
Asian and African super apps are following the playbook WeChat originated - thought
https://afridigest.substack.com/p/why-super-apps-are-proliferating
======
4cao
In China:

\- There is no single Play Store equivalent, so the barrier to make people
install a relatively unknown app is higher.

\- Phones do not come with Google Services Framework, so the barrier to
develop a networked app is higher.

\- Just like everywhere else, people will use whatever is available because a
suboptimal solution is still better than opting out completely from the
benefits these solutions bring.

I don't think in China specifically it's about low-end devices or data cost at
all. South East Asia - perhaps, but all in all the situation reflects the
structure of the economies (the prevalence of monopolistic conglomerates with
a finger in every pie).

Most of the time the most widespread solution is far from excellent because it
only has to be better than the competition. Even more so when competition is
limited by entry barriers to the point it hardly exists. So while the article
is a good summary of the situation, it ends up being a bit like wondering why
people use Windows.

Android is already one abstraction layer on top of another, there is no
intrinsic technological benefit of adding yet another one OS-like super app on
top of it, or at the very least any such benefits remain to be demonstrated.

~~~
swiley
> \- Phones do not come with Google Services Framework, so the barrier to
> develop a networked app is higher.

Looking at f-droid: hobbyists seem to do just fine without google play
services. I feel like this gives you a business advantage rather than a
technical one.

~~~
duxup
f-droid is a horrible experience though IMO.

I go searching and I can't figure out what some of the apps even "DO", others
are "Here is this app, you need to install these other things too to make it
work, also it only works with X, so maybe it will work for you I duno....".

Now I get why it is the way it is, I don't expect much more from folks putting
out software for me like that, but it's a terrible user experience.

~~~
stallmanite
Conversely I always look on FDroid first because for me the quality of apps is
higher and the level of shady BS is minimal. I only resort to the Play store
if there’s no open source alternative.

------
1cvmask
"Super apps" are just bundlers.

This is the history of software, and other businesses as well.

From Jim Barksdale:

“Gentlemen, there’s only two ways I know of to make money: bundling and
unbundling.” And said, “We’ve got an airplane to catch.” And we left, and
Peter Currie, walking out the door, said, “Those people are looking at you,
Barksdale, like you’re crazy. What did you just say?” And I said, “Well, best
I can tell, most people spend half their time adding and other people spend
half their time subtracting, so that’s what works out.”

[https://hbr.org/2014/06/how-to-succeed-in-business-by-
bundli...](https://hbr.org/2014/06/how-to-succeed-in-business-by-bundling-and-
unbundling)

Here is another presentation on "super apps" by Connie Chan of A16Z:

[https://a16z.com/2020/01/23/four-trends-in-consumer-
tech/](https://a16z.com/2020/01/23/four-trends-in-consumer-tech/)

Of course the largest "super app" is the operating system as it constantly
offers new APIs etc.. and devours more features by point solutions leading to
terms like being Sherlocked:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_\(software\))

~~~
zxcmx
I feel like OS as a superapp is an underappreciated concept.

Like the idea that fish don't see water. On one side we have WeChat, but on
the other side we have IOS, Android, and the browser.

And we're free... to install approved apps from approved sources. Free... to
view stuff inside a browser window that works the way the platform owners want
it to.

What if we could unbundle the operating system? I wonder what innovations
we're missing out on?

For example, true peer to peer networking would be nice. I don't think we'll
ever see it from Apple or Google. It's a hard problem sure, but it's also not
in anyone's interest to allow people to communicate directly without platforms
intermediating.

~~~
Ensorceled
People don't WANT an unbundled OS. What does unbundled from the browser even
mean? I can imagine my mom on day one with an unbundled OS ... "Well, first
you need to download a browser, I recommended firefox but you have sooo many
choices now that they are unbundled! What are those choices? Well, if you go
www.browserchoicesexplaned.unbundled you'll ... oh, wait"

~~~
nicoburns
> What does unbundled from the browser even mean?

