Le Blog

Tencent just released it’s Q4 2018 financial report and 2018 annual report. The report provides insights about the overall strategy of Tencent, and the future of WeChat and QQ. Financial growth Tencent continued on a steady growth of revenue: revenues reached nearly 85 billion RMB, a healthy 28% YOY increase. The company however delivered disappointing profits of 14 billion RMB …

The short video craze is reaching new heights in mainland China. But what’s happening outside? As you may know, Tik Tok is the king of short video Apps oversea. What is Tik Tok? If you live outside China, you can hardly have avoided seeing advertising for Tik Tok, the latest short video App to boom in the Western markets. If …

The social commerce space never lacks innovation. A new type of location-based social model called Community Group Buy is changing how people engage in grocery shopping. Here is the monthly Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) of top community group buy platforms according to eburn.com: Xingshen Youxuan 兴盛优选 – 370 million RMB Shixianghui 食享会 – 210 million RMB Niwonin 你我您 – 200 …

During 4 years helping brands sell to Mainland China via WeChat, we collaborated with many cross-border payment gateways. These gateways are authorized by Alibaba, Tencent, and Union Pay to provides a cross-border payment solution for foreign businesses. Most of these payment gateways cover specific countries or regions, and some provide a one-stop-shop to leverage WeChat Payment, Alipay, Union Pay and …

If you search for “Starbucks” (“星巴克”) on Taobao you might be in for a surprise. Instead of simply seeing a link to Starbucks’ Tmall store, you will see a menu linking you to a “Starbucks Mini-program” experience within Taobao. The search also shows 4 tabs leading to different sections of the “Mini-program”. When opening the mini-App, the interface looks like… …

The 5-hour long Spring Festival Gala (AKA Chunwan) is the most-watched Chinese TV program, with over 1.17 billion viewers and 30.07% viewership rate in 2019 according to CCTV. In comparison, the Super Bowl’s record-high viewership was only 114 million (in 2015). Just like the Super Bowl, the Spring Festival Gala has become a competition for advertising sponsorship. The cost of …

It is a well-known fact that every other teenager in China wants to become an “influencer”, “KOL” or “WangHong” (网红): a social media personality with a large following and glamorous lifestyle. But how much do influencers make in China? And how does that compare to the revenues of Western influencers? Revenues of influencers outside China Instagram influencers The average rate …

Baidu saw a fast and steady decline of its stock price over the course of 2018, from 254.14 USD on the 25th of January 2018 to 162.7 USD on the 24th of January 2019. How to explain this 36% decline in stock price? What is causing the fall? What is causing this drop in share price? Baidu has been subject …

On Tuesday 15th of January, WeChat blocked 3 competing Apps on their launch day: Liantianbao (聊天宝) – formerly called Bullet Messenger, Duoshan (多闪) – launched by Tencent’s archenemy ByteDance, and Matong MT (马桶MT) – launched by Ringo.AI. Is this approach to competition specific to WeChat? To the Chinese market? And how do Chinese and Western companies differ in their growth strategies? …

We received many questions from clients and readers asking about the effects of the new e-commerce regulation in China that became effective from January 1st, 2019. Many worry that individuals will no longer be able to run WeChat stores anymore and that daigous will no longer operate their Taobao stores. We look into the regulation and here is the summary: …