WeChat monthly active user numbers inching closer to WhatsApp

China’s Tencent Holdings Ltd., which operates online games and the popular WeChat messaging service, said Wednesday its quarterly profit rose 59 percent due to strong growth in its mobile business.

The company has also announced that WeChat had  438 million monthly active users during the second quarter of 2014, which is an increase of 10.6 percent from 396 million the previous quarter. These numbers bring it on par with Whatsapp, which claimed to have hit 500 million mark in April.  

“But WeChat’s quarter-on-quarter growth rate is notably flattening compared to last year. The slowdown is due to the saturation of the mainland Chinese  market. Although the total population in the market exceeds 1.3 billion, WeChat still has to compete with other messaging apps including WhatsApp and smaller domestic players,” adds the ZDnet report.  

The company based in the southern city of Shenzhen earned 5.8 billion yuan ($949 million) in the three months ended June 30, or 0.63 yuan (10.2 U.S. cents) per share. Revenue rose 37 percent to 19.7 billion yuan ($3.2 billion).

Tencent and other Chinese Internet services are spending heavily to expand mobile services as the country’s Web surfers shift to going online wirelessly through smartphones and tablet computers.

Tencent’s online games revenue rose 7 percent over the previous quarter, driven mostly by higher revenue for smartphone games integrated with WeChat. Revenue from social networks rose 15 percent over the previous quarter, also driven by mobile services.

“We deepened user engagement on mobile across our social, games and media platforms,” said chairman Ma Huateng in a statement. “Our online advertising business grew particularly strongly.”

Tencent also has expanded into online video, taxi hailing services and online finance. It bought a $215 million stake in March in JD.com, the country’s second-largest online sales platform.

With input from Associated Press