Tencent working to make WeChat remote control for your oven

Tencent Holdings Ltd. is connecting ovens, televisions, air conditioners and other appliances to its WeChat and QQ instant-messaging services amid a push to expand its mobile-application store.
Asia’s second-largest Internet company is working with appliance manufacturers and third-party developers to allow users to control home hardware from their phones and tablets, Chief Operating Officer Mark Ren said yesterday at the Tencent Global Partner Conference in Hainan, China. The plan is to build up its application platforms, which Ren said have so far attracted 2.4 million third-
party programs.
Tencent is pushing its instant-messaging services WeChat and QQ to become distribution channels for other moneymaking apps besides mobile games, its biggest sales generator. The Shenzhen-based company has enlisted 5 million outside developers and employees at startups to create apps for its platforms and attract more of China’s half billion mobile Internet users, Ren said.
“Tencent’s open platform will start embracing all smart hardware devices, as we are setting up a hardware open platform for QQ and WeChat,” Ren said. “Our open platform isn’t just about software, but also hardware and offline.”
The company has been selective in the third-
party developers it allows to access its platform, Ren said. The QQ version of the product, QQ Connect, was released yesterday.
The company was also looking to invest in 100 startups over the next three years, Lin Songtao, vice president of Tencent’s social networks group, said yesterday. Tencent would take stakes in the companies and use its Internet resources to help them reach target valuations of USD100 million each, Lin said.
QQ and WeChat helped Tencent’s mobile-game revenue rise 67 percent to 3 billion yuan in the three months ended June 30, from a quarter earlier.
The initial success of making money from the two apps has helped boost Tencent’s market value to about $146 billion, making it the biggest Asian Internet company by market value after Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.
QQ, which began as an instant-messaging service on desktop computers and was adapted for use on mobile devices, has about 829 million monthly active users, according to its second-quarter earnings report. WeChat has 438 million.
Revenue from China’s online gaming market is projected to expand to 225 billion yuan ($37 billion) by 2017, from an estimated 115 billion yuan this year, according to IResearch, a Shanghai-based Internet consultant.
Tencent has offered a number of popular games, such as Timi Run Everyday and Timi Match Everyday, through its own studio. It also has introduced third-party apps including Candy Crush and is working with Kakao Corp. and Nexon Co.
WeChat may be worth as much as $64 billion given the potential for the service to make money, Elinor Leung, an analyst at CLSA Ltd., wrote in a March 10 report. Lulu Yilun Chen, Bloomberg