background
The homebred mobile phone manufacturer that dozen get head broken and blood on weekdays, finally rare ground united once. Not long ago last month, huawei, Xiaomi, ZTE, Lenovo and other mobile phone manufacturers jointly held the launch conference of the “fast application” standard.
“Quick Application” is a new application ecosystem jointly launched by several mobile phone manufacturers based on hardware platforms. Users can enjoy the performance experience of native applications without downloading and installing them. “Fast App” uses front-end technology stack development and native rendering, and has the dual advantages of H5 pages and native apps.
In form, the “kuaiapps” offered by the major handset makers are similar to wechat’s mini-programs, but with entry built into their own mobile customisation systems. Handset makers are clearly motivated by profit, trying to transform themselves from mere hardware companies into hardware, software and services companies like Apple.
Wechat’s small programs make the original need to mobilize the APP in many scenarios no longer exist. This is like cutting the bottom line and depriving handset makers of profits from pre-installation, app distribution, browser advertising, and so on. This business is a small part of handset makers’ revenue, but an important source of profits.
The launch of “fast application” also means that domestic mobile phone manufacturers and existing software, service providers have a certain interest conflict, such as Google, wechat, Ali and so on. Google is very tolerant of domestic phone manufacturers, and the relationship between the two is relatively harmonious. However, Ali’s Cloud OS is basically not accepted by mainstream manufacturers, while meizu and other manufacturers carrying cloud OS have equity relations with Ali and are not rivals. Of course, Alibaba’s Alipay small program and “fast application” is a competitive relationship, but its volume is much smaller than wechat, the conflict is not big.
After the launch of wechat small program, although the early stage has been questioned, but has been very stable development. Tencent disclosed in its 2017 full year financial results just released on March 21 that it had launched 580,000 mini programs and had more than 170 million daily active accounts as of January 2018 since it launched mini programs in January 2017.
Zhang xiaolong also said that in the next two years, small programs will replace 80 percent of the app market. If this goal is achieved, it means that wechat mini program has established a strong super ecosystem, greatly squeezing the growth of app distribution and digital advertising business of domestic phone manufacturers. As a result, the “fast apps” of domestic phone manufacturers are mainly aimed at wechat mini programs, competing with the latter for users and traffic.
Theoretically speaking, if mobile phone manufacturers can form a joint force, then the overall amount of everyone is still expected to compete with wechat small programs. The idea of “fast apps” is nice, but the reality is that it faces formidable obstacles.
Mainly manifested in
1. Benefit distribution is difficult, and the cooperation foundation between mobile phone manufacturers is fragile
At the beginning of the joint venture, all enterprises aim at 1+1 greater than 2, but they have different interests and considerations, and their opinions tend to be different in the actual operation, so it is difficult to form a joint force and finally become a form.
For example, Wanda joined forces with Baidu and Tencent to do e-commerce. The combination of three different giants looked promising, but in reality, Tengbaiwan failed. With so many normally dog-eat-dog rivals joining forces, the outlook for the future is even less rosy. Once there is conflict in the market competition, it is easy to affect the cooperation in the fast application, after all, in everyone’s revenue is still small. The already fragile foundation of cooperation could easily break down in an instant, returning to a state of war, or even switching sides and adopting Tencent’s miniprogram technology standards.
Unless they can take the whole business out and set up a corporate entity similar to UnionPay, as Chinese banks do, and let it run independently. In this way, for enterprises like Xiaomi that have done a better job as the first mover, it is a bit like cutting their meat and refusing to give up. If they are allowed to take a larger share, other manufacturers think it is unfair. And from the current situation, it seems that these domestic manufacturers have only reached a technical alliance, and there is no stronger intention of cooperation.
2, easy to be influenced by economic interests, excessive expansion affects user experience
The most criticized part of domestic mobile phones is that there are too many advertisements in the system, so that the spam congestion affects the user experience. It is not to say that the technology of domestic manufacturer is short of, resist the economic temptation of advertising income hard however. System advertising so, the future of the fast application is likely to follow its footsteps.
From the current observation, the mobile phone system in the entry of fast application is too much, and too active. Take Xiaomi direct service as an example, there are url scene (link launch), application store search entrance, application store classification entrance, global search entrance, portal entrance, browser entrance and other entrance in MIUI, and it is said that the entrance is still increasing. It’s like we want to keep our tools in place at work, but we don’t want to have them all over the place.
Many Xiaomi users have complained on the Internet that the direct service has been exposed too much, causing serious harassment to their daily operations, and they hope the service can be shut down. Domestic mobile phone manufacturers are difficult to do like Zhang Xiaolong’s team, keep the product concept of extreme moderation, under the premise of user experience first make it possible to go.
3. It is difficult to compete with wechat due to the lack of usage scenarios and user stickiness
It is very simple and natural to call small programs in wechat, such as friends recommend a good product, or see a group discount in moments of friends, directly click on the open. Comparatively speaking, similar scenarios are rare in “fast application”, which is its biggest disadvantage.
Consider this: do users click one step in wechat to open their own small program, or leave wechat to find the entrance and call the “fast application”? I think virtually no one would bother themselves by adding steps.
The high frequency of wechat usage still has a great advantage for users. It is not troublesome for users to open wechat easily, but clicking on other applications that are not commonly used is regarded as a high cost. This is also the reason why Alipay has no more opening steps than wechat, but many people are used to using wechat to pay for offline shopping. “Fast apps” will also encounter this problem in the future. They may have better products and functions than wechat mini programs, but they will not be able to change users’ inherent habits and win the market.
4, wechat small programs occupy the first-mover advantage, forming a certain competition barrier
As mentioned above, as of January 2018, wechat mini programs reached 580,000, with more than 170 million daily active accounts. The number of users of wechat mini programs has reached more than 400 million, equivalent to nearly half of wechat users have become users of wechat mini programs. At the same time, wechat small programs attract a large number of enterprise users and developers, for the later “fast application”, to persuade them to switch to their camp has a high switching cost. These first-mover advantages form a certain competitive barrier to the “fast application” of mobile phone manufacturers and increase the difficulty of breaking through.
Based on the above difficulties, I am not too optimistic about the prospects of mobile phone manufacturers’ “fast application”, do not think it can occupy much market share, let alone beat the good thing of wechat mini program. The likelihood is that they will simply agree on a technical standard and go home to their own business.
Of course, we should also see the positive factors of “fast application”. At the very least, it represents that domestic mobile hardware manufacturers begin to reflect on their position in the Android ecosystem, seeking transformation and breakthrough to strive for a greater voice and interests. This direction is obviously right. Even if it cannot knock down rivals such as wechat mini program, as long as it can win some benefits from the future application distribution and traffic market, it can be regarded as a successful performance.
conclusion
For our APP developers, we suggest that we should not be affected by the changes in the market, stick to the route identified by our favorite people, precipitation and progress!
If you are interested in small programs and fast applications you can refer to the following article
Wechat small program development
Wechat small program development < 2 >
In this day and age, as a programmer, why should I learn small programs
Believe in yourself, there is nothing impossible, only unexpected
Wechat official account: Terminal R&D Department
