Tencent’s popular instant messaging app, WeChat has grown huge to entertain as many as 438 million monthly active users, up 10.6 percent from previous quarter’s 396 million active user mark.
It’s interesting to note that within just three years of its launch the instant messaging app, also known as “weixin” in China, has come much closer to its rival Whatsapp, which claimed to have hit 500 million active user mark back in April.
The figures, revealed in the second quarter earnings report, showed that WeChat’s quarter-on-quarter growth rate is notably flattening as compared to last year. The chat app’s active userbase grew between 15 percent and 30 percent in 2013, while the same grew 11.6 percent and 10.6 percent in 2014’s first two quarter.
The slowdown has been attributed to the saturation of its largest user base Mainland China. The flattening growth indicates WeChat will have to face a tough time catching up with its Facebook-owned competitor.
Tencent reported that it earned 5.8 billion yuan ($949 million) in the quarter ending June 30, up from 3.68 billion yuan from the same period a year ago, beating analyst estimate of 5.73 billion yuan.
Revenue rose 37 percent to 19.7 billion yuan ($3.2 billion). Revenue from online games made up for 11.08 billion yuan or 56 percent of total revenue in the second quarter with contribution of about 3 billion yuan from Mobile QQ and Weixin.
