WeChat is testing a new feature allowing users to find nearby restaurants according to Yiou News. This feature locates on the top level menu, in parallel with WeChat Moments, People Nearby, Mini-Programs, etc.

Some WeChat users discovered “Nearby Restaurants” feature in Plugins of Settings (previously WeChat Lab; left picture of the screen capture below) according to Yiou. The testing is currently only limited to Guangzhou.

WeChat has been providing Food feature for a while with Mini-Programs, which is under “Mini-Programs > Nearby Mini-Programs”. However, users can’t get much information about the restaurants as no information such as ratings or reviews is available.

The new “Nearby Restaurants” feature in WeChat looks like a challenge to Meituan Dianping, one of China’s leading e-commerce platform for local lifestyle services that went public in Hong Kong in September 2018. Meituan’s annual transacting users increased by 30.3% to 382.3 million as of September 2018.

With its strong social feature and large user base, this Nearby Restaurants could become an essential part of WeChat ecosystem. It can target and hurt Meituan Dianping if it chooses to do so. But, it’s not clear yet.

Tencent is Meituan Dianping’s largest shareholder holding close to 20% of its shares:

Meituan Dianping has well utilized Tencent’s WeChat ecosystem, especially WeChat Pay and Mini-Programs. And, it owns several ones in the top WeChat Mini-Programs.

Would Tencent create another Meituan Dianping? Theoretically, it’s one possibility. Alternatively, Tencent could also work with it integrating its restaurants’ data while enhancing it with high social engagement and complementing its e-commerce offerings.

WeChat is at least not an immediate threat to Meituan. Its current strong competitors include Alibaba’s Koubei and Ele.me.

Also read: WeChat launched its own version of “Facebook Stories”

Despite the continuous weak growth and even decline in smartphone sales in China, major domestic mobile phone manufacturers still set a “big leap” of shipping target in H1 2015. Although foreign brands iPhone and Samsung still held a large market share, domestic brands as Huawei, Lenovo, Xiaomi and TCL etc. all set their phone sales volume at 100 million units.

In Q2 2015, Xiaomi was the top smartphone vendor in China by total shipments volume of 15.9%, followed by Huawei (15.7%). Apple ranked third, followed by Samsung and Vivo.

China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, the three Chinese telecommunications companies accounted for 90% of the market.

4G network penetrated quickly into Chinese people’s life while users accessing to the internet through Wi-Fi accounted for 52%, mainly because of the high data charges of 4G network.

25% China mobile internet users on average opened less than 5 apps per day while over 60% would use less than 10 apps. Only 2.9% users would open more than 20 apps in one day. Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu still led China’s mobile internet market.

Among the top 20 mobile apps by total number of monthly average users, seven apps were from by Tencent. And among all the mobile apps in China in July 2015, WeChat and QQ ranked first with the monthly average users of 556.48 million and 424.28 million respectively.

WeChat and QQ were the social communication platforms with the highest penetration rate. Among the usage of the top 20 apps, users spent about 27% of the total apps usage time on WeChat and QQ. Search engine, video, and music player apps were also popular among mobile internet users.

Tencent held a strong position in the mobile social platform. Mobile internet users spent more time on WeChat compared with QQ; however among the post-00s, QQ was the major communication tool.

In the mobile video player market, Tencent, iQIYI and Youku led the market, with fierce competition and little gap of MAU (monthly active users) and total usage.

In the mobile music player market, Kugou music undoubtedly took the lead, followed by QQ Music and Kuwo Music.

Tencent News enjoyed a large share in China’s news apps market while Toutiao was in the process of fast penetration. Toutiao and Tencent News were quite close in total usage time. The daily usage of Toutiao was even twice that of Tencent News .

Offers from China online travel providers such as Ctrip and Qunar have extended to provide more on “things to do” in travel destinations. China online travel providers have also expanded to provide lifestyle offers such as food delivery, movie ticketing and car renting. In H1 2015, Ctrip and Qunar continued the growth momentum, which contributed to the tourism market of China.

