Businesses have used Tencent’s (HKG: 0700) enterprise communication platform WeChat Work to provide enterprise services for 250 million, or one-fifth, of WeChat’s total users, according to a post from the platform’s social media account. At the same time, 220 million people held online conferences on WeChat Work, said its parent company Tencent.
WeChat Work didn’t say how many users it has in the social media post.
Functioning as an office collaboration tool, WeChat Work is built on the backbone of WeChat. The two separate apps are integrated in a way their users are allowed to send messages to each other, making it easier for WeChat Work to tap into WeChat’s humungous user base, which now stands at 1.2 billion. Businesses and salespeople on WeChat Work can access and manage their customers who already use WeChat. WeChat Work also provides a streamlined portal to manage administrative and human resource tasks.
Thanks to the deep integration with WeChat, Work’s daily active users “has grown significantly,” in Q1 2020, said James Mitchell, Tencent’s chief strategy officer, on the company’s quarterly earnings call last week.
Yesterday, China’s largest office collaboration tool by total users, DingTalk, announced through a press release that the app reached a total of 300 million users as of March 31. In comparison, the latest user accounts Tencent announced for WeChat Work, stood at last year-end’s 60 million.
In the first half of 2020, enterprise software solutions including digitized office workflow and video conferences boomed as COVID-19 outbreak shifted people to remote work. Expected to hit a market size of USD 6.4 billion in 2020, digital enterprise solutions are luring many other internet giants in China to join the competition.
In early March, e-commerce and logistics operator JD.com unveiled a video conferencing app, JoyMeeting, for iOS, while search engine Baidu also opened its internal collaboration platform to the public in the wake of the nationwide remote work transition in February.
In mid-March, The United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization included DingTalk, WeChat Work , and ByteDance’ Lark in an international list of online education product suggestions for children affected during the COVID-19 outbreak.