Tencent launches entertainment brand

Tencent Holdings, China's largest Internet company by market capitalization, officially launched its new business brand, Interactive Entertainment, on Wednesday to boost its entertainment offerings in the mobile Internet era.

The new brand amalgamates three business groups — online literature, animation and comics and gaming — signaling a new beginning of the Shenzhen-based company's entertainment strategy, said Cheng Wu, vice-president of Tencent.

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Cheng said at the press conference in Beijing that the Internet has completely changed the way people entertain themselves.

"People can read books, play games online whenever and wherever they want. There is no clear boundary between life and entertainment," he said.

"With the growing popularity of mobile Internet, people's demand for entertainment will be boosted and the entertainment business is entering a golden era."

Tencent's move to combine the strength of its online literature, animation and gaming is in line with its leading position in China's gaming industry, as literature is upstream of many cartoon movies and games.

Online games contributed to nearly half of Tencent's revenue of 16.97 billion yuan ($2.73 billion) in the fourth quarter of 2013, according to the company's financial report.

The company also achieved great performance in China's emerging but rapidly growing mobile gaming market by launching game centers on its flagship mobile QQ and WeChat applications.

Through inking contracts with a dozen star online writers in China and establishing a partnership with many famous game developers, Tencent expects to build up some eye-catching entertainment products, which are expected to attract a large group of fans.

In the news conference on Wednesday, Wu Wenhui, the CEO of Tencent Literature, said his online literature department will start to operate independently.

Tencent Literature, which was founded in September 2013, has a daily active user base of 15 million. As many as 170,000 people publish their writings on the online literature platforms of Tencent. As many as 12 of them earn more than 10,000 yuan a day by publishing their pieces online, according to Wu.