But is it an inability to penetrate the Western world, a conscious decision not to.. or simply a matter of time? I understand your first point.. so you suggest it's just not worth their while to invest outside of China? Surely there's money to be made. And it's not insignificant.

I could be a matter of time, it comes down to their motive. From a sales point of view Australia would be close to the bottom of the list based on population. It comes down to ROI and motive. For motive it may not be direct revenue they are after, it is most likely the meta data. In that case Australia may be further up the list. The collect a lot of valuable data that would make them more money than advertising and other promotions they have. Selling user data and meta data is common for social media sites, so when it comes to IM it is no different. As for the ROI. My business partner made a good point that relates to this. One of our products has market share in Australia, it took about 3 years to get there however we finally took the market. We talked about future projects and his reply was "As long as it isn't in Australia". His reason; Take the product we just got market share with and build it for the American market. Put in the same amount of time and effort and our return would be multiplied by more than 10. The truth is the product we took to the Australian market was only built because we both have passion for the industry, saw the industry didn't like the current products and are both Aussies. However it would have made more sense to develop the product for the American market. While we do make money, the difference between the Australian market and say the American market is massive. So the money made on Australian products is by definition insignificant when you have larger countries that want the same product. IM and social media are all about data, the more users the more meta data, so China and India at the top of the list. Another way to look at it. I sell data, Australia has ~24,309,330 people, America has ~324,118,787. When I sell data at ~9c per record, what country is more appealing? This is why Australia is behind with a lot of technology and advancements. The market simply isn't big enough to invest in at the early stage. After the bigger markets have been taken over sure, Australia is very appealing however not at the top of the list. Another way to look at it. We are also SMS providers and most banks and collection companies are starting to change over to us because no competitor can beat our price. We make money on a per SMS basis. Looking at the population Australia should not be a priority, however... again because we are Aussies and saw that greedy companies are simply ripping other companies off and we like to upset those companies. We offer this in Australia. However America would make us much more money. I see this every time I walk into an Australian clients office. Even some of the countries largest companies are behind the times. Unless they have an American company behind them they simply don't know the new way to do things. Analytics is one of those areas, I have spoken to companies most would expect to be up to date with the analytics world only to see just how far behind they are. As an Aussie I hate it, I want to see things come to our country a lot faster however the numbers hold most people back from focusing products on the Australian market.

Great Question Yee! I would say Origin is both the driving factor in user uptake in the east as well as the limiting factor in the west. WeChat originated from China, operates from China under Chinese law, which includes strong censorship provisions. Security and privacy concerns needs to be address.

WeChat is far more than a messaging app however. If you google it, it is actually a platform which they use, pretty much, for everything.. messaging, yes. But also booking doctor appointments, paying electricity fees or traffic fines, and booking transportation... Why haven't the Western equivalents kept up to speed?