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Internet giants face off for users market share
阿里巴巴腾讯竞争升温
The battle for online supremacy between Alibaba, China's largest e-commerce provider, and its main rival, Tencent Holdings, is heating up, and is now crossing into more and more platforms.
Alibaba’s flagship online payment app, Alipay, has nearly 50 percent of the massive Chinese market, as of the third quarter of 2013. But Tencent’s competing app, Tenpay, is gaining ground, with just over 20 percent of the market.
One area where Tencent does have the upper hand, though, is in smartphone messaging. Its app, WeChat, has gained upwards of 300 million active users since it was launched 3 years ago. By contrast, Alibaba’s chat service, Laiwang, has only racked up 10 million users since it going online in September last year.
All this has added to the anticipation for Alibaba’s initial public offering, expected to take place later this year, which could raise up to 140 billion US dollars, according to Reuters. Meanwhile, Tencent’s market cap surpassed 100 billion dollars in 2013.
