Tencent Holdings Ltd (0700)

[sgd]

If it does IPO here, I would definitely subscribe. The world is moving towards mobile technology and there are huge opportunities for mobile apps. This would be an extremely hot IPO if it does list here. I am using wechat as well and I do like it a lot. Never use whatsapp...

I see writing mobile apps to be low barrier of entry business, there are courses in polytechnic today teaching people how to write mobile apps. I've even seen commercial sites that have tools to help just about any newbie write apps for iphones and smart phones. There are so many thousands of apps out there, out of these thousands maybe a handful can become a hit wonders for a while look at where angry birds are today.

I see things like messanging normally will do well. Whatsapp is so popular today but if people need to pay for it will anybody still want to use it or move on to the next best free thing? That's the thing with online users today, they are so spoilt silly they expect good things to be either free, dirt cheap or opensourced. With this kind of expection how then will anybody hope to get rich from selling mobile apps?

So is it any surprise companies try to get their money back by doing IPO to unload to investors?

I beg to differ on your point. I am a computer engineer myself. I know that it is easy to write a mobile apps but the main point is how many users are using the app and how user-friendly it is. If there are apps with only 10,000 users compare to one with a few million users, which one is easier to get advertising revenue? Also, who is the backer for the Wechat app as compare to one written by another novice? What is the targeted market for the apps?

I am not sure if you have download Wechat to try it yourself. Yes, it is free now. I have seen a lot of new features been put into it and I certainly do see the potential in it. In any case, Tencent has denied the rumours so there's nothing to talk about now.

I think trying to sell advertising thru such medium not so easy, people assume is so easy, the people who want to use your apps doesn't mean they will accept advertising, if it is too intrusive people will be put off and try to skip it out, see what youtube has now resorted to doing putting ads in between videos trying to get people to watch them, if advertising is so easy why need to resort to such things?

If you want to see if people will pay for mobile apps can do a very simple test. Almost everybody have hundreds of apps on their mobile devices these days. If you are given a choice either pay $10 each for the 20% apps that are your phone currently or remove them totally what would your decision be? There is your answer.