WeChat hits 500m users as Tencent misses analysts’ forecasts

WeChat, the Chinese social media smartphone app, saw an increase in user numbers of 41 per cent year on year to 500m at the end of 2014, in a sign that parent company Tencent is extending its reach for the mobile internet.

2014年底，微信用户数量同比增长41%，至5亿人，突显推出这款中国社交媒体智能手机应用的腾讯在移动互联网领域扩大地盘。

Tencent made the announcement on Wednesday, as it reported results that missed analysts’ forecasts. Fourth-quarter net profits were up 51 per cent year on year and net income for the quarter ending December increased to Rmb5.95bn.

腾讯是在周三发布财报时宣布上述消息的，财报中的业绩低于分析师此前的预期。2014年第四季度净利润同比增长51%，至59.5亿元人民币。

Revenue grew 24 per cent to Rmb20.98bn, slightly higher than forecasts, driven mainly by online gaming revenues.

2014年末季营收同比增长24%，至209.8亿元人民币，略高于预期，主要推动因素是在线游戏收入。

It is unclear how much WeChat contributed to Tencent’s revenues but the app’s growth is a strong indicator of the company’s long-term health as it tries to adjust its business to be more suitable for mobile devices.

尚不清楚微信对腾讯的营收做出了多少贡献，但这款应用的增长是该公司长期前景良好的强有力指标。腾讯正努力使其业务更适合移动设备。

“We extended our leadership in games and online media, and made breakthroughs in emerging platforms such as online security…and mobile payments,” Ma Huateng, Tencent chairman, said in a statement.

腾讯董事长马化腾在一份声明中表示：“我们在游戏和在线媒体领域扩大了领先优势，在网络安全……和移动支付等新兴平台上取得了突破。”

WeChat is the second highest ranked app in China, behind QQ, Tencent’s other chatting app, which claimed to have 815m registered monthly users at the end of 2014. However, that figure is more than the total number of internet users in China, which the government puts at 649m.

微信是中国排名第二的应用，仅次于腾讯的另一款聊天软件QQ，后者据称在2014年底有8.15亿月活跃账户。然而，这个数字比中国网民总数还要多，后者的官方数据是6.49亿人。

Tencent has been reluctant to monetise WeChat by flooding it with advertising, which could impair efforts to increase the user base. But this is expected to change.

腾讯迄今不愿在微信上大量投放广告赚钱，以免损害其扩大用户数量的努力。但这一点预计将会改变。

Ricky Lai, at Guotai Junan International, a Hong Kong brokerage, said analysts anticipated that advertising would be introduced on a large scale later this year.

香港券商国泰君安国际的分析师赖健邦表示，分析师们预计微信将于今年晚些时候大量推出广告。

Early attempts to test ads on the service have not always gone smoothly. After a BMW ad was introduced on some users’ feeds in January, many users who were not targeted by the luxury brand’s marketing complained of “discrimination” by Tencent’s data mining algorithm. They claimed it unfairly profiled them as not wealthy or successful enough to view the sought-after BMW ad.

微信此前投放广告的尝试并不总是顺利。今年1月微信对一些用户试投放一支宝马广告之后，许多没有看到这个奢侈品牌广告的用户不满地表示，自己受到了腾讯数据挖掘算法的“歧视”。他们声称，这个算法不公平地认定他们为不够有钱或不够成功，不配看到这支热门的宝马广告。