Apple launches App Store gift cards. Can it learn from Tencent to open up China’s paid market?
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In China, gift cards from various merchants are very common. Now Apple is also adapting to local customs and has even launched gift cards. What does this small move by Apple represent? A few days ago, the AppStore recharge card WeChat official account launched by Apple was officially launched and the first article was released in the afternoon. What is an AppStore recharge card? According to the official website, the App Store Recharge Card is a prepaid card available in a variety of denominations. It can be used to purchase the latest apps and games on the App Store and Mac App Store, and can also be used for Apple Music membership and iCloud. Apple fans all know that to purchase apps and other paid services in the AppStore, you need to bind a bank card, third-party payment, etc. However, after purchasing a recharge card, these steps will be omitted and users can directly use the recharge card to deduct the amount. In the official public account , there is a module for purchasing recharge cards. Recharge cards are mainly divided into five fixed denominations of 50 yuan, 80 yuan, 100 yuan, 200 yuan and 500 yuan, and there are also custom denominations of 50-500 yuan. Through WeChat Pay, users can purchase gift cards directly without having to log into Apple’s closed system to do so. Another highlight is that users can give the purchased gift cards to their friends. After purchasing the recharge card, it will appear in the WeChat card wallet. Users can give the recharge card to friends just like sharing articles. In the help module, there are detailed gift instructions. As early as January 10 this year, Apple announced that App Store Recharge Cards will go on sale in China. From now until January 15, you can pre-order them directly at the App Store Recharge Card flagship store on Tmall , and they will officially go on sale on January 16. The store shows that if you successfully purchase any designated card, you can get 20 times the Tmall points. On Tmall, there are two options for recharge cards: electronic cards and physical cards. The former has denominations of 50 yuan, 100 yuan, 200 yuan and 500 yuan. The latter has denominations of 88 yuan, 100 yuan, 200 yuan and 500 yuan. But there is no custom denomination option. Previously, iTunes Gift Cards, which can be used to purchase digital products on the App Store, were not sold in mainland China, and many users purchased them directly on Taobao. On JD.com, Apple also opened an App Store recharge card flagship store. Recharge cards are mainly divided into electronic cards and physical cards. But the exact launch time is unknown. In addition to the three major online channels of WeChat, Tmall and JD.com, users can also purchase recharge cards in offline physical stores. These offline distributors include 7-Eleven convenience stores, Lawson convenience stores, Meiyajia convenience stores, Bailian Group, Hongqi convenience stores, Shizuo convenience stores, etc. Why did Apple make this decision? Some analysts believe that this may be related to Alibaba . Recently, Taobao officially announced that it has received many complaints about App store recharge cards (iTunes Gift Cards), mainly including: recharge cards cannot be used, usage time cannot be checked, source of goods is unknown, and credit cards are used in violation of regulations, which seriously damage the interests of consumers and related parties. In addition, many disputes have arisen in the process of handling disputes, resulting in financial losses for consumers and merchants. To protect the rights and interests of both parties to the transaction and improve service quality. Taobao has decided to ban all Taobao sellers from selling App store recharge cards (including App store recharge cards in countries and regions around the world) starting from February 1, 2017. Since China's paid market has not yet been developed, many users previously purchased related Apple products and services directly on Taobao, which led to the rampant occurrence of the above-mentioned violations. This decision by Taobao can indirectly promote the demand for purchasing genuine products. Another more important reason is that software service revenue is becoming increasingly important to Apple. Apple certainly cannot miss out on such a huge potential payment market in China. It is an indisputable fact that iPhone sales are poor, but the performance of service revenue is becoming more and more impressive. Market research firm Asymco recently released a report saying that iOS service revenue (including content) has now exceeded $100 billion. This means that the entire iOS ecosystem's revenue will exceed $1 trillion this year. In the past four quarters, Apple's revenue from services was US$6.06 billion, US$4.996 billion, US$5.976 billion and US$6.325 billion, respectively. Among them, three quarters achieved double-digit year-on-year growth, which is indeed a good performance compared with the negative growth of hardware. During the conference call, Cook repeatedly emphasized the service business and also began to lay out related content. Apple announced earlier that its App Store platform brought in $20 billion in revenue for app developers in 2016. Cook also said in August last year that more than $50 billion has been paid to developers since the App Store went online in 2008. Cook also said that based on the scale of Apple's service business alone, it could rank among the Fortune 100 in 2017. What do you think? In addition, although Apple's service revenue is booming and China's potential paid market is huge, current users may not necessarily pay for it. On the App Store platform, in addition to games, streaming applications such as Spotify, Netflix and Pandora provided the greatest revenue growth effect in the fourth quarter of last year. How can we get Chinese users to pay for these services? The WeChat gift-to-friend function seems to bring a glimmer of hope. Years ago, QQ Music was the first to try a paid model, but users were not buying it. However, the "Give to Friends" function, which integrates Chinese culture, unexpectedly opened up the paid market, allowing paid music to sell well in this form. I wonder if Apple’s gift card can open up China’s payment market this time? Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising The author of this article @高小倩 was compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). 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