The official launching event of WeChat was held on 23 June, 2015 at Sule Shangri-La Hotel, Yangon. Famous Hip Hop star, Sai Sai Kham Leng was present at the event who became the first Myanmar artist to have a WeChat account. Poshu Yeung, Vice President of International Business Group at WeChat app’s mother company, Tencent, said “In Myanmar, we’re aware that there’s an increasing need for efficient communications and social interactions in people’s personal and professional lives and we’ve watched as dropping SIM card costs have caused the number of mobile users in the country to shoot up to 18 million from around one million just three years ago. In this time of great change, we’re proud to offer Myanmar users a new, creative and free medium to express themselves and connect with the world”, he continued, “To make the experience more social and fun for our growing user base, we’re committed to continue innovating and enhancing our services so that we create a localized, relevant and meaningful interactionon our platforms.”
Huawei Marketing Manager, Ma Khin Yadanar Win who also attended this event declared the partnership with WeChat. These two companies are offering 50,000 prizes including Huawei P8 and the Bluetooth Speaker for WeChat users who have to register on WeChat and click on “Lucky Draw” in order to participate and win such prizes. Myanmar language is available on WeChat’s latest version 6.2, and users can share their expressions with fun Myanmar stickers. WeChat was firstly introduced in 2011 and it now has more than 549 million monthly active users worldwide. WeChat is available for free on Android, Blackberry, iOS, Symbian and Windows operating system.
