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Tencent is also making bold acquisitions abroad. A consortium that it led spent $8.6bn to acquire Finland’s Supercell last year, a deal that turned Tencent into the world’s biggest purveyor of online games. Together with Taiwan’s Foxconn, a contract-manufacturing giant, the firm invested $175m last year into Hike Messenger, an Indian messaging app akin to America’s WhatsApp. It was also an early investor in America’s Snapchat, another popular messaging app, whose parent company Snap went public in March.
腾讯也在国外展开大胆收购。去年,腾讯领衔的财团斥资86亿美元收购了芬兰的Supercell,令腾讯成为世界最大的在线游戏公司。去年腾讯还联合台湾代工巨头富士康共同对印度的即时消息应用Hike Messenger(类似美国的WhatsApp)投资1.75亿美元。腾讯也是另一个流行的即时消息应用——美国的Snapchat——的早期投资者,Snapchat的母公司Snap于3月上市。
bold adj.大胆的
acquisition n.收购
- acquire v.获得,习得
- The old word has aquired a new meaning.
consortium n.联合企业
purveyor n. 供应商
akin to 近似于
One reason for these purchases is that Tencent’s earlier efforts to promote WeChat abroad (including a splashy advertising campaign in Europe featuring Lionel Messi, a footballer) flopped. Established social networks such as Facebook and WhatsApp proved too entrenched to dislodge. They also did some copying of their own: once they adopted some of WeChat’s innovations, Western consumers had little reason to switch to the Chinese network.
这一系列投资动作有一个原因:腾讯早些时候在国外推广微信的努力告败(包括花大价钱在欧洲进行的一次广告宣传活动,当时还请了足球运动员梅西代言)。事实证明Facebook和WhatsApp这样成熟的社交网络的地位已牢不可破。而且那些社交网络自己也照搬了微信的一些做法,而它们一旦采用了微信的创新,西方消费者就更没什么理由改用中国的社交网络了。
promote v.宣传
splashy adj.炫目的
- a splashy movie
flop v. 失败(fail)
entrenched adj.根深蒂固的
- entrench v.巩固 (to establish solidly)
- The officials tried to entrench themselves in office.
dislodge v.移动 (to forcefully remove from a place or position)
- The earthquake dislodged the buildings.
adopt v.采纳
switch v.转变
Such investments have been in Tencent’s core areas, away from turf occupied by Alibaba and Baidu. Sometimes, the trio end up co-operating, if not by design. All three BAT firms are backers of Didi Chuxing, a ride-hailing firm with global pretensions of its own. But in other ways their domestic war is spilling into foreign markets.
腾讯的这些投资一直是在其核心领域,远离阿里巴巴和百度的地盘。有时候,虽然不是有意为之,三巨头倒也成为了合作者。BAT都投资了本身也有意打入国际市场的网约车公司滴滴出行。但在其他方面,三巨头在国内的战火正在向国外市场蔓延。
turf n.地盘
occupy v.占领
backer n.赞助人
ride-hailing 一键叫车
pretension n.主张,野心(ambition)
spill v.溢出,蔓延
India is one such battleground. In April, together with eBay and Microsoft, Tencent invested $1.4bn into Flipkart, a leading Indian online retailer. Alibaba and Ant together are reported to have invested nearly $900m in Paytm, India’s top online-payments firm; in February, Paytm launched an e-commerce portal akin to Alibaba’s Tmall to take on Flipkart and Amazon in India.
印度便是它们在海外的一个战场。4月,腾讯与eBay和微软合作,向印度领先的网络零售商Flipkart投资14亿美元。据报道,阿里巴巴和蚂蚁金服已对印度最大的在线支付公司Paytm投资近9亿美元。2月,Paytm在印度推出了一个类似阿里巴巴天猫的电商门户,与Flipkart和亚马逊印度抗衡。
battleground n. 战场
portal n.门户
take on 竞争