WeChat seeks smart-phone download lead

“We aim to have half of all smart phones download and use WeChat actively,” Krittee Manoleehagul, managing director for content and services at Sanook Online, said yesterday.
Since its local soft launch two months ago, users have reached about a million.
Sanook Online, as a local marketing partner, plans to spend Bt15 million for the introductory campaign. A television commercial started airing last weekend.
Smart-phone users in Thailand now number about 15 million and are increasing very fast.
The partnership with Exact is expected to raise the number of WeChat users.
Thailand is the first country in Southeast Asia to have official accounts.
Surapol Perapongpipath, marketing and sales director of Exact, said tha joining with WeChat let the company learn the actual direction of social media marketing.
“We see a lot of features of WeChat that can help Exact to engage our audiences and stakeholders,” Krittee said.
Users can use probably two or three chat apps at the same time. The market is still opening up as long as the smart-phone market is expanding, said Poshu Yeung, vice president of Tencent’s international business group.
“Mobile Internet is our direction. We are looking for new opportunities from mobile Internet,” he said.
The other chat app service providers monetise the app by selling emotion icons and games, but it is not now the time to monetise WeChat.
“It is never good enough in mobile products, so we need to keep our products improving,” Krittee said.
WeChat is a social network that can be applied as the communication platform, particularly since it is free. And the company does not plan to monetise it in the near future.
“We will not monetise WeChat in 2013 for sure. Users will tell us what we should do and what are the services they will pay for. In the old days, they were games, emoticons and advertising. We are not rushing to go to that way. We now want to strengthen our product to be a good quality product first.
“We want to define and to redefine the way people communicate. It will be about mobile,” he said.
There are 200 million WeChat users, mainly in China. WeChat’s users are found around the world, including in such Asian places as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand.
“We love Thailand a lot. Thais are pioneers to try a lot of things, a lot of different apps and products. They are hungry for Internet content,” he said.
Mobile adverts are very cheap. It is not the time now to think about making money from WeChat. Content is needed to engage WeChat users. Exact is a suitable partner to offer content, Krittee said.
WeChat is one of the important services of Tencent in both China and Thailand.
It is in the early stage of business, so WeChat needs to keep tabs on the growth of smart phones. In Thailand, the growth of smart phones is 100 per cent, while it is 20-30 per cent globally on average.
“We are committed to doing business and providing services in Thailand,” Yeung said.
Just local marketing campaigns have been launched in Taiwan and now in Thailand.
Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia are the priority markets where local operations are set up, he said.|