

History īy 2010, Tencent had already attained a massive user base with their desktop messenger app QQ. Joe Biden officially dropped Trump's efforts to ban WeChat in the U.S. and Sweden "transactions" with WeChat through an executive order but was blocked by a preliminary injunction issued in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in September 2020. President Donald Trump and Prime Minister of Sweden Stefan Löfven sought to ban U.S. In response to a border dispute between India and China, WeChat was banned in India in June 2020 along with several other Chinese apps, including TikTok. Chinese-registered Weixin accounts censor politically sensitive topics. User activity on Weixin, the Chinese version of the app, is analyzed, tracked and shared with Chinese authorities upon request as part of the mass surveillance network in China.

Non-Chinese numbers are registered under WeChat, and WeChat users are subject to a different, less strict terms of service and stricter privacy policy, and their data is stored in the Netherlands for users in the European Union, and in Singapore for other users. WeChat provides text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, video conferencing, video games, mobile payment, sharing of photographs and videos and location sharing.Īccounts registered using Chinese phone numbers are managed under the Weixin brand, and their data is stored in mainland China and subject to Weixin's terms of service and privacy policy, which forbids content which "endanger national security, divulge state secrets, subvert state power and undermine national unity". WeChat has been described as China's "app for everything" and a super-app because of its wide range of functions. First released in 2011, it became the world's largest standalone mobile app in 2018 with over 1 billion monthly active users. 'micro-message') are a Chinese instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. WeChat and Weixin ( Chinese: 微信 pinyin: Wēixìn ( listen) lit. However, during the quarter Apple recorded a 19.9% share of the Chinese smartphone market - its biggest since 2014 - as it increased sales by 6% year-on-year in a declining market, the research firm said.Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Indonesian, Malay, Thai, Vietnamese, Arabic, Turkish Apple also tried marketing its products on a livestream in China for the first time in May with an hour-long show.Ĭhina's smartphone sales in the first quarter fell 5% year on year, marking the lowest first-quarter sales figure for the country since 2014, according to data from Counterpoint Research. The move by Apple comes as Chinese consumers increasingly turn to social media platforms such as WeChat and ByteDance's Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, to shop.īesides its own stores and website, Apple already operates a shop on Alibaba Group's (9988.HK) Tmall online marketplace. The announcement by WeChat, China's dominant messaging app which also provides e-commerce, livestreaming and payment services, said users would be able to buy Apple products including iPhones, iPads and Macs from the store.Īpple and Tencent did not immediately respond to requests for further comment. firm's retail channels in the world's second largest economy. BEIJING, July 11 (Reuters) - Tencent's (0700.HK) WeChat said on Tuesday that iPhone maker Apple (AAPL.O) had opened a store on its social media platform, marking an expansion of the U.S.