Resulting from the convenience of online banking and online payment, mobile online banking apps developed quickly. China Construction Bank ranked first with monthly average usage of 2.32%.

China became the largest e-commerce market since 2014. About 53% users were women in 2015. Taobao held an unaltered position in the online e-commerce market, followed by JD and Vipshop.

In the mother care market, Beibei ranked first with an overwhelming advantage, whose monthly average usage was more the sum of other four apps.

Competition was fierce in the  cross-border hopping market, and Red ranked first in H1 2015 with a market share of 0.19%.

Meituan still ranked top on the group-buying apps in H1 2015, followed by Dianping and Nuomi while Ele continued to compete and was expected to be competitive to Meituan in the monthly average usage.

Meituan and Ele dominate the food delivery market. Ele led the market in Beijing and Shanghai while Meituan held an obvious advantage in other cities. Beijing made up of nearly 10% of the total food delivery share.

Car calling market was basically shared by Didi, Kuaidi and Uber. Although Uber China made much effort in the localization of Uber, the number of daily average users was only one third that of Didi Cars/Kuaidi One.

WeChat payment has gradually been adopted by more users. Many apps supported payments by WeChat. Didi and Meituan were first two apps that used WeChat payment as the primary payment method.

Also read: China Top 100 Mobile Apps in July 2015

Since first half of 2013, China popular group buying websites like Nuomi.com, Meituan.com and 55tuan.com all expanded business in lower tier cities in China. Their market share now shows an increasing gap from other group buying websites who are still making efforts in tier-1 and tier-2 cities.

According to the latest data from the report of China group buying market statistics in August published on Tuan88.com, 55tuan and Lashou had 72.6% and 55.97% market share respectively in fourth and lower tier cities but  only 5.45% and 13.67% in first tier cities in August. Dianping, which concentrating on prosperous cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, accounted for 69.9% market share while in fourth tier city, it only accounted for 1.16%.

Also read: China Online Food Ordering Market in 2014

Tencent launched its WeChat 5.2.1 on March 21, 2014, increased a new feature for Dianping, a Cragslist like Chinese review website. It has been over a month since Tencent bought 20% of stake in Dianping, the market guessed wildly about how WeChat could drive its traffic to Dianping without compromising user experience.

Let’s check out the update on WeChat.

First, the location sharing button stands out in WeChat Version 5.2.1 in Friends Circle, while the button was not so obvious in previous versions.

Once you select your location, it will show a list of restaurants, tourist spots and landmarks. The data is provided by Dianping.

After you choose a restaurant to share with friends, you will see your post displayed like that in below:

Basically, the new update includes data from Dianping and does not comprise user experience at all. WeChat brilliantly drives its traffic to Dianpiing website. When users click the link below the image, they will be redirected to a page of Dianping website.

WeChat users could check which of their friends have been there, and groupbuy information, address of the restaurant and phone number.

According to a report released by Dianping, a Yelp like top review website in China, tier two and three cities’ mobile internet growth speed surpassed tier one cities for the first time.It also showed that mobile consumers had become more localized and personalized, the need for services kept growing.

Dianping’s mobile life report in 2013 is based on mobile consumers in 22 cities, and data ranged from August 2012 to August 2013. By the end of Q2 2013, Dianping monthly traffic hit 2 billion, among which 70% were from mobile devices. Mobile dependent users has reached 75 million.

Dianping’s data showed that mobile traffic in Changsha grew 350% in the past year, more than two times in Shanghai. Changsha’s mobile internet growth rate ranked top in the 22 cities.

Besides, mobile users tended to search more about pharmacy, bank, park, internet cafe, movie theater, gas station, nail polish, etc. Cities showed their own features. Hangzhou, a slow pace city, coffee, tea house and bar were the hot search key words.