Tencent’s Weixin celebrated its 10th anniversary at this year’s Weixin Open Class PRO, and disclosed that its ecosystem has continued to grow with flagship services including Mini Programs having attracted more users and served more businesses.

Weixin Open Class PRO 2021, the annual event for business partners and developers held via livestream for the first time this year in the light of the pandemic, addresses the acceleration of digital transformation with a look at its contribution to the short-term economic recovery and the long-term strategic competitiveness created for merchants and enterprises. Tencent has a strong track record as a “digital assistant” that supports industries through digital upgrades and building open, innovative, and secure ecosystems. As one of Tencent’s flagship products, Weixin is a smart lifestyle ecosystem that enables global businesses to access China’s consumers. 

Weixin Open Class PRO 2021 held in Guangzhou with livestream

Weixin Video Accounts, or Channels, empowers businesses and other influencers to create and watch video and photo feeds. Weixin Channels was only in operation for one year, but has been widely adopted by brands and influencers as a fun and creative way to grow their fan bases. A number of well-known brands such as Nio, JD.com and Baidu have utilized short videos or live-streaming to grow followers, as well as market and sell products directly to consumers.

Weixin Mini Programs, which gives users instant access to enterprise services while creating tremendous value to merchants and service providers, has maintained strong momentum in its fourth year of operations. With brands leveraging the services to facilitate consumer interaction amid the COVID-19, Mini Programs’ average daily active users exceeded 400 million and the total sales (GMV) more than doubled over last year, while the number of Mini Programs used per user and the average transaction value increased by 25 percent and 67 percent year-on-year respectively. Weixin Mini Programs has helped brands and businesses to easily embrace digitalization and enable direct access to hundreds of millions of stay-at-home consumers during the pandemic. Today, the services are used in a variety of sectors with transportation, department stores, apparel, and sporting goods leading the growth. In the future, Mini Programs will cross-promote user traffic more seamlessly with Weixin Channels to provide greater value to businesses and consumers.

WeCom, Weixin’s dedicated product for work communication, continued to help enterprises improve efficiency and enhance engagement with their clients amid the pandemic. WeCom now serves more than 5.5 million companies and 130 million monthly active users, with services provided to more than 400 million Weixin users.

Weixin improved its search functions in 2020 to help users easily navigate through its massive ecosystem and will continue to improve the user experience this year. Mini Games monthly active user accounts crossed 500 million for the first time in 2020, with half being women, which is above industry average. Mini Games provides a good opportunity for female-oriented game developers to shine. 

Weixin was launched in 2011 and is China’s most widely used social communication platform. It provides users with a convenient and mobile digital lifestyle via a rich offering of entertainment and secure payments function. Weixin and WeChat reached more than 1.2 billion monthly active user accounts as of December 2020 within which more than 400 million people use Weixin Mini Programs daily.