A popular Chinese tech media outlet 36KR has just reported that Tencent, the company behind the immensely popular mobile and PC game PUBG (Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds), might be looking to make its own gaming phone. If this is true, the result could be a unique Tencent-branded gaming phone. There is also a probability that the smartphone will be co-branded as there are other companies who might be involved.
According to 36KR’s report, either one of Acer, Razer, and Xiaomi’s Black Shark could be a potential partner of Tencent for this venture. In that case, we will be seeing a co-branded smartphone in the end. It is important to note that the all of the three potential partners have their own flagship gaming smartphones: Asus has the ROG Phone, Xiaomi has the Black Shark 2, and Razer has the Razer Phone 2.
ODM Wentai is also reported to be in contact with Tencent on building this phone. If Wentai was to be the partner, then Tencent’s gaming smartphone will be a self-branded device.
With companies as notorious in the gaming world and the smartphone manufacturing industry as the ones mentioned above, we can understand why Tencent would want to co-brand their new smartphone.
The report by 36KR says that the smartphone will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset. This doesn’t come as a surprise because the most powerful flagships of this year are being powered by Qualcomm’s latest flagship, the Snapdragon 855, and gaming phones rely heavily on extremely powerful chipsets that can handle the heavy processing and graphical computing required to run a game smoothly. Also, Asus’, Acer’s, and Xiaomi Black Shark’s gaming phone are all powered by the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon flagship chipsets.
It was reported by Digitimes in February that Tencent had offered its help to Asus for launching the ROG Phone. The report pointed out that Razer also showed interest in a partnership with Tencent which would be focused on launching the Razer Phone 2.
Tencent is a very influential and popular company which may be popular because of its splash screen during the start of PUBG Mobile game but the company has major stakes in a lot more companies in the gaming industry.
Tencent owns Riot Games (creator of League of Legends) and holds a majority stake in Supercell (creators of Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, and Hay Day). That’s not all, Tencent also has 5% stakes in Ubisoft and Activision-Blizzard, both of these companies don’t need any introduction at all. Tencent also has 40 stakes in Epic Games which developed Fortnite, the phenomenal Battle Royale PC game.
Moreover, the company is the sole owner of a film distribution company along with a few music streaming services. Instant messaging apps including WeChat and QQ and the popular Chinese Social network Weibo is also owned by Tencent. To top that, the company also owns a search engine and a maps application.
