Best known for its messenger WeChat, Tencent the social media and gaming giant became more valuable than Facebook after the closing of markets in HongKong on Tuesday. The company is now estimated to have the value of $522 billion and with this Tencent also became the first Asian company to enter the club of companies worth more than $500 billion. Facebook is currently valued $519 billion.
Tencent’s share rates have doubled in the last 1 year but despite this jump, it is still way behind the world’s most valuable company, Apple, which is currently valued at $873 billion. Senior vice president Seng Yee Lau said “Tencent has made a “breakthrough” in gaining an e-payment license in Malaysia for local transactions and plans a launch early next year.”
“Tencent is an enterprise that focuses on innovation,” said Huang Hao, an associate researcher at the National Academy of the Economic strategy of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. “Its product ideas are not simple emulations of those of foreign businesses.”
Tencent has a big advantage over companies like Twitter and Facebook that they are blocked in China, cutting off a market of up to 1.3 billion people. The Wepay service, along with Alibaba, has helped China jump from a cash-based society to one at the global forefront of mobile payments.
The media sectors have also seen big changes in how Chinese people consume and pay due to these companies and it is expected that such companies will earn big in coming years.