I'm guessing it would mean being able to install alternative browsers. Which
is possible on most OS's, but not iOS.

~~~
Ensorceled
That's a pretty useless definition of "bundling" though, since it only applies
to ONE popular OS and, you CAN install alternative browsers (I use firefox),
developers just have to use the iOS browser stack. You can share bookmarks,
etc.etc. with their non iOS installations on other platforms.

~~~
nicoburns
It's a pretty important one. iOS's lack of support is the main thing that is
preventing "PWA"'s from taking off. They're already pretty viable on Android.
It's the iOS's browser stack that prevents them from being viable cross-
platform, and locks everyone into the the 30% Apple tax.

------
danesparza
This is not a good road for anybody to go down. It's been done before. My
primary example is the behemoth that is CA technologies:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CA_Technologies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CA_Technologies)

They started acquiring software in the 1980's. Software that would be
reasonably good would go to CA to die an awful and slow death.

They're still around. They don't own a single piece of groundbreaking
software, but they still make money.

~~~
kumarvvr
Haha. History of technology is littered with anecdotes like this.

Almost all big tech companies have huge graveyards of acquired software
companies, some for the products, some for tech, some for people.

The targets are acquired, in-digested and slowly die. What is left is a lot of
millionaires / billionaires who move on to other big things, a lot of half-
baked tech / feature stuff, a lot of wasted potential.

------
kumarvvr
While the trend is obvious, these types of super apps are neither desirable
nor user centric.

They are hot-spots of monopolies, censorship and are front-line enemies for
democracies. Especially if they include social / news / events / groups stuff.

I wish, there are more apps, bound together with integration mechanisms
(loosely coupled, high cohesion) rather than one super app.

Unfortunately, the whole world is moving towards super apps. Google / Amazon /
FB / Apple are all doing Commerce / Banking / Products / Entertainment /
Internet Services / Cloud Computing / News & Information / Social at the same
time. (There may be some exceptions, like Apple not doing commerce like
Amazon)

I guess business moves in circles. There was consolidation in times of
Standard Oil (or steel, I don't recall), where controlling everything in every
vertical is the game, then business moved towards a more distributed services
type structures, then we are witnessing another round of consolidation.

Across all sectors, this is more pronounced in US, a handful of companies
directly / indirectly control huge aspects of an individuals life.

Unfortunate.

~~~
ramraj07
I'm in India now, and I don't see these super apps as monopolies , at least
not yet. You can pay bills, recharge your mobiles and book tickets among other
things using a bunch of super apps without any exclusive lock-in. The
government did one good thing making a commoditized payment API enabling
seamless transfer of money between services. Thus the apps compete on UX and
fees and it really shows. Getting stuff done through my mobile in India is an
order of magnitude less painful than anything I experienced in the US.

------
kosmischemusik
In India, there isn't a super app just yet although there are multiple players
trying to build it. Paytm: Alibaba has invested PhonePe: Acquired by Walmart
(along with Flipkart)

Google Pay has opened its platform to select companies to offer their
services: food ordering, investment products etc

Facebook invested in India's largest telecom network Jio (owned by Reliance
which is India's largest listed company) and there are indications that they
are building a super app with OTT, e-commerce, grocery etc as offerings.

------
waltpad
My understanding is that people want integration: being able to use their
favorite platforms so that it's easy to share and connect data between them,
and what the user already has on their device(s).

As I understand it, nowadays OS shells do provide something like that, by
having a smart indexing and search tool available. A "super app" seems to be
another way to provide that consolidation, but is there more to it than
indexing?

A user is basically having a chat with their device. The UI is the language
available for the user to form queries. The more flexible the language, the
more the user may express complex queries. But users don't really want to
learn a complex language, they want something either "intuitive" or matching
their interests from the beginning (ie, opening up the search possibilities,
or narrowing down to a usable set of targets). Because intuition is only made
from analogies of accumulated knowledge, the former can only be constructed by
having the app capable of understanding (possibly a subset of) the user
language, which leads to Siri and the like. The later by reducing the scope of
the super app to a template of interests, which could either fixed (mainstream
topics), or determined from a set of existing models by having the user go
through a questionnaire at app install to narrow down their interests to a
manageable subset.

