Tencent’s WebQQ
Marbridge Consulting recently reported that Taiwanese PC manufacturer ASUS has “signed a strategic agreement to embed Tencent’s QQ product line on its EeePad tablets” citing an industry source. The partners are said to be cooperating on research and development with a new tablet soon on the way.
Tencent has already developed “QQ for Pad” for Android tablets, as well as the browser-based application, WebQQ (pictured). But because QQ includes such a wide range of services and an application marketplace (much like Google does) some are speculating that Tencent might follow Google’s lead and make WebQQ into a full-on a cloud operating system.
I’ll refrain from guessing exactly what the result might be of this reported ASUS-Tencent cooperation, though a cloud-OS would be nice. But any operating system that can properly incorporate the many popular QQ services should certainly be happily welcomed by Chinese users, and would give ASUS a leg-up in the tablet wars in China.
QQ, which began as an ICQ-like instant messenger has expanded over the years to include other things like SNS, games, news, and microblogs. The active userbase as of September 2010 was a staggering 636.6 million.
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