It's all about who's got numbers," ICT analyst Sibonginkosi Nyanga at fund manager Momentum SP Reid said. "You could argue that WeChat is pulling ahead in monetization efforts but WhatsApp guys can do anything using their numbers.
Ntshingila said WhatsApp is the No.1 messaging platform in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya. With Facebook's deep pockets, analysts believe WhatsApp can easily leverage its popularity on the continent as and when it turns on the monetization tap. "That's in a three-year time frame because right now the focus is on two big apps which are Facebook and Messenger." "At this point in time, we are not at the stage where we are looking at monetizing WhatsApp," Ntshingila told Reuters.
#Wechat vs whatsapp free#
The joint venture is facing an uphill battle in taking on WhatsApp, which offers free text, picture and video messages and whose adoption in big African markets such as South Africa was lightening-fast because texts over a phone network are still expensive.Ī 2015 study by World Wide Worx, a Johannesburg consultancy, showed WhatsApp had just over 10 million users in South Africa compared with just over 5 million for WeChat.īut WhatsApp, acquired by Facebook in 2014 for $19 billion and which has a long-standing promise to keep the platform ad-free, has no immediate plans to make money out of the service in Africa, Facebook Africa head Nunu Ntshingila said. Launched in Africa in 2013 by China's Internet giant Tencent and its 34 percent shareholder South African e-commerce and media group Naspers, WeChat Africa is a rare south-south corporate partnership to expand on the continent. "That's at the heart of the story for us because we knew that we were late to the market compared to other instant messaging apps and so we realized that focusing on chat services was not the most practical way to get to market," WeChat Africa head Brett Loubser told Reuters. WeChat's Go Dutch feature circumvents this frustration by doing all the math for you and allowing you to pay exactly what you owe, via the app, to any of your contacts using the WeChat Pay feature.But WeChat is betting an array of services that include money transfers, prepaid electricity and airtime purchases and its experience in selling products to lower income users in the villages of China will loosen the Silicon Valley grip.
It is, to put it bluntly, an exercise in frustration. How many time have you gone out for dinner with your friends only to become massively frustrated when you get a long complicated bill with multiples items, tax charges, service charges and the like, then dividing it up, making sure you have the right amount and denomination of money? Some titles, like Thunder Raid and Dragon Warrior are fully fleshed out 3D experiences that feels almost console-like in terms of technical quality. To top it off, WeChat's games are way more than simple 2D-pixel art style titles.
#Wechat vs whatsapp download#
WeChat users can visit the in-app app store to download games, launch games from within the app and then take advantage of WeChat's social features to add a more social dimension to the gaming experience. WeChat's parent company, Tencent, is the world's largest gaming company so it makes sense that WeChat is looking to leverage Tencent's expertise to bring gaming to the platform. One of WeChat's most popular features is its integrated gaming platform.
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