2011, Tencent acquired a majority equity interest (92.78%) in Riot Games, developer of League of Legends, for about USD 230 million. Tencent had already held 22.34% of the equity interest out of a previous investment in 2008. On the 16th December 2015, Riot Games sold its remaining equity to Tencent Holdings. Tencent acquired a minority stake in Epic Games, developer of franchises like Unreal, Gears of War and Infinity Blade, in June 2012. Tencent in 2013 increased its stake in Kingsoft Network Technology, a subsidiary of Kingsoft Corporation, to 18%. Tencent previously had a 15.68% stake in the company and raised the stake through a USD 46.98 million investment. Tencent took part in Activision Blizzard splitting from Vivendi as a passive investor in 2013 and now owns less than 4.9% of the shares as of 2017. On September 17, 2013, it was announced that Tencent had invested $448 million for a minority share in Chinese search engine Sogou.com, the subsidiary of Sohu, Inc.
On January 15, 2014, Tencent said it will invest HKD 1.5 billion (USD 193.45 million) in logistics and warehouse firm China South City Holdings Ltd to develop its e-commerce and logistics business. On February 27, 2014, Tencent purchased a 20-percent stake in restaurant ratings and group buying website Dianping for $400 million. On March 10, 2014, Tencent bought a 15 percent stake in Chinese e-commerce website JD.com Inc. by paying cash and handing over its e-commerce businesses Paipai, QQ Wanggou and a stake in Yixun to JD.com to build a stronger competitor to Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. On May 22, 2014, JD.com got listed on NASDAQ and Tencent expanded its stake in the company to 17.43% on a fully diluted basis by investing an additional USD 1,325 million. On March 27, 2014, it was announced that Tencent had agreed to pay about $500 million for a 28 percent stake in South Korea's CJ Games. On June 27, 2014, Tencent announced that it had agreed to buy a 19.9 percent stake in Chinese e-commerce website 58.com (WUBA) Inc. for $736 million. On April 17, 2015, Tencent announced it has bought an additional $400 million worth of shares, rising its stake in the company to about 25%. On October 16, 2014, via its wholly held subsidiary Hongze Lake Investment Ltd, Tencent announced that it had bought a 7% stake in lottery technology firm China LotSynergy Holdings Ltd for HKD 445.5 million (USD 57.4 million). On October 23, 2014, Tencent pitched in $145 million for a 10 percent stake in Koudai Gouwu, a Chinese mobile shopping portal. In November 2014, the company announced a deal with HBO which would give it exclusive rights for distribution in China. On December 9, 2014, Chinese taxi-hailing app Didi Dache announced that it had raised more than $700 million in a funding round led by Tencent and Singaporean state investment firm Temasek Holdings.
2015-2017: Recent investments
On January, 2015, Tencent launches WeBank (China), China's first online-only bank. On January 30, 2015, Tencent announced that it had signed a USD 700 million deal with the National Basketball Association to stream American basketball games in China. Later that year, Chinese automaker BYD became the chief corporate sponsor for Tencent's NBA broadcasts. On February 27, 2015, Tencent announced that it had acquired a minority stake in Robot Entertainment, the developer of the Orcs Must Die! series. On April 29, 2015, Tencent acquired a minority stake in Glu Mobile, paying USD 126 million for 14.6 percent of the company. On May 13, 2015, Tencent acquired a minority stake in mobile developer Pocket Gems, acquiring 20 percent of the company for the price of USD 60 million. On June 21, 2016 Tencent announced a deal to acquire 84.3% of Supercell with USD 8.6 billion. In July 2016, Tencent acquired a majority stake in China Music Corporation. In 2016, Tencent, together with Foxconn and luxury-car dealer Harmony New Energy Auto founded Future Mobility, a car startup that aims to sell all-electric fully autonomous premium cars in 2020. On March 28, 2017, Tesla, Inc. announced Tencent had purchased a 5% stake in Tesla for USD 1.78 billion. The Wall Street Journal at the time called Tencent China's "most valuable company." In a "direct challenge to Chinese search engine Baidu," in May 2017 Tencent entered news feed and search functions for its WeChat app, which the Financial Times reported was used by 770 million people at the time.
