China's Mobile Internet Messaging (IM) War, part 11: the battle is heating up

This is part 11 in this series. One can find the previous part (part 10) in this series here:

part 10 here

I am still keeping track of the weekly download statistics. The pattern I observed in part 10 is still valid. That is Netease/CHA (China Telecom)'s YiChat is still growing like crazy. Alibaba's LaiWang is a very strong grower. Sina's WeMeet is dying in front of our eyes.

In addition, there are two other new players that are getting into this space. One is from Shanda and another from a big retailer. But so far those two new players are not catching any traction at all.

Both Alibaba's LaiWang and Netease's YiChat had/will have major announcement. But first, some users statistics:

From the following article:

YiChat's super fast growth (in Chinese)

Netease's YiChat had already accumulated more than 30 million users. In addition, its user base are increased by 200k per day. Of all users accounts, 28% of them are daily Active account users. Thus, about 30*0.28 = 8.4 million users are using YiChat every day.

Considering YiChat starts operation on 8/19/2013, it is able to accomplish this feat in less than 2.5 months. I had never heard of any social networking product that are able to grow this fast out of the starting gate, anywhere.

But Alibaba is going all out for its LaiWang product. From the following article:

Alibaba is going all in (in Chinese)

Alibaba is offering all LaiWang users of free mobile data traffic cost for users in 4 major provinces. This trial will last 2 months for now. Alibaba would also likely to expand this free service.

Not to be outdone, Netease had just announced that it will have a major announcement on 11/8/2013. From the following articles:

Netease's major announcement (in Chinese)

(in Chinese)

(in Chinese)

The detail is still a little unclear. But it looks like CHA/Netease will expand the free data service offer for its YiChat users not just to all CHA users, but all users in China. It will also covers users from China Unicom (CHU) and China Mobile (CHL) users.

Of course, the cost of these free service is so large that is so far beyond what Netease can afford. Most likely, Netease is just alone for a free ride. Either the cost will come from CHA (China Telecom) or China Unicom and China Mobile will become partners of YiChat. We will find out more details on 11/8/2013.

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China's Mobile Internet Messaging (IM) War, part 10: YiChat vs. LaiWang vs. WeMeet

This is part 10 in this series. One can find the previous part in this series here:

Part 9 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.

Baidu Search statistics

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.

end.