Tencent targets healthcare and connected car industries

Chinese internet group Tencent Holdings plans to expand into providing services to industries such as healthcare and connected cars, Reuters reported.
Tencent WeChatThis is part of the strategy announced by Tencent, China’s largest social media and gaming company, aimed at moving from being a consumer business toward one catering to industry too.

Dowson Tong, president of Tencent’s newly formed Cloud and Smart Industries Group, told the company’s annual global partners conference that the new group would focus on artificial intelligence, cloud services, big data and security.

“If the development of internet is said to have centered on consumers over the past 20 years, it will probably focus on business and industry over the next 20 years,” Tong said at the livecast event in Nanjing.

Tencent’s restructuring comes as the company’s main business of gaming and online services grew at a slower pace, hit by regulatory hurdles this year. Tencent revenue has come under pressure. The company also consolidated three content-related businesses into one.

Tencent will improve its traditional stronghold of consumer internet services, while developing new industry-facing services focusing on sectors such as healthcare, transportation, education, and retail.

Tencent vice-president Zhong Xiangping said that the company’s autonomous driving business was a software and services provider. It also provides cloud services to business partners in connected cars, an area where Tencent has obtained road testing licenses in Shenzhen and Beijing.

Lin Songtao, vice president in charge of Tencent’s content platforms, said the company had set aside a 5 billion yuan or 720.13 million fund to encourage creative content for Tencent’s various platforms that include WeChat and Spotify-like music apps.

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