SHENZHEN, China/SHANGHAI: Tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd plans to leverage its strengths in video games and social media to grab market share in China’s burgeoning cloud computing sector from incumbent Alibaba, the head of its cloud unit told Reuters.
Tencent is best-known for its WeChat messaging app and a suite of popular games but is aiming to expand into business services as consumer internet growth slows and companies shift number-crunching from their own computers to the cloud.
“I think we can start from where we have advantages,” said senior executive vice president Dowson Tong in his first interview with international media since he took charge of Tencent’s Cloud and Smart Industries Group.
Restructuring last year included the creation of the stand-alone unit from Tencent’s small, six-year-old cloud operation.
“Our focus will be to capitalize on the advantages that Tencent has with the global video games eco-system, and help more customers – some of whom are Chinese businesses going overseas, some of whom are local game developers in foreign markets,” Tong said at Tencent’s headquarters in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen.
Tong listed gaming strengths such as audio and video communication as well as server management capabilities.
Giving increased focus on serving businesses — locally dubbed 2B — from its mainstay consumer-oriented, or 2C, operations could be lucrative, but the transition is often difficult to get right due to existing competition and the need to adjust to unfamiliar customer requirements, analysts said. – Reuters
