Tencent’s long-awaited Android ROM enters beta

“From now, change together”

Tencent, the maker of China’s favorite messaging app WeChat, has started closed beta testing for its upcoming Android ROM.

Details are sparse right now. Getting into the beta requires filling out a survey and waiting for Tencent to accept or deny the application.

We’ve been expecting a Tencent ROM for some time now. Fellow web giants Alibaba and Baidu both released their respective spins on the Android OS years ago, so it was only a matter of time before Tencent followed suit. In December 2013, Tencent also contributed to a US$23 million series B investment into CyanogenMod, one of the more popular Android ROMs that comes pre-installed on some phones made by Oppo, Micromax, and Oneplus.

In March 2013, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) warned against the country’s dependence on Android and encouraged tech companies to develop their own alternatives. Today, all phones from Chinese brands sold domestically come with some sort of Android ROM. China now has 386 million daily active Android users, according to Baidu.

Tencent hasn’t said whether or not it has struck any deals with local phone makers to get its ROM pre-installed. Alibaba’s mobile OS now comes packed with a handful of relatively unknown smartphone models, but hasn’t really caught on anywhere else. Most Chinese phone makers simply opt to make their own ROMs rather than license one from a web giant like Alibaba and Baidu. The most successful by far and away is MIUI, the Android ROM made by Xiaomi.

This isn’t Tencent’s first attempt at making an Android ROM. In 2012, Tita launched with about as much fanfare as a damp firecracker. It seems development was halted sometime after Android 4.0 was released.

Tencent has also dabbled in a few launcher apps that were eventually all merged into Qube. One tier below a full-fledged OS, Qube offers a handful of themes, voice commands, application sorting, and a few other quirks. Tencent also makes a browser, an app store, a music app, a video portal, and, of course, WeChat. That’s nearly all the ingredients for a ready-to-ship ROM.

But even with WeChat and QQ’s massive userbases, it’s unlikely that a ROM from Tencent could catch on without being pre-installed on handsets. Changing ROMs is a major commitment that requires a certain degree of Android competency, and payoff for switching to a different version of what is essentially the same OS is usually minimal.

If Tencent OS does manage to gain some traction, it opens up a ton of real-estate in which Tencent can push its apps and services to users. Pre-installed apps will all be made by Tencent, growing the company’s userbase beyond WeChat and QQ. Search queries will likely default to Sogou, a search engine owned by Tencent. Purchases and commissions will generate revenue from Tencent’s app store. Xiaomi uses a similar strategy with MIUI, but it’s hardly a proven business model.

We’ve reached out to Tencent for more information on Tencent OS and will update this article if we learn more.

See: Tencent ready to launch China’s 1st private internet bank, WeBank