The strategic partnership was inspired by Tencent's Weixin/WeChat ecosystem and its billion monthly active users.

Orange wants to double the adoption of its Max it super-app by 2025. To this end, the French group decided to sign a partnership with China's Tencent Cloud on Tuesday, February 27 at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

Orange will leverage "Tencent Cloud's Mobility framework and the Tencent Cloud Mini Program Platform (TCMPP) solution to create an open platform for Max it, enabling the integration of a wide range of mini-apps within its super-app." The aim is to enrich the Max it ecosystem and enhance the customer and partner experience for businesses and people in Africa and the Middle East.

Commenting on the partnership, Jérôme Hénique, CEO of Orange Middle East and Africa, said: "This partnership with Tencent Cloud is a key step in our vision to offer innovative and high value-added services to our users. Enriching Max it with innovative mini-apps is key to strengthening its value proposition, increasing its penetration among Orange and non-Orange customers, and amplifying our social impact."

Max it, launched last November, is a super mobile application that aggregates all the services offered by Orange and its partners. The French company aims to position its super-app in this part of the world as a hub for all mobile services. Deployed in half a dozen countries at launch, it will expand to eight more destinations in the first quarter of this year, before covering all the countries where the group operates before the end of the year.

Adoni Conrad Quenum