Tencent challenging Uber as it makes its move in China
Uber is facing tough competition in China as the country's ride-hailing app rallies in powerful allies. Among those is Tencent, which is the owner of WeChat, China's most popular messaging app with more than 600 million users. WeChat is a powerful platform in the country hosting messages and even ads from local and foreign brands. Unfortunately, Uber is nowhere to be found on the platform.
Uber claims that its accounts started disappearing from the platform around March 16. Its Hangzhou customer support profile vanished first before Beijing followed. Senior vice president for business at Uber, Emil Michael, also shared that Tencent has either banned or frozen Uber's accounts in WeChat in the following months. This is the first time that Uber addressed the brewing situation in China, according to Bloomberg.
The Feb. 14 merger of Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache raised tensions between Uber and Tencent. According to Michael, “From then on is when you start to see deterioration in the competitive environment, and it hit a crescendo where our accounts actually got shut off in March."
Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache rank as two of China's largest car-booking apps. The current change of competitive structure among China’s local apps has raised hopes among investors.
Previously, there were doubts whether China's apps can hold their ground against Uber. That may soon change though as mergers and other deals have been in place. In fact, Chinese car rental service Car Inc reported increased revenue and net profit at 24 percent and 87 percent, respectively, according to Business Insider. Uber, on the other hand, have been telling investors that it plans to shell out immensely over China.
The company reportedly plans to spend as much as $1 billion (AU $1.4B), considering China can account for as much as half of the top 10 cities in the world in terms of booking. However, Uber may have to think of more ways to take advantage of the market as Didi Kuaidi has 78 percent market share as of the moment.
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