China’s smart vehicle supplier PATEO, on Tuesday 9th February 2021 in a statement accused Tencent of violating its messaging app’s significant market position to control sales of its products.
A new anti-monopoly complaint has been directed towards Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd to regulators, this time from a supplier of smart vehicle technology and a General Motors Co China venture.
PATEO provides voice recognition features and other mobile applications that depend on Tencent’s all-in-one WeChat app. It added that Tencent has been asking car companies to stop using PATEO’s Internet of Vehicles products since August 2020.
Tencent did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The General Motors venture with SAIC Motor Corp, which put forward the request together with PATEO, also did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The new complaint comes just after a week from ByteDance’s Chinese version of TikTok called Douyin charging Tencent of monopolistic behaviour and filing suit in a Beijing court, asking for 90 million yuan ($14 million) in compensation.
Tencent has responded saying that claim has false and said ByteDance was illegally using its users’ data.
Chinese regulators have increased anti-trust scrutiny of tech firms since December, commencing an inquiry into e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Ten Alibaba-backed and Tencent-backed firms for not seeking anti-trust reviews for deals.