SHANGHAI - Tencent Holdings Limited, the leading provider of Internet and mobile & telecommunications value-added services in China, today announced the launch of version 1 of their QQ International (QQi 1.0) instant messenger (IM) product.

The international version of China's most popular IM is now available in English, Japanese and French and is intended for users worldwide to connect with their Chinese friends, clients, customers, or just about anyone anywhere in the world. The service is entirely free of charge, free of ads and can be downloaded for Windows based PCs at www.imqq.com. Additionally a light version of QQi with stripped down functions is available for Mac, iPhone and iPad.

"As one of the most influential Chinese technology companies, Tencent has decided to challenge its most successful product QQ, by creating a multi-language version offering a bridge to any non-Chinese user to connect with the existing 600 million active Chinese language accounts," said Marc Violo, product manager of QQi.

"One year after the release of the beta version targeting foreigners living in China, QQi currently already has over 2 million registered accounts with an average of 170,000 daily unique users in and out of China. We are now very excited to announce QQi 1.0 and make it available to a larger international audience," Violo added.

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Apart from its core IM functionality, QQi offers its users a variety of free apps to explore anything China related from job opportunities, news or language learning tools, to events, travel deals, directories and videos. The service has already partnered with a range of large local partners, such as the travel portal Ctrip.com and will in the future integrate more third party apps from local and global players. Based on the latest Tencent patented IM technology, QQi includes an innovative file transfer feature (no need to zip files anymore), a customizable screenshot feature as well as higher quality audio and video chat.

Additionally to the IM client, Tencent's QQi will launch its first English language social networking site early 2011, integrated into the existing information portal www.imqq.com and seamlessly synchronized with the QQi IM. More language versions of QQi IM will also be made available in the coming months.