I think that for now the key factors are:

(1) consolidation of information, because the user doesn't want to jump
through each of their accounts or data sources to find what their looking for.

(2) automatic connection of different services (banking, online markets, and
perhaps many other use cases); this is only relevant for services which are
not equipped with a protocol to deal with a given form of connectivity.
Perhaps this is a generalization of (1).

(3) social interaction and controlled sharing of data

(4) security

Ultimately, the UI would have to become some sort of programming language to
really be able to fulfill all of the users wishes, but natural languages are a
poor fit for this task, and because of this the feature set of these apps will
always be limited, unless somehow Siri and al learn to ask the user to be more
precise when there are ambiguities (not unlike the dialogue that exists
between a programmer and a compiler). Also, speaking to your app is not really
a secure way of interacting with it, unless you're alone when doing it, and
you never leave your device.

~~~
waltpad
Perhaps a few precisions:

I don't claim to be capable of producing the software that is discussed, I'm
merely stating my opinion on the topic. Most likely my view on this is skewed
and not deep enough to be qualified as insightful. I feel that the work done
on all these applications are already quite a feat, but I also remember seeing
hard critics about Siri, Cortana and these solutions when they are quite
difficult to get to the level they've reached. Yet, I also think that there is
still a long way until they really become good assistants. The other way I
discussed - which is these super apps - in my opinion require quite a bit of
customizability to get out of the dashboard trench, but since I don't believe
to have an accurate view of what they are capable of these days, you probably
want to take all of that with a large grain of salt.

------
raindropm
My Asian company have this kind of super apps as highlight product, the "hub"
of everything imaginable. I hates it with the bottom of my heart.

I think super apps can be good, useful and fast if made well, but most of the
time it's slow, bloat, messy, cluttered, etc. - seriously, no amount of
negative adjectives can describe this kind of abomination of app. I feel bad
for our users - our exe seems to like it though...I guess they never use it.

------
jbverschoor
It's simple.. You have automatic: authentication, payments, linked messages
and everything. AND you don't have to download anything.

So all the usual crap is available, and you can simply use the application
part of an app.

luckily apple will also provide app-snippets.. Unfortunately, authentication
is still not fixed

------
cwxm
This immediately made me think of the Unix philosophy (Do one thing well and
provide the right way for other tools to connect to the output or pipe in
input) vs the Emacs way (Operating System within an Operating System).

If we frame it this way, I think it helps us understand better the pros and
cons of each, and importantly that they appeal to different type of folks
depending on their use cases.

For e.g., one of the main appeals of Emacs is that it's easier to combine
functionalities across mini-tools within Emacs than in Vim. However, it also
means that when building one of these mini-tools, you have to have awareness
of all other mini-tools in the system, and integrate with them properly, which
makes the cost of building much higher vs Vim.

------
nsoonhui
One crucial difference between China and other western countries is that,
China government won't try to break WeChat up in the name of antitrust or anti
monopoly.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Is that because China's government has direct access to the data in WeChat?

I mean the US government has that as well with Google and FB and co (see
Snowden revelations), but apparently not as much as they'd like.

