Steven Millward · · 2 min readWeChat reaches 800m active users, but it’s close to the bamboo ceiling
WeChat now has 806 million monthly active users (MAUs), up 34 percent on the same period last year, said parent company Tencent today in its earnings report for Q2.
This is the messaging app’s wild ride since it first started revealing MAUs at the start of 2013:
Edging closer
How high can WeChat go, exactly? The likely answer is not much further. With WeChat’s global expansion plans in tatters, the app is now eking out every last soul in the Chinese market.
Tencent’s old-skool social network QQ, which launched way back in 1999 as an evolution of ICQ (remember that old beast?), gives a good indicator of how much more juice WeChat has left. QQ now has 899 million MAUs, Tencent said today, as it inches up ever so slowly after pretty much hitting a plateau years ago.
If WeChat does indeed follow the same path, we can expect to see it crawl to 900 million MAUs and then run out of steam. WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, meanwhile, with their global audiences are just past the one-billion user milestone – and with plenty more room for growth.
Editing by Nadine Freischlad
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