tencentroadmap_01Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Twitter, Zynga and Uber all have each other to contend with, but what if a fierce new competitor were to enter to the U.S. market?

Tencent may be the latest Chinese superpower eyeing global expansion, according to an article published in the May edition of Fast Company.

Similar to Alibaba, which is expected to IPO in the U.S. this week, Tencent is another tech conglomerate out of China that is hard to understand because it does so much. Just as Alibaba is considered Amazon, eBay and PayPal in one, Tencent offers an overwhelming mix of services, making it a serious threat to many U.S.-based companies.

The company, which went public in Hong Kong 10 years ago, started off with a messaging platform called QQ, but has expanded into e-commerce, gaming, messaging, social networking and more.

What makes it — and Alibaba — a consideration in the U.S. is the sheer size of the companies user bases and of its war chests.

For instance, China’s Tencent is worth a $139 billion and counts nearly a billion users on its network of services. Its chairman and CEO, Ma “Pony” Huateng, is the company’s mysterious leader, who reportedly shares similar interests to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Tesla’s Elon Musk. He’s also insanely wealthy with a personal net worth of $13.4 billion (Bezos’ net worth is estimated at $32.7 billion).

 

How Tencent stacks up compared to its U.S. competition (Via Fast Company)
How Tencent stacks up compared to its U.S. competition (Via Fast Company)

Meanwhile, Alibaba could represent the biggest technology IPO ever, potentially exceeding the $16 billion that Facebook received in its public debut. If successful, Alibaba’s value could top $150 billion.

With that kind of money, either company could move into U.S. territory easily through organic growth or acquisition.

In particular, Fast Company details how Tencent has acted aggressively in areas its wanted to enter in the past, playing hardball with Zynga and others.

One area that it could become an instant competitor is in cloud computing. Fast Company said it recently started offering 10 TB of free online storage to users — an offering 100 times larger than what Dropbox, Box, Microsoft’s SkyDrive, Google Drive and Kim DotCom’s Mega offer combined.

For that same amount of storage, Google charges $100 a month.

The company’s chatting service called WeChat is another prime example with 400 million registered users, including 70 million international users, according to a recent count. Facebook was willing to pay dearly (up to $19 billion) for WhatsApp, its close competitor.

The timeline for when Tencent might take the leap into the U.S. is unknown, but it’s already made some small moves. It bought Riot Games, maker of League of Legends, for $400 million; it invested in Plain Vanilla Games, and participated in Fab.com’s $150 million funding round last June.

“The two giants (Alibaba and Tencent) are competing with each other, making acquisitions in very similar areas – travel, online lifestyle websites, shopping – it’s head-to-head competition,” said Forrester Research’s Bryan Wang, in an interview with the BBC. “I believe it will be one of the most expensive competitions in online history.”

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