~~~
JoeSmithson
What part of the Snowden revelations showed that the US government has "direct
access" to Facebook and Google data?

~~~
_iyig
>The NSA's top-secret black budget, obtained from Snowden by The Washington
Post, exposed the successes and failures of the 16 spy agencies comprising the
U.S. intelligence community, and revealed that the NSA was paying U.S. private
tech companies for clandestine access to their communications networks.

>The NSA was shown to be secretly accessing Yahoo and Google data centers to
collect information from hundreds of millions of account holders worldwide by
tapping undersea cables using the MUSCULAR surveillance program.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Revelations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Revelations)

~~~
JoeSmithson
These two quotes refer to different things. The first refers to PRISM, which
gives the US a privileged position as it involves companies bound by US law,
however, all participating companies denied it involved direct access to their
data. See the quotes in the wiki article
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#I...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_\(surveillance_program\)#Initial_public_statements)

From the slides; it appears it works by the agencies (via the FBI DITU)
sending the cooperating company a selector (e.g. email address), and then
those companies sending back the actual material (e.g. emails);

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#/...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_\(surveillance_program\)#/media/File:Prism-
slide-7.jpg)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#/...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_\(surveillance_program\)#/media/File:Prism-
slide-6.jpg)

From transparency reports it is clear that the receiving company can see how
many selectors are coming in and how much data is being "exfiltrated" under
this scheme (and it is roughly 10,000 targets).

\---

The second quote refers to a program of passive surveillance which - while
probably the most underhand thing revealed by Snowden - did not rely on any
privileged position of the US government, and could have been pulled off by an
adversarial nation as well. It didn't rely on the cooperation of those
companies, and in fact they were outraged by it and implemented encryption in
an attempt to thwart it.

------
mensetmanusman
It just goes to show you that phone makers are unlikely to be the best OS
makers.

Take this trend forward, a phone only has one app that a user clicks on to
‘open’ a new and better ‘operating system’ that better suits their needs.

Each of these app-‘OSs’ will be unavailable to other developers, so it becomes
an arms race.

The convenient thing for China is that the CCP picks which companies will be
winners and will therefore have the capital backing to compete and make the
best app-OSs to get a majority of users to buy in to. They can also build in
the required back doors to keep their population from getting any funny ideas.

------
toyg
The description of “shake” is something that I would expect to have “in the
West” as well, by now, but still... nothing. Connecting to someone’s online
identity when meeting or soon afterward is still somewhat awkward - either
rely on old-school phone numbers, which are long and error-prone, or on names
and usernames you can misspell.

I get that it’s hard to do this while respecting the more privacy-oriented
sensibilities “we” have, but surely it’s not impossible. Is there anything I’m
missing, like some cool app that teenagers use...? LinkedIn, for example,
should absolutely add it.

~~~
Ensorceled
"Shake"? You mean "bump" don't you? This has been tried numerous times before
...

[https://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/01/23/5-mobile-apps-that-
co...](https://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/01/23/5-mobile-apps-that-could-kill-
business-cards/)

~~~
toyg
Bump had bootstrapping problems (if I have it but you don't, it's useless),
and it was also not particularly reliable at the time because of hardware
quality.

To be clear: I don't think this sort of thing alone is enough to bootstrap on
its own in a market with established social networks, but I don't understand
why such social networks don't offer it as a feature.

------
ilaksh
I live in Mexico and recently discovered Rappi. It has delivery from the
pharmacy, AND restaurant delivery, AND grocery delivery. And live events
(which I don't know how that works). And some other stuff that is not
available in this area.

I think I tried to get Instacart to work before and I don't think they have it
here. So when I found out that the app which I already entered my credit card
into for ordering take-out has grocery delivery also, I was pretty happy.

But not having to enter my credit card or do a verification again is pretty
convenient. And like I said a lot of US apps aren't available here. So I think
Rappi is great. When it works.

I mean, just to clarify Rappi runs like a piece of shit on my phone, sometimes
completely freezes, sometimes does not deliver important chat messages, does
not seem to have tracking for users, has few restaurants compared to Uber
Eats, and the grocery inventory seems to be totally out of date.

However, it's the only one I know of for grocery delivery. And I know that
Uber Eats is screwing over restaurants so I would love to order through Rappi.
If they can make it slightly less shitty then I would be happy to use it more.
It's sort of like an Amazon for delivery.

