This is part 10
in this series. One can find the previous part in this series here:
This is going to be a quick update on the status of three
new players in China's Mobile Internet Messaging war.
Netease and China Telecom's love child, YiChat had been
out for about 6 to 7 weeks now.
NTES and CHA had spent a lot of money on marketing the
first day of the launch. But interestingly, I don't see any more marketing on
any of the popular web sites after the first day. But YiChat had been in the
news non-stop because it is a product of a monopolistic like state own company
and a highly competitive private company. Thus, YiChat had been getting free
marketing after the first day of launch.
At about the same time, Sina come out with their new
product, WeMeet. Except for the first week, I don't see any more marketing.
There is also not that many news articles about WeMeet.
Not to be out done, China's internet and E-commerce giant,
Alibaba, also comes out with its own mobile internet messaging product, called
LaiWang. Alibaba had done very aggressive marketing on all of China popular web
sites for LaiWang.
I want to know how are these three products doing. In
part 8 of this series of articles, I had used Baidu searches to get a measure
of how popular these services are.
But I don't think Baidu search directly translates to the
popularity of these products (there is an indirect relationship, but I want a
more direct and more correct measurement).
I believe the total numbers of downloads shall be a more
correct measurement. To do that, I used some of the most popular download
sites. Unfortunately, some of the most popular download site don't provide
download statistics.
I used 4 of the most popular download sites that do
provide download statistics. Taken all together, they represents about 1/4 to
1/5 of total downloads. These four sites are:
91 Android
360 ZhuShou
AppChina
WanDouJia
Adding the total download per week, I got the total
number of weekly downloads from the four sites. The respective numbers for
Netease's YiChat, Sina's WeMeet, and Alibaba's LaiWang is as follows:
|
Weekly Download Total
|
YiChat
|
WeMeet
|
LaiWang
|
|
8/30/2013
|
1660572
|
27888
|
|
|
9/6/2013
|
572497
|
2668
|
|
|
9/13/2013
|
653619
|
1823
|
|
|
9/20/2013
|
465007
|
1154
|
|
|
9/27/2013
|
613850
|
727
|
146928
|
|
10/4/2013
|
965452
|
505
|
71941
|
Again, the
number here is not the absolute total number of downloads. It probably
represents about 1/4 or 1/5 of total downloads. But the error will be the same for all products I tracked. Thus, it might
not be great in predicting absolute number, but it shall be very good in
comparison of different products as well as tracking the growth of a single
product at different time.
From the above
table, YiChat had a great beginning. It begins tapers about one month after the
official launch. But after that, it had caught a second wind and is starting to
grow again.
Sina's WeMeet
had a horrible start. It is dying even faster. It is suffering a horrendous
death.
Alibaba's
LaiWang starts strong. Please don't compare to the start of Netease's YiChat. I
had never seen a product starts so strong as I saw YiChat. It will be
absolutely unfair for any product to compare to the original start of YiChat.
None of the three major social networking products (Sina's Weibo, Tencent's QQ,
and Tencent's WeChat) had a start anywhere close to the start of YiChat.
If we don't
compare to YiChat, Alibaba's LaiWang actually had a very strong start. At this
point, it is still way too early to say how good LaiWang will do. But I do know
that Alibaba is sparing no expanse in promoting this product.
At this point,
it appears that YiChat will be, at a minimal, at second place to Tencent's
WeChat in China mobile internet messaging application. Again, as I mentioned
multiple times previously, the best thing for YiChat is not to be second place
in mobile IM application. It is different enough that it could create a brand
new product that combine internet, mobile, off-line home phone, SMS (Short
Messaging Service), and VOIP (Voice Over IP) into one giant social network.
For Sina's
WeMeet and Alibaba's LaiWang, they have to compete in the mobile IM. They don't
have off-line telephone, SMS, and VOIP
capability, nor will they ever have (unless one of China's 3 telecom becomes
their sugar daddy). They have to compete with WeChat head-on. Of the two,
WeMeet is dying in front of our eyes. But LaiWang has a very promising start.
I will provide
another update on this in another couple of months.
