The coronavirus outbreak is leading to the huge adoption of remote working in China.
Chinese technology companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu have long been technically ready for their staff to work outside the office. But, remote working to the majority workforces in China remains new and uncomfortable.
As China continues to fight the coronavirus, remote working is no longer an option but a necessity for many. Communication and collaboration platforms are essential to remote workers; Alibaba’s DingTalk, a.k.a. Dingding in the Chinese version, has seen a spike in demand in China.
It has surpassed social messaging apps in popularity on Apple’s App Store for the first time as companies tell employees to work remotely due to the novel coronavirus epidemic.
DingTalk responded quickly to release free solutions for workers staying home including contacts management, attendance, video conferencing, cloud drive, group streaming, task coordination, and etc. It even offers a beauty touch-up for those who do not have time to dress up before making a video call.
DingTalk has set up a special 24-hour team as the number of users rose to about 200 million, according to Daily Economic News. The interests over both DingTalk and WeChat Work (separate app from Tencent that integrates with consumer app WeChat) have skyrocketed as indicated by the search data from Baidu:
Enterprise version of WeChat, or WeChat Work launched in 2016, has also seen fast growth over the past two weeks. It allows up to 300 people to join video calls while DingTalk allows up to 16 people. Tencent also offers Tencent Docs for online document collaborations while Alibaba offers Yuque (technically by Ant Financial team but used by all Alibaba teams).
Huawei also promoted their teamwork platform WeLink and Kingsoft’s WPS office software suite also has some popularity in China for their collaborative online work. Both provide their services for free. WeLink is more focused on security considering the nature of Huawei’s business.
Feishu, a team collaboration software from ByteDance, is also offering SMEs the business version for free for three years.
NASDAQ listed Zoom Video Communications is benefiting from the coronavirus outbreak. And, it also wants to help Chinese businesses:
But, the dedicated domain doesn’t have a fully localized Chinese page. Even the sign-up page is in English. Nonetheless, Zoom has some level of awareness in China; some MNC and technology companies like ByteDance use Zoom.
Baidu is also offering its solution Baidu Hi; but, it doesn’t seem to be seriously promoted at the moment. DingTalk is a winner; and, WeChat Work and Feiyu both saw some traction.
Continue reading Acquire, convert, and retain customers through WeChat Ads + WeChat Work or check out Rocky’s China Digital Trends podasts via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Google Play or Spotify.