------
Fauntleroy
It's interesting that they say there's "nothing like it in the rest of the
world" while KakaoTalk has incredible usage numbers in Korea, with a similar
number of capabilities. You can do banking, ride hailing, messaging, and even
more... plus the characters from stickers/emoji are cultural icons in and of
themselves.

~~~
thought
Hi, author here.

I'm a fan of KakaoTalk and I specifically include them in the visual:
[https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q...](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F41c6ff46-c8bb-467b-9f6d-446ffb6a9ba6_1012x506.png)

I think you're referring to where I quoted Ben Thompson, but he was speaking
in a specific sense: that there it nothing like WeChat in the sense of being
an OS for an entire nation (not simply being a super app). More context around
the quote is here: [https://stratechery.com/2017/apples-china-
problem/](https://stratechery.com/2017/apples-china-problem/)

The quote is indeed a bit dated though, I'll grant that -- is KakaoTalk that
dominant in SK now?

------
jpadkins
super apps == late 80's, early 90's walled gardens (AOL, compuserve, GEnie, et
al). It will be interesting to see if the same forces that led to the downfall
of walled gardens also effect super apps. I think two key variables are the 1)
diversity of user tasks / needs 2) amount of interop needed between services.

If it's a large number of tasks with low interop needed, I think these will
give way to unbundled open web / app marketplace style platforms. If users in
these markets have concentrated needs with high degree of interoperability
between them, then I think they will persist.

------
davidkuennen
I created [https://stockevents.app](https://stockevents.app) a few months ago
and it's currently undergoing a similar development.

It started of as an app for one use case (events around stocks), but due to
customer requests I'm expanding the use cases to many more areas around
finance. So I guess in some time it will be a super app for finance.

With each use case I added so far, the conversion rate, in app time and
downloads increased.

The key to it all it to keep it simple I guess and help users configure the
app so that they only see what they want.

~~~
TechticSolution
Congratulation for your new venture.

~~~
davidkuennen
Thank you. It's a lot of fun developing this.

------
digisset
Great write-up of WeChat's history here.

So Tencent (now as big as Facebook market-cap wise) owes a large part of its
success to an acquihire? Impressive.

------
nitwit005
WeChat feels like an odd thing to try to copy, because you can't copy the
Chinese government. They directly keep out foreign competition like Facebook,
and it's difficult for any small company to deal with the censorship issue.

You're much more likely to have some small scrappy startup steal all your
users elsewhere.

~~~
dntbnmpls
Good god in every other thread there is the standard propaganda about the
"CCP".

> They directly keep out foreign competition like Facebook

As opposed to huwaei that's welcomed with open arms in the US? Lots of
countries keep out foreign competition to protect their own industries. It's
the smart thing to do. We actually pioneered it in the 1800s.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism_in_the_United_St...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism_in_the_United_States)

So you can copy the chinese government. Not only that, the chinese government
copied the US, germany, japan, korea, etc. Protectionism is how every major
economic power became a major economic power. Airbus wouldn't exist if it
weren't for EU copying "the chinese government".

~~~
nitwit005
I never stated an opinion on the policies, and you don't seem to be saying I'm
wrong. I have to wonder how anyone can say anything positive about China, if
even accurate descriptions are "propaganda".

If you actually want to help China's reputation I'd also advise skipping the
whataboutism.

~~~
dntbnmpls
> I never stated an opinion on the policies, and you don't seem to be saying
> I'm wrong.

I'm clearly saying you are wrong with examples and sources.

> I have to wonder how anyone can say anything positive about China, if even
> accurate descriptions are "propaganda".

You can say positive and negative things about every country. China isn't an
exception regardless of your agenda. It's bizarre that anyone would even write
"wonder how anyone can say anything positive about China".

Well how about this? Their economic growth? Their impressive poverty
reduction? Their infrastructure build-up?

> If you actually want to help China's reputation I'd also advise skipping the
> whataboutism.

It's not "whataboutism" to directly refute your claim : "because you can't
copy the Chinese government." \+ "They directly keep out foreign competition
like Facebook".

