Tencent Holdings Ltd's WeChat has been dubbed a "super app", and it's exceptionally popular in China, but Apple has been working to earn a larger cut of in-app purchases on games within the platform.
According to a new report from Bloomberg, Apple has approved a new version of WeChat for the iPhone on the App Store, but has seemingly done so in the hopes of finding an agreement over the billions of dollars that flow through WeChat's gaming library.
"The approval is likely to quash speculation in China that a dispute between the US firm and China’s largest company over app store fees could snowball and even bar WeChat from the latest iPhones," Bloomberg reports.
"Their disagreement centers on Apple’s insistence that it get a cut of potentially lucrative transactions that flow through WeChat’s mini-games platform, a repository of popular casual titles created by thousands of indie developers."
Apple and Tencent's Chequered Past
Back in 2020, a survey conducted in China showed that 678,000 smartphone users would switch to an alternative platform if Apple removed WeChat from the App Store.
That's after accusations WeChat harvests large amounts of data from users worldwide, leading to then-President Trump signing an executive order prohibiting companies from doing business with WeChat (as well as TikTok). The ban was dropped by President Biden in 2021.
The app has almost 1.4 billion users in China, and incorporates so many aspects of daily life that it's essentially an operating system in and of itself.
One of its most popular facets is its variety of games, but developers have been suggesting users make purchases outside of the app to circumnavigate Apple's payment fees (not unlike Epic Games did). Tencent has been reluctant to close these loopholes, leading to friction between it and the platform holder.
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