Rumor: QQ Buy to Merge into 51Buy.com
Tencent Tech, 11/23/12
According to industry sources, Shenzhen-based internet company Tencent (0700.HK) will continue to increase its holdings in B2C e-commerce company 51buy.com to wholly acquire the site. A source inside Tencent said they had not heard anything about plans to acquire the remaining shares of 51buy.com, but could not rule out the possibility of such plans existing. Tencent had created QQ Buy as its e-commerce brand, but found that 51buy.com outperformed QQ Buy after the former site invested more money in promoting its brand. 51Buy.com recorded ten times as many completed transactions as QQ Buy. Tencent is reportedly planning to merge the two services together under 51buy.com's brand.
Editor's Note: A spokesperson for Tencent's e-commerce division said that reports on the rumored merger were inaccurate, noting that over the past half-year Tencent has invested a great deal of effort in promoting QQ Buy as its core open platform and 51Buy.com as its core self-operated platform.
Tencent's e-commerce division will focus its efforts on two areas, the spokesperson said. The first, strengthening the company's national deployment and service capabilities, will be overseen mainly by 51buy.com. The second area will be upgrades to the open QQ Buy platform, and the promotion of outstanding QQ Mall vendors to the QQ Buy platform.
Following optimizations and upgrades to both the self-operated and open platforms, the spokesperson said, Tencent will complete integration of the two into a single platform at the appropriate time. The company did not divulge its internal timetable for the merger; nor did it say which of the two brands it will use.
Editor's Note: For more background on this topic, please see "Rumor: Tencent to Acquire Remaining 20% of 51Buy" MD 10/29/12 issue.
Keywords: e-commerce Internet B2C Tencent 0700.HK open platform QQ Buy 51Buy investment M&A
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