In April 2017, Tencent unveiled its very own flagship gaming platform, WeGame which will host games, content, and services from all over the world and will provide gaming info, purchases, downloads, live streaming and community services, creating an open ecosystem for gaming. WeGame is an upgraded version of TGP (Tencent Games Platform) that already has more than 200 million active users (compared to Steam's 125 million) and over 4.5 billion downloads, and is widely considered as a direct competitor to Steam. It will be dedicated to both global developers and players, and will assist developers who require help with translation. The gaming platform will support both Chinese and global users through a single storefront and is due to go online on 1 September 2017, Tencent has stated that the platform will focus on PC and standalone games and will no longer host web or mobile games, and will provide support to small and indie companies. Aside from mainstream games, the company has promised to also launch titles which includes Stardew Valley, Rocket League, Portal Knights, Minecraft, Cities: Skylines, with 170 games promised by the end of 2017. There are expectations that WeGame will grow huge and successful globally with its new focus on Western users, combined with the massive buying power of today's Asian consumers.
In May 2017, Tencent surpassed Wells Fargo to enter the world's top 10 most valuable companies. Tencent has also entered an agreement with Wuhu City Council to build the world's first eSports town in the Chinese city of Wuhu, which comprises an eSports theme park, eSports university, cultural and creative park, animation industrial park, creative block, tech entrepreneurial community and Tencent Cloud's data center. The site will be used for the education and accommodation of future eSports players, as well as hosting national eSports events and serving as a hub for Tencent's game development. Aside from Wuhu, another eSports theme park has been planned in Chengdu.
In June 2017, Tencent became the 8th most valuable company in BrandZ's Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands, signalling its growing influence globally as well as the rise of Chinese brands. Alibaba overtook Tencent as Asia's most valuable company as its stocks surged after the company hosted its 2017 Investor's day. The company has also developed its own voice assistant Xiaowei, and is in the midst of discussion to acquire Rovio Entertainment, the developer of Angry Birds. At the same period, Tencent introduced its mini-programs feature that allows smartphone users to access mobile apps across the globe on WeChat without downloading them.
In July 2017, Tencent bought a 9% share in Frontier Developments, the creator of the Elite: Dangerous and Planet Coaster franchises; as well as developer for Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 & 3. In September 2017, Tencent invested US$90 million in German aviation start-up Lilium Aviation, which specializes in developing and building high speed flying vehicles and electric jets.
In August 2017, Tencent became the second Asian company after Alibaba Group to surpass US$400 billion market cap. Tencent has also created an alliance to its own AI self-driving program, similar to Baidu's Apollo Project, recruiting numerous industry players in the automotive industry.
In September 2017, Tencent has announced plans to introduce Chinese online comics to every market around the world, with the first being North America. It will be working with San Francisco-based digital publisher Tapas Media, a partnership that will see English-language releases of a number of popular online Chinese titles. It also enters a partnership with Alibaba Group on music-streaming rights sharing, the deal aims to protect licensed streaming services offering copyrighted content of the music industry, encouraging more high-quality and original music, as well as developing China's fast-growing streaming market. Alibaba will gain the rights to stream music from international labels, which already have exclusive deals with Tencent, in return for offering reciprocal rights to its catalogue of Chinese and Japanese music. Tencent plans to increase its advertising revenues through artificial intelligence and branded virtual costumes in video games. It is also collaborating with L'Oréal, the world's largest cosmetics company, to explore digital marketing under the Joint Business Partnership (JBP) agreement and unleash new marketing innovations.
Tencent has announced a partnership with Nintendo to publish its widely popular game Honor of Kings (King of Glory) into Nintendo Switch, causing Nintendo's stock to hit a 9-year-high, as well as JD.com to create and sell a line of merchandise (from clothing to accessories to other products), based on Tencent's games and intellectual properties. It will also be working with China International Capital Corporation (CICC) in financial services, capitalizing on each other's strength, while acquiring a 5% equity stake in the investment banking firm. The announcement of the deal propelled CICC's shares by as much as 16 percent. Tencent Pictures unveiled that it intends to expand cooperation with overseas film and TV companies on new productions, as well as making more long-term investment in the movie and TV industry. Tencent has also signed an agreement with Helsinki and World Tourism Cities Federation to provide intelligent tourism services to Chinese tourists, with Helsinki serving as an intelligent tourism model for China's outbound tourism.
In November 2017, Tencent revealed that it had purchased a 12% stake in Snap Inc in the open market, with plans to help establish Snapchat as a gaming platform. The company also owns 44% stake in Sogou, a search engine company which started trading in New York on November 9, 2017. Tencent remained the largest video game publisher in the world by revenue, and had a market capitalization of around $475 billion. In the same month, Tencent announced the company's Q3 results that exceeded optimistic expectations with skyrocketing sales, net income and gaming revenue, while Wechat reached 980 million monthly active users. It will be earmarking billions of dollars to amass a catalogue of user-generated content, in competition with Youtube. The company also broke records by becoming the first Asian company to cross US$500 billion valuation, and surpassing Facebook to enter the top 5 list of the world's biggest firms.
