Why does Apple want to punish Tencent? Written after the 5.5 earthquake at the Apple Store!

The App Store earthquake came and went quickly, just like all hot topics, but the inside story of Apple and Tencent remained unknown. Today I recommend an article to everyone that details the story of Apple and Tencent.

Everyone should still remember the big earthquake in the App Store a few days ago: on May 5, a global bug appeared in the App Store, and the search rankings of many super apps were reset to zero (including BAT, Google, Uber, etc.). Soon, the news that Apple and Tencent were fighting and Tencent products were removed from the shelves spread like wildfire in the circle of friends. Soon, Tencent officials came out to refute the rumor, saying that the Apple Store backend was upgraded and there was a problem with the logic. That night, the App Store gradually returned to normal. After a few days, the atmosphere was peaceful and the topic gradually faded from people's sight.

However, the calm on the surface cannot conceal the undercurrents beneath the surface. Today, with the help of new evidence, we will boldly dig into this inside story and analyze the reasons. Statement: All speculations are based on public facts and I am not responsible for the conclusions.

Some careful friends may have noticed that, although the App Store failure has been resolved, some abnormal phenomena have occurred in Tencent products. WeChat has dropped out of the top 50 in the free list (44th as of press time). You know, it was in the top 10 before the incident!

In addition, there were also abnormalities in Tencent's "Quanmin Series" (to exaggerate, "Quanmin" can be regarded as Tencent's semi-brand word). When searching for "Quanmin" in the App Store, only one Tencent product can be found in the top 100, Quanmin KTV, which is currently ranked 29th. The search popularity of “全民” can be said to have been hyped up by Tencent. Before this outage, searches for “全民” yielded results everywhere for Tencent products!

Driven by curiosity, I searched for the brand words of the three BAT companies, and found that only Tencent’s brand words were dominant. There were only four Tencent products in the Top 50, namely Tencent Video at No. 2, Tencent News at No. 4, Tencent Sports at No. 24, and Tencent WiFi Manager at No. 47. In comparison, Baidu is better, with 4 of its own products in the top 10, while Alibaba is the best protected, with all of its top 5 products being its own. I can't help but wonder, why doesn't Tencent complain, or is there no way to complain?

If this is not enough to prove that the quarrel has become public, you can look at the following evidence:

1. In 2012, Apple deeply integrated Sina Weibo and Baidu search services and released them in iOS6 in September;

2. In the second half of 2015, Apple announced that it would set Baidu as the default search engine for Siri;

3. In September 2012, Youku announced a partnership with Apple, becoming the third local Internet service provider to be integrated into iOS after Sina and Baidu; in October 2015, Youku was acquired by Alibaba;

4. In the second half of 2014, Apple and Alibaba frequently contacted each other to discuss cooperation between Apple Pay and Alipay.

Doesn't anyone find it weird? Tencent, which owns QQ and WeChat, cannot even get Apple's favor! The hidden war between Apple and Tencent has been going on for a long time, but why is there such a big rift between these two giants that it has been exposed?

There may be several reasons for this:

First, software can subvert the inherent fear of hardware

Hardware manufacturers like Apple are naturally afraid of software companies with complete ecosystems and powerful social networks. Therefore, even though Facebook is much larger than Twitter, Apple finally chose to cooperate with Twitter. Similarly, Tencent is the Facebook of China, and WeChat has more than 700 million monthly active users. Such a behemoth has the potential to subvert the Apple ecosystem.

Second, Tencent’s actions in operating systems and mobile phones

BAT have all tried their hand at mobile operating systems, but Tencent seems to be the most persistent one. As early as six years ago, Tencent launched a QQ-Service with a prototype of an operating system, integrating almost all Tencent software services. In cooperation with Huawei, it launched a smartphone called HiQQ in December 2010. However, the system had fatal flaws and did not support third-party applications well, so it soon gave way to a new project, Tita, which was launched in April 2012. However, this operating system only survived for less than a year, and the project team announced its dissolution in early 2013. In April 2015, Tencent finally released a new operating system, TOS. As of press time, it is ready to release TOS2.0. According to the announcement on its official website:

TencentOS 1.0 has been updated 55 times since its internal testing in March last year, and the official and Deep Blue Studio have adapted it to more than 20 models.

This cannot but arouse Apple's vigilance. Some people may say: This is just an operating system, it is eating into Android's market share, what does it have to do with Apple? Yes, Ma Huateng also stated publicly in August 2012 that Tencent will not make hardware. But can you take what is said in the business world seriously? In fact, in March 2015, DaQ (Tencent investment company) launched a "Tencent Thunder Phone" with an initial price of 499 yuan. It was hard to believe that this was made by Tencent! However, we should not underestimate these actions of Tencent. Who can say that Tencent cannot threaten Apple in the future through the binding of "mobile phone + operating system + WeChat/QQ and other services"?

Third, WeChat’s application account directly steals the business of App

If the above can only be regarded as a tactical detour, at the beginning of 2016, Zhang Xiaolong announced that WeChat will launch "Application Numbers", which is simply taking meat directly from Apple's bowl!

When this feature goes online, many developers may face a dilemma: Apple or Tencent, this is a problem!

I even have a feeling that the application number will be launched in the near future?

Fourth, Alibaba’s promotion

As a payment channel, Apple Pay can cooperate with Alipay and WeChat Pay. However, everyone knows that these two companies are mortal enemies in China. If anyone says that Jack Ma is not involved, I will believe it if he cannot defeat him.

In any case, what is certain is that Tencent has already posed a real threat to Apple's ecosystem, and this time Apple has dealt a heavy blow to Tencent, and there is probably a fuse. As for what the incident was, we can only wait for insiders to reveal the news, and it is difficult to say. Looking back at Tencent’s response now, don’t you think that there is something fishy going on here? Apple has consistently stated that there was a problem with the service, without mentioning the cause. I checked the news from abroad and no one knew exactly what was going on. Why could Tencent give such a detailed reason as "there was a problem with the logic of the Apple Store backend upgrade"?

I think everyone has their own answer in their hearts. I believe there will be more big dramas to come. My friends, please move your benches.

postscript

The current algorithm of the App Store is extremely chaotic, and it seems that it has not recovered from last week's accident. However, based on the above facts, the judgment that Apple is quietly suppressing Tencent products should be correct. In this special period, all kinds of volume-boosting and volume-increasing methods are going on like crazy. Let us wait and see, and we will follow up the latest analysis in a timely manner.