China’s Tencent Enters Mobile Market With 3G Smartphones

Chinese Internet giant Tencent has announced that it is cooperating with China Telecom and five mobile phone manufacturers in the launch of six smartphone products, which have the embedded QQ-service platforms.

These six smartphone products are made by five Chinese mobile phone makers, including Huawei, ZTE, Coolpad, K-Touch, and Hisense. Based on China Telecom’s CDMA 3G network, the smartphones preinstall Tencent’s QQ-service platform, which provides Tencent’s existing mobile phone plug-ins and new applications. The smartphones will also be marked with the logo of QQ, which is Tencent’s instant messaging service.

These six smartphones will reportedly be sold at the retail prices of around CNY1,000, targeting the student demographic.

At present, Tencent’s QQ instant messaging product has a total of 1.2 billion registered users and the number of active accounts has allegedly reached 484.9 million. Based on the large user group, Tencent’s own brand mobile phones will become a powerful competitor with both software system and mobile-terminal-based value-added services, covering instant messaging, entertainment, and information.