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BEIJING -- China's WeChat saluted Apple Inc. Monday on the iPhone's 10th anniversary -- just as it unveiled a new app platform that could challenge Apple in the decade to come.

On his social media, WeChat founder Allan Zhang posted photos from the landmark 2007 iPhone launch. At the same time, WeChat parent company Tencent Holdings Ltd. rolled out a suite of web apps aimed at smartphone users, moving into turf long ruled by Apple and Alphabet Inc.'s Google, through its Android operating system.

"Tencent was conveying that they want to play a leading role in the next decade," said Jia Mo, an analyst at Canalys.

It was the latest example of WeChat stepping up to challenge global tech giants. Once a simple chat app, WeChat has become a digital Swiss Army Knife, allowing its 846 million users to read news, pay their bills, buy movie tickets and even do their banking.

The new apps function, which is available now, is called Mini Program. The apps are cloud-based, so users can access them without downloading and without taking up memory on a smartphone.

Apple did not respond to requests for comment, and Google declined to comment. Google's Android and Apple's iOS operating systems each have more than 1 billion active users. Apple's iOS accounted for 17.1% of smartphones sold in China in the third quarter 2016, versus Android's 82.6%, according to Kantar Worldpanel ComTech Asia.

Apple said last week that sales of its apps in China rose 90% in 2016.

A Tencent spokeswoman said the company maintained regular dialogue with Apple during Mini Program's development. The company has taken care not to describe Mini Program as an app store, saying it doesn't have a central location to distribute applications. Apple doesn't allow third-party app stores in its iOS App Store.

Tencent also dropped plans to include the word "app" in its name, calling the features "programs" instead.

"Apple won't let us call it App Accounts, which might turn out to be a good thing," Tencent Chairman Pony Ma wrote on his WeChat account in September, as Mini Program began beta testing.

Instead of being in a centralized "store," the mini programs are designed to be discovered by users through third-parties, for example by scanning a QR code or tripping across them in a search. But once WeChat users open one of the features, a "Mini Program" tab appears on the users' WeChat home screen.

Mini Program has some similarities with services offered by Google and Apple to help developers build light apps that don't take up storage space on a device. Google launched app streaming services in 2015, and Apple opened iMessage to third-party apps last year.

Dong Xu, an analyst at research firm Analysys, said these mini apps are suitable for functions used frequently that aren't too complicated.

"Any tool should help the user increase efficiency," Mr. Zhang said in a speech last month. "That is the goal of a tool, the mission of a tool."

Industry experts say the first mini-programs are less sophisticated than most conventional apps, with fewer features and functions.

"For heavy users, the experience on apps is still better so I don't think this would threaten the status of app stores," said Zhu Xiaohua, product supervisor of online question-and-answer platform Fenda.

"Mini Program is not a simple substitute," said Hong Bo, a Beijing-based tech analyst. "It will take a fairly long term for developers and users to get used to it."

--Yang Jie and Eva Dou

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 09, 2017 07:55 ET (12:55 GMT)

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