Messaging app WeChat now has 500 million monthly active users (MAUs), parent company Tencent revealed today. The new figure for Q4 2014 is up from 468 million in Q3 last year, and up from 355 million at the end of 2013.
WeChat’s growth in active user numbers slowed down dramatically in the first three quarters of 2014, but it stabilized at 6.8 percent growth from Q3 to Q4 – the same rate as from Q2 to Q3.
Tencent did not provide any data on where WeChat’s users are located, but most of them appear to be in the massive mainland China market, and WeChat’s much-vaunted global expansion is not very evident in the stagnating MAU figures.
WeChat and Tencent’s older chat app QQ brought in a combined RMB 11.96 billion (US$1.92 billion) in revenue from social games in Q4, which was up 41 percent from the same period a year ago.
Elsewhere in the world, rival chat apps like WhatsApp, Viber, and Line seem to be faring better around the globe. Facebook-owned WhatsApp hit 700 million MAUs at the start of the year.
See: The latest numbers on web, mobile, and social media in China in early 2015 – INFOGRAPHIC
Editing by Paul Bischoff
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