Virtual Economy Research Network

As Vili introduced before, Tencent QQ is the dominant form of instant message for online communications in China. It supports instant messaging, games, and other value-added services, all of which are paid for with Q-coins. With the usage of Q-coin, you can buy everything from QQ sausages and clothing to QQ credit and debit cards, which builds the QQ virtual world.

According to Virtual China, there is a new QQ service called iTQQ.

Tencent has partnered with TCL to produce a low-cost some kind of IPTV that provides access to QQ services as well as TV programmes through a new service called iTQQ.

Nowadays the online PCs are still out of reach for some Chinese at home, this new service could further increase online activities for Tencent since the Internet can be always available at home. As a result, Tencent will further expand QQ's dominance for communications and expand the usage of Q-coins to pay for that new value-added service.