(Yicai) Jan. 10 -- WeCom, Tencent Holdings’ workplace collaboration app, expects to become profitable this year ahead of its main competitors, Alibaba’s DingTalk and ByteDance's Feishu, according to its vice president.

WeCom's number of daily active users rose last year, Li Zhifeng also said at an internal company meeting yesterday, without disclosing any figures. The number of educational firms using the platform fell, while retail business users increased, he added.

WeCom added 1,399 new searchable applications and 3,734 new development app templates for users, producing 214,084 new development apps last year, according to the company. Outsourced app development is the creation of self-built apps through WeCom using third-party service providers.

The data mainly reflects the building of WeCom's independent software vendor ecosystem, which leads to optimistic expectations about its earnings turning positive, a VP of an enterprise service company told Yicai.

WeCom also revealed that more than 300,000 new third-party paying companies and over 100 million third-party paying accounts joined the platform.

WeCom has made many changes to its business and payment models in recent years. The app's 4.0 version upgraded its meetings product last year, allowing users to hold up to five simultaneous meetings, with the option to buy advanced features to unlock more.

The number of enterprises and organizations on WeCom exceeded 10 million in 2022, with over 180 million active users and more than 500 million users connected via Tencent's WeChat ‘everything’ app.

DingTalk's users totaled 700 million at the end of last year, it announced yesterday. The number of organizations, including businesses and schools, was 25 million, that of paid DAUs reached 28 million, and that of software-paid firms totaled 120,000, it added, without disclosing any financial data.

Editor: Martin Kadiev