It’s no secret that China Mobile and Tencent (the company behind WeChat) have been at odds over the past few weeks. Even before then, carriers and messaging and calling apps have never really seen eye to eye most of the time.
China Mobile has decided to do what a number of other carriers are doing and has decided to launch its own messaging service. In China Mobile’s case, it is relaunching its Feition app, which first launched in 2007, nearly four years before WeChat. Feition intends to combat WeChat directly as 300-million-user strong WeChat continues to grow largely at the expense of China Mobile. China Mobile announced that it will accept bids from third-party companies to help revamp Feition, as its Guangdong branch is leading an auction for four areas pertaining to the project totaling a combined $100 million USD.
No doubt WeChat has the advantage in this battle; WeChat is currently available for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. In order for China Mobile’s app to combat WeChat, it will need to be available just as widely. In addition, it will likely take Feition a lot of time and effort to match WeChat’s numbers, which are likely to continue growing despite China Mobile’s best efforts.
Even if Feition were to gain some additional users, many of those users are likely to use WeChat on the side as well, which effectively shutters China Mobile’s efforts to pull users away from WeChat. It’s a notable effort on China Mobile’s part, though it awaits to be seen just how well these efforts will pay off.