WeChat blasts past 700 million monthly active users, tops China’s most popular apps

Well, we knew it was coming, but according to a new report from Chinese data tracker Quest Mobile, it’s now official: Tencent’s WeChat broke the 700 million monthly active user (MAU) barrier in March.

WeChat has been China’s social app of choice for years now, of course, but Quest Mobile’s report – which is based on data from both Android and iOS devices in March – shows just how far Tencent is ahead of the competition when it comes to user base.

As it turns out, the only other app with anywhere close to as many users as WeChat is QQ, Tencent’s other social messaging app. Alibaba’s mobile Taobao app ranks a distant third, still more than 250 million users down on WeChat. And Sina Weibo, once the darling of China’s social media scene, would need to add more than 300 million new active users before it could catch WeChat.

As the chart above demonstrates, though, Tencent’s social apps are growing at a slower pace than many others in the top ten, including – surprisingly – Weibo. Not that there’s any cause for Tencent to worry. With four apps in the top ten and record-breaking MAUs, Pony Ma’s tech giant is sitting pretty.

Digging a little deeper into Quest Mobile’s data reveals a few other apps that are pushing hard to crack into the top, though. AutoNavi Maps, Letv, Daily Headlines, and Didi Kuaidi all have year-on-year growth rates of over 100 percent.

With a relatively low monthly active user count of 58 million, Didi only barely makes China’s top 50, but it’s growing at a rate of 195.9 percent year-on-year. And there’s more good news for Didi: Uber, Didi’s biggest rival, didn’t make the top 50 list at all.