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The rapid growth of the mobile Internet sector plus Tencent's large user population may help the company explore new businesses, including financial services, according to Yu Xiaohui, chief engineer of the China Academy of Telecommunication Research under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
"Mobile Internet is set to become the most desired segment for Chinese Internet companies as the nation is growing to become the second-largest Internet market only after the United States," he added.
User numbers for WeChat saw a steady increase since its release in January 2011. The user population exceeded 300 million at the beginning of this year with users outside the Chinese mainland hitting 70 million, according to Lau.
In addition to Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, WeChat's major markets include India, Thailand, Malaysia and Mexico.
WeChat will have at least 400 million users by the end of this year, Bloomberg News reported, citing Alicia Yap, an analyst at Barclays Plc in Hong Kong. WeChat could produce annual revenue of as much as 2.16 billion yuan if the app provides gaming and other related services, said Yap.
Building an active developers' community will be one of the top priorities for Tencent's new businesses such as WeChat, said Lau, president of the company.
App developers of Tencent have received 3 billion yuan in revenues since the company launched an open-platform project in 2011 encouraging technology startups to develop new apps for the Internet giant.
Developers are likely to earn another 3 billion yuan before the end of this year, Lau estimated.
