In the mini-app war between BAT and others, who is more likely to be the winner?

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summary:

Why do BAT attach so much importance to mini programs, why do they choose to make efforts now, what are their respective advantages and opportunities, where will this competition eventually lead to, and what does all this mean for users and netizens? When we try to answer these questions and string the answers together, we may be able to get a vague future for China's mobile Internet.

After the National Day holiday, 2018 entered its climax stage. As one of the hot spots at the beginning of 2018, mini programs also had a wave of intensive and big moves on the eve of the National Day holiday. In mid-September, Ant Financial CEO Jing Xiandong announced that mini programs would become one of Ant’s most important strategies for the next three years; just a few days later, Baidu announced that its own smart mini program had more than 100 million monthly active users and officially opened registration, and would soon be open to the public.

At this point, BAT has officially started to focus on mini programs. Although it is still difficult to answer the question "Is this the era of mini programs?", it is becoming a matter of course for platforms with large traffic to invