The CEO of Chinese internet giant Tencent, Pony Ma, said on Thursday at the 2016 China “Internet Plus” Summit that Tencent will focus on three major blocks: cloud services, location-based services (LBS), and security.
Ma claimed that Tencent is very good at cloud computing, only that in the past it mainly served the company internally without being opened up to the public. This year, Tencent will commercialize its cloud capabilities to offer cloud services to the public, the government, and business partners.
In terms of location-based services, Ma believes that it will pave the road for future development of both mobile internet and artificial intelligence. He used Tencent Map as an example, pointing out that the ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing is both a user and a builder of the map. Millions of real-time transport information is generated daily, which in turn improves the LBS of Tencent Map. Ma said that Tencent will further cooperate with Didi Chuxing, Meituan-Dianping, and 58 Ganji.
Security is another aspect on which Tencent has been focusing for over five years. According to Analysys, Tencent Mobile Security Manager ranked the first among all mobile security applications in China in Q3 2015. Additionally, Tencent Security was introduced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference on Tuesday as the only built-in security product of iOS 10, which will help iPhone users block spam calls and messages.
Building infrastructure for areas such as payment will not be left behind.
“In spite of the big changes in communication, finance, retail, O2O, and transport in the past year, we are clear on our positioning,” said Ma. “Tencent aspires to serve as a connector, connecting services and users.”
Ma also introduced the “internet plus index” project. This collects information and data from various industries in different places, in order to present a digitalized hologram of GDP in China, reflecting fresh industrial changes closely related to the development of the internet.
With over 700 million active users of its products, Tencent basketed RMB 102.86 billion (USD 15.63 billion) in revenue in 2015.
(Top photo from Baidu Images)