Microsoft could be surprise winner of Chinese instant messaging battle

In the acrimonious battle between Chinese instant messaging king, Tencent, and free anti virus provider, Qihoo 360, it seems that Microsoft’s MSN Messenger could be the surprise benefactor.

The Wall Street Journal’s China Realtime Report writes that since the dispute began, MSN Messenger’s daily signups from the region have grown from “tens of thousands” to “millions”.

As The Next Web reported here, the dispute between the Qihoo and Tencent began when Qihoo’s 360 anti-virus software began blocking QQ because QQ’s internal security software was scanning users’ hard disks.  QQ recently escalated the dispute by preventing it’s client from running on machines that are also running Qihoo’s software.

Regardless of who’s right and who’s wrong, it’s now clear that this very public and widely reported spat is damaging the reputations and the market share of both companies.  In the long term, however, analysts still believe that QQ is big enough to survive this crisis without a significant loss in market share.