The Chinese Superapp, WeChat

When people try to understand Chinese tech companies, they tend to use some American company as the “anchor” to compare and understand it. Use Amazon to understand Alibaba; Google to understand Baidu… That’s a good way to start, but only upto a point, writes Kevin Shimota in The First Superapp.

 

WeChat, the Chinese superapp (more on that term in a bit), started as a messaging service, so one might be tempted tend to use WhatsApp as the anchor. But unlike WhatsApp, WeChat started as a PC app in the pre-smartphone era. Over time, WeChat expanded to become a social networking app as well, so a Facebook comparison seemed to make sense. Then WeChat expanded into a way for businesses and individuals to interact (and buy/sell), so was Amazon the right anchor? Then WeChat added online payment mechanisms, so was PayPal the right anchor?

 

By now, it is obvious that no American company can serve as an anchor to understand WeChat. It is like a combo of WhatsApp + Facebook + Amazon + UPI. Plus, one can buy online games and many other services on it. All this made the app extremely popular. Who wanted to install a different app for everything? In turn, its popularity meant companies providing other services had no choice but to integrate with WeChat, which made WeChat even more popular.

 

That then is what it means to call WeChat a “superapp”, a single app that does many different things so well that people use only that app. WeChat does not make money via ads (it can take a cut from all the commerce going on the app). And since ads aren’t the source of income, you get hit with very few ads per day when you use the app. Fewer annoying ads further adds to its attractiveness.

 

This superapp status is what spooks Apple. In China, all one needs is WeChat. If WeChat were to remove its iOS app, nobody would buy an iPhone! In the West, such an app would attract intense scrutiny as a monopoly. In the West, people would worry how much info a single app has about everyone, their contact, their purchasing habits… None of those things matter in China:

“Chinese care more for convenience than privacy and security.”

 

China’s culture is different, the Chinese splinternet is different, and the Chinese mindset is different, all of which leads to the Chinese tech industry being very different, as Shimota reminds us.

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