WeChat's global monthly active accounts reached 1.206 billion, up 6.5 percent year on year and 0.3 percent from the previous quarter, according to Tencent's second-quarter financial results released today.
The company other social messaging app QQ had 647 million monthly active accounts on smart devices, down 8.4% from 707 million in the same period last year and down 6.6% from the first quarter.
According to the financial results, Tencent's second-quarter revenue reached CNY114.883 billion, up 29 percent year on year and the highest growth rate in eight quarters.
Tencent's Q2 revenue grows with an eight-quarter high rate of 29%
Tencent registered 203.4 million paid value-added service accounts in the second quarter, up 20.4 percent year on year and up 3 percent from the first quarter.
In WeChat, Tencent released updates to enhance its communications, content and services capabilities. Both the number of monthly active accounts and the number of messages per day grew year on year.
Ming-Chi Kuo: US WeChat ban could cause iPhone shipments to fall by up to 30%
Tencent upgraded the WeChat public account's video content publishing capabilities and introduced content aggregation tools to improve the efficiency of content discovery by users.
These initiatives have reinvigorated content consumption in the WeChat public account, driving year-over-year growth in views, the company said.
Analysts say no need to panic over Tencent shares over US WeChat ban
Tencent said it also helped traditional retailers undergo digital transformation and assisted them in resuming business through mini-programs. Transactions generated through the mini-programs picked up on a year on year basis as economic activity recovered.
Tencent has launched a free and easy-to-use mini-program feature called "mini-stores" to help long-tail merchants set up and run online stores.