In December 2017, Tencent's music arm, Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) and Spotify agreed to swap 10% stake and invested in each other's music businesses, forming an alliance in the music industry in which Martin Lau (president of Tencent) described it as a "strategic collaboration".
Maps Tencent
Game development
For the occasion of the 19th National Party Congress, Tencent released a mobile game titled "Clap for Xi Jinping: An Awesome Speech", in which players have 19 seconds to generate as many claps as possible for Xi.
Starting in 2016, Tencent developed a video gaming console dubbed TGP (Tencent Gaming Platform) Box. The TGP BOX is called the Blade. It is an Intel- powered console running Windows 10 and a TGP Box mode. So far, the TGP console has imported many Tencent games, such as League of Legends, FIFA Online 3, NBA 2K, Monster Hunter, Need for Speed, etc. Tencent hopes to bring third-party developed games.
Branching out from messaging products, Tencent's first game was QQ Tang (QQ?) in 2004. This was soon followed QQ YinSu (QQ??) in 2006 and QQ SanGuo(QQ??) in 2007. In 2011, Tencent started hosting the game League of Legends. Tencent's mobile game Honor of Kings was the most downloaded app in the world on the IOS App Store in the first quarter of 2017.
Virtual goods
Tencent sells virtual goods for use in their MMOs, its IM client, social networking sites, and for mobile phones. Income from the sale of virtual goods was a large proportion of Tencent's revenue in 2009.
Tencent's online currency, QQ Coins, can be used to purchase virtual goods. These range from the offbeat, such as virtual pets and the virtual clothing, jewelry, and cosmetics needed to customize online-game avatars, to the more mundane, such as more storage space, wallpapers, bigger photo albums, and ring tones.
Business locations
Tencent's headquarters are located in the Southern Hi-Tech Park District (Chinese: ???? x?nk?jìyuán) in Nanshan District, Shenzhen. Among other notable sites are a 48,000 square meter compound that houses an R&D center in the Chengdu Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone, a data and R&D center in Tianjin's Binhai Service Outsourcing Industry Park that is expected to be finished by June 2013, and also some 17,646 square meters of Shanghai office space purchased through a subsidiary, Tencent Cyber (Tianjin), and located in the Shanghai Modern Technology Services Community Zone.
Apple and Spotify are facing threat from Tencent, especially in South-East Asia. Also, Tencent is expanding aggressively in India.
Products and services
Tencent offers a diverse mix of services and counts both consumers and businesses as customers.
Virtual reality headsets
In late April 2017, Tencent announced it was preparing to launch its virtual reality headset that year.
iTQQ
China's first "smart interactive television service" and a joint effort with TCL.
Multiplayer online games
Tencent used to offer a number of online, multiplayer games through its game portal QQ Games.
These massively multiplayer online games include Call of Duty Online, a Massively multiplayer online game that consists of previous Call of Duty titles with added content; Dungeon Fighter Online, a side-scrolling online fighting game; QQ Fantasy, a 2D online game that incorporates elements from Chinese mythology; Xunxian, a 3D, online RPG; QQ Three Kingdoms, an online casual role playing game set during the historical three kingdoms period; QQ Huaxia, an online RPG; QQ Dancer, an online musical dancing game that offers QQ IM interactivity; QQ Nanaimo, an online game set on a desert island where players maintain houses and pets; QQ Speed, a casual online racing game; QQ R2Beat, an online in-line skating game; QQ Tang, an "advanced casual game" with gameplay derived from Chinese literature; QQ PET, a QQ IM-based desktop virtual pet game and three online first-person shooters; War of Zombie, CrossFire and AVA.
In 2017, April 21, Tencent announced the rebranding of its Chinese 'Tencent game platform' as WeGame, which will be going global in July 2017
Music distribution
In 2014, Tencent established exclusive in-China distribution agreements with several large music producers, including Sony, Warner Music Group and YG Entertainment and in 2017 it signed a deal with Universal Music Group to stream its music in China.
PaiPai.com
Launched on March 13, 2006, PaiPai.com (Chinese: ????; pinyin: p?i p?i èr sh?u) was a C2C auction site. It was shut down on April 1, 2016 and the site redirects to JD.com.
QQ Haiwai
haiwai.house.qq.com is Tencent's first venture into international real estate listings and information and is the result of a partnership with Chinese international real estate website Juwai.com. Haiwai was announced at Tencent's annual regional summit in Beijing on 21 December 2016.
QQ instant messenger
Launched in February 1999, and Tencent's most notable product, QQ is one of the most popular instant messaging platforms in its home market. As of December 31, 2010, there were 647.6 million active Tencent QQ IM user accounts, making Tencent QQ the world's largest online community at the time. The number of QQ accounts connected simultaneously has, at times, exceeded 100 million.
While the IM service is free, as of 2006 a fee was being charged for mobile messaging.
QQ International
An English version of QQ that allows communication with mainland accounts, QQi is available for Windows and Mac OSX.
QQLive
A peer-to-peer distribution platform for streaming media.
QQ Show
An avatar-based social platform like Cyworld, QQ Show facilitates purchasing virtual goods to outfit avatars, which can also be used with QQ IM.
QQ Player
In 2008, Tencent released a media player, available for free download, under the name QQ Player.
Qzone
A social networking service, which as of 2008 became one of the largest company in China.
SOSO
Launched in March 2006, this search engine's name sounds like "Chinese: ??", or "search search" in Chinese. It was a Chinese partner of Google, using AdWords.
Tencent Pictures
Tencent Pictures (Chinese: ????) is a Chinese film production company owned by Tencent. It has created film based on books, comic books, animated series and video games.
Tencent Traveler
Abbreviated "TT" (TencentTraveler), this web browser developed by Tencent is based on Trident and was the third most-used browser in China c. 2008.
Tencent Weibo
A Chinese microblogging service, Tencent Weibo competes with Sina Weibo.
Tencent Weiyun
A cloud storage service that offers 10 GB of free storage (1 TB until Jan 16, 2017). It is available in Chinese for free, and English with a payment. Requires an SMS phone number for verification of account registration.
TenPay
An online payment system similar to PayPal, it supports B2B, B2C, and C2C payments. In some Chinese cities individuals can use TenPay for utility payments and to refill their public transport cards. Co-branded credit cards are available, and credit card bills can also be paid using the service. Offline recharging of your TenPay account is possible, as the company sends employees to collect customer money in person.
Tencent was reported in 2017 to be working with China's Central Bank to develop a central payments clearing platform for online payments. If successful, this move would incur greater regulatory oversight.
WeChat is a social mobile application with voice and text messaging, timeline, and several social features like drift a bottle. It is the most popular social mobile application in China and some overseas Chinese communities, for instance, Malaysia. WeChat would like to have expanded more abroad but, as of 2017, WeChat was unsuccessful in penetrating major international markets outside of China.
Subsidiaries
Tencent has at least four wholly foreign owned enterprises and nearly twenty subsidiaries.
Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Co Ltd
A software development unit that has created, among others, Tencent Traveler and later versions of QQ IM, as well as some mobile software. This subsidiary is located on the Southern District of Hi-Tech Park, Shenzhen. It also holds a number of patents related to instant messaging and massively multiplayer online game gaming.
Controversy
Copying claims
Many of Tencent's software and services are remarkably similar to those of competitors. The founder and chairman, Huateng "Pony Ma" Ma, famously said, "[To] copy is not evil." A former CEO and President of SINA.com, Wang Zhidong, said, "Pony Ma is a notorious king of copying." Jack Ma of Alibaba Group stated, "The problem with Tencent is the lack of innovation; all of their products are copies."
As of 2009, the company held 400 patents.
Anti-malware software cheating allegations
In 2015, security testing firms AV-Comparatives, AV-TEST and Virus Bulletin jointly decided to remove Tencent from their software whitelists. The Tencent products supplied for testing were found to contain optimizations that made the software appear less exploitable when benchmarked but actually provided greater scope for delivering exploits. Additionally, software settings were detrimental to end-users protection if used. Qihoo was later also accused of cheating, while Tencent was accused of actively gaming the anti-malware tests.
Criticism on King of Glory
The People's Daily published two articles criticizing the Tencent owned game King of Glory, due to its purportedly addictive nature among Chinese youth. Share prices for Tencent drop dramatically by 5% on the days the articles were published.
See also
- Tencent Video
- Tencent QQ
- Tencent Weibo
- Foxmail
- Pengyou
- Qzone
- List of virtual communities with more than 100 million users
References
External links
- Official website
- Tencent Holdings Limited
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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