• 60% of WeChat users are youngsters, aged from 15 to 29.
  • Young users have an average of 128 friends, and add another 20% upon entering the workforce.
  • Lower tiers cities and rural areas pose a further growth opportunity.

For the first time, Chinese gaming and social media giant Tencent let the outside world take a rare peek into how its hyper-popular WeChat app weaves itself into an indispensable part of Chinese’s daily life by releasing a data analysis report on the ubiquitous super app at its annual Global Partners conference.

The report revealed some conventional wisdom, also disrupted a few stereotypic perceptions about the most popular messaging platform in China.

Geography of WeChat users in China as revealed at a recent Tencent Global Partner Conference

For instance, Tencent’s most recent quarterly results told us that WeChat growth has been slowing down, led many to believe that Chinese messaging app market is now saturating.

While this remains true to some extent in tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3 cities, where WeChat commands respectively 93%, 69% and 43% market share. However, in tier 4 and tier 5 cities its penetration is still relatively low, signifying an opportunity for the giant to extend its reach in the future.

Demographically, most of the users of the app are within the age group from 15 to 29, accounting for 60% of the total pool of app users. The young crowd also accounted for 58% of international calls and have an average of a 128 friends list in their account.

For the younger ones, the data also posits that their friends list in WeChat is set to grow by 20% once they enter the workforce.

Content-wise, people of differing ages are also attracted to different genres of content.

Topic of Interest Based on Age as revealed at a recent Tencent Global Partner Conference

When it comes to exercising – the healthy lifestyle, the most common time for people to take long walks happen to be from 8 – 9pm in the evening. A surprising fact – people tend to do more exercise on a work day, was also revealed.

It is noteworthy to mention that WeChat is eating into carrier talk time as WeChat users’ audio chat talk time accumulated to  280 million minutes, or 540 years, per day.

Editor: Ben Jiang