<p>Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., thelargest e-commerce company in China, is offering an instant-messaging app as it tries to compete against Tencent HoldingsLtd. in the world's biggest smartphone market.</p><p>The app, called Laiwang, allows users to form group chatswith as many as 500 people and share maps, videos and stickers,according to Alizila, a website run by Alibaba. It has about 1million existing users, and the company wants to boost that to100 million, the company said in an e-mail today.</p><p>Alibaba's competition with Tencent, operator of the WeChatservice, comes as smartphone shipments in China are projected torise to 450 million units in 2014 from 360 million this year,according to International Data Corp. More than 84 percent ofChina's Internet users regularly access instant messaging,making it the most popular online application in the country,according to data compiled by Bloomberg.</p><p>"Alibaba wants to gain as many access points for users aspossible," said Alex Wang, a Beijing-based analyst at Internetconsulting group IResearch. "Tencent has an existing advantagewith WeChat and lots of users. It would be a challenge forAlibaba to compete in that sense."</p><p><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-23/alibaba-offers-instant-messaging-app-to-compete-against-tencent.html">Keep reading...</a></p><p>Read also:</p><p><a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/09/23/alibaba-pushes-mobile-messaging-app/">Alibaba Pushes Messaging App</a> (Wall Street Journal (blog))</p><p><a href="http://www.techinasia.com/alibaba-laiwang-messaging-app-struggling-relaunch/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=alibaba-laiwang-messaging-app-struggling-relaunch">Struggling to steal momentum from WeChat, Alibaba pushes its own messaging ...</a> (Tech in Asia)</p><p><a href="http://thenextweb.com/apps/2013/09/23/in-china-pay-with-messaging-app-wechat-and-get-a-discount-at-these-vending-machines/">Pay Via WeChat To Get A Discount From These Vending Machines In China</a> (The Next Web)</p><p>Explore: <a href="http://news.google.com/news/more?ncl=d79MxcaKMBjl6lMpMbgy89538hUPM&ned=us">13 additional articles.</a></p>