騰訊開拓非洲 挑戰Facebook
One of China’s largest internet companies is intensifying its efforts to crack the African market with a bid to disrupt Facebook’s WhatsApp with a rival messenging service.
中國最大的互聯網公司之一正加緊努力開拓非洲市場，與Facebook旗下的聊天服務WhatsApp展開競爭。
Tencent has teamed with Africa’s largest media company, Naspers, to introduce its social media app across the continent. The service, WeChat, has more than 650m active monthly users in China, and it is cheaper than SMS.
騰訊(Tencent)聯手非洲最大的媒體公司Naspers，在整個非洲大陸推出其社交媒體app。微信(WeChat)服務在中國每個月擁有超過6.5億活躍用户，且費用低於短信。
The Chinese-South African joint venture is betting on the rapid growth of smartphone sales to young people, who are increasingly using their mobile phones to shop, bank, search for jobs, listen to radio and order taxis and takeaways.
這一由中國與南非合資的項目押注於面向年輕人的智能手機銷售快速增長，這一人羣越來越多地使用手機購物、儲蓄、找工作、聽廣播、打出租和叫外賣。
Naspers holds a 46.5 per cent stake in Tencent, making it one of the highest profile examples of South African and Chinese companies joining forces to expand across the continent. Its initial investment of $34m for the shareholding has paid off spectacularly, helping Naspers become South Africa’s biggest company by value and its chairman Koos Bekker to become a billionaire.
Naspers公司持有騰訊46.5%的股份，成為南非與中國公司聯手在非洲大陸擴張的最引人注目的一個例子。其3400萬美元的先期投資已換來可觀回報，幫助Naspers成為了南非市值最高的公司，也令其董事長庫爾斯·貝克(Koos Bekker)成為億萬富翁。
Brett Loubser, the head of WeChat Africa, said the average African would have their first ever experience of the internet through their mobile device.
微信在非洲的區域負責人Brett Loubser表示，非洲普通人的首次上網體驗將通過移動設備實現。
“They’ve missed the entire desktop, PC, laptop, whatever thing, and because of that, I think we’re seeing innovation come out of Africa from a mobile perspective that is just leagues ahead of anywhere else on earth really,” said Mr Loubser.
Loubser説：“他們已經錯過了台式機、個人電腦、筆記本電腦之類，而正因為如此，我認為從移動設備的角度來看，非洲迸發的創新實際上遠遠超前於世界上其他地方。”
WeChat offers users services far beyond the simple messaging functions available in WhatsApp.
微信向用户提供的服務，遠遠超越了WhatsApp所提供的單純聊天功能。
In an apparent bid to tie in other services to its system, WeChat has also launched a $3.5m venture capital fund to invest in new tech companies offering services that the app could offer. It has already invested in Money for Jam (M4JAM), a micro jobbing (casual work) service.
為了將其他服務捆綁至自己的系統，微信還啟動了一隻350萬美元的風險投資基金，投資於新興科技公司，由其開發微信可向用户推出的服務。它已投資了微招聘（兼職）服務平台Money for Jam (M4JAM)。
It is also introducing a “digital wallet” service in partnership with Standard Bank, Africa’s largest lender by assets, which is part-owned by China’s ICBC bank. This enables users to conduct financial transactions and make payments using mobile phones, even to recipients with no bank account.
微信還與非洲資產最大的銀行——標準銀行(Standard Bank)合作推出了“電子錢包”服務，該銀行由中國工商銀行(ICBC)持有部分股權。該服務能讓用户通過手機完成銀行轉賬和支付，即便對方沒有銀行賬户。
Mr Loubser declined to say how many users it had in Africa, but he acknowledged that competition was intensifying. World Wide Worx, a Johannesburg-based technology research company, estimates that WeChat, launched in the African market in 2014, has about 6m registered users in South Africa, compared with about 14m active WhatsApp users.
Loubser拒絕透露微信在非洲擁有多少用户，但他承認競爭已愈演愈烈。據約翰內斯堡科技研究公司World Wide Worx估計，2014年推向非洲市場的微信，在南非擁有大約600萬註冊用户，相比之下WhatsApp擁有大約1400萬活躍用户。
“Given that WhatsApp is eight years old, we’re five years late to the party, and I think where we are at right now we are happy with,” Mr Loubser said.
Loubser説：“考慮到WhatsApp已經8歲了，我們晚來了5年，我認為我們很滿意現在的處境。”
He added: “WhatsApp has possibly the highest market penetration of any country on earth in South Africa. Fighting that as a newcomer is really tough, but in other African territories, smartphone penetration is pretty much non-existent: that’s an open market.”
他補充説：“WhatsApp在南非的市場滲透率，可能是全球所有國家中最高的。作為一個新入者要與其競爭是非常困難的，但在非洲其他國家，智能手機的滲透率幾乎還不存在，那是一個開放的市場。“
WeChat’s short-term focus is on building its presence and offerings in South Africa, the continent’s most industrialised nation, where it has a team of 31 staff and scores of services available on its platform.
微信短期內的重點是在南非這一非洲大陸工業化程度最高的國家落户，並推出更多服務，微信目前在南非有31名僱員，其平台上提供數十種服務。
But it is also active in Ghana and Nigeria, the continent’s most populous nation, where it has a team of three and is working with Nigerian start-ups such as Jobberman, an online employment service, and Traclist, an online fashion shopping service.
但它在加納和尼日利亞也很活躍，後者是非洲人口最多的國家，微信在該國有一個三人小組，與當地初創企業展開合作，如在線招聘服務Jobberman和在線時尚購物服務Traclist。