You certainly see the difference between whataboutism and a refutation with
examples right?

And I'm not here to help China's reputation because I don't have an agenda
like you. I'm here to refute nonsense and bullshit propaganda.

~~~
nitwit005
What is my agenda? I'm genuinely curious. Tell me, based on my original post,
what I'm in favor of, or against.

------
sevencolors
Hey it worked for AOL ... for a while

~~~
im3w1l
Any theory on why it works for a while?

~~~
Slartie
It's a pendulum. It swings.

A single super-platform has the benefit of integrating several functions in a
nice package. But while accumulating more functionality at some point it
becomes too bloated, innovation slows down, it's a big ball of mud able to do
everything, but also bad at everything, at which point it is outpaced left and
right by small speedboats specialized on single functions, highly innovative,
but with less tight coupling between them. This leaves more burden on the user
to integrate them, but at some point the qualitative difference between the
big ball of mud and the individual tools is so big that users will gladly do
this integrative work if they can then enjoy better solutions...until the
individually-constructed "big ball of muds" made out of haphazard integrations
of many individual solutions become convoluted enough again for someone to
"professionally" integrate some of these functions at the current level of
quality into a new "super platform", and the cycle starts anew.

------
RedBeetDeadpool
Isn't a large part of the success of duplicate apps in china due to the great
firewall preventing outside tech from suceeding in chinese markets? Baidu is
just a worse google, alibaba is a worse amazon, list goes on, I'm sure I could
find ten more.

~~~
RedBeetDeadpool
To the people anonymously downvoting, that was a question. Is it or is it not?
Are we going to discuss or are we just going to downvote anyone behind the
security of our screens just because I’m saying something you don’t like? The
great firewall exists. China has a track record of duping products, not
upholding copyrights, and manipulating their markets. They are trying to
passive aggressively win an economic and cyber war, and if you want to pretend
it’s not the case then and pretend we are all playing by fair rules and
continue to preach fairness when there is clearly a bad actor and continue to
let the bad actor get away with it then we will all be worse off for it.

------
jowler
This is the normal business model in much of Asia. Large, tightly knit, near
monopolistic, corporations operate over many sectors. Classic example are
Zaibatsu of old and Keiretsu of today. Is it any surprise that the same
business approach is used in software?

------
6510
I find it fascinating how we can sort of up-scale things but never without
adding something weird that no one wants. Often there are competing formulas
that have us compare the drawbacks rather than the qualities. (The funniest to
me are monasteries running some kind of business. They have a management level
above the suits (so to speak) made up out of monks who care only about
quality.)

Something that increasingly puzzles me are the implications of having links in
a chain that either do not care if things work or not or are able to pressure
the rest into obedience though lack of skin in the game. They may seem the
least significant but have the most leverage.

------
bsaul
I still believe it's because of an original intuition everybody has : more is
better. It actually takes a lot of time and (collective) experience to accept
that 'less' is actually more. "emerging" markets will probably get there too,
with a bit of time.

~~~
brainless
More is evidently better. Which new iPhone or XLaptop gives you less? Or
focuses?

"Less is more" is just talk of company that want to not grow into monopolies
and I support that view. But users do not.

Outside of software each global conglomerate is the exact opposite of "less is
more".

~~~
freehunter
Chromebooks are less than comparable laptops that came before it. iPads are
less than laptops that came before it. The iPhone SE 2 is less than the iPhone
11 which came before it. The MacBook was less than the MacBook Air which came
before it which is less than the MacBook Pro that came before it.

------
throwawaysea
This also makes me feel like there is not much innovation happening, but
rather just copycat playbooks in different marketplaces or niches. It's a
missed opportunity because different markets can inspire different solutions
or focus on different problems, but not if the cheapest and lowest risk path
is to do the same thing everyone else has.

------
bsanr
So, a tangential query: have we already lost Africa to the Asian sphere of
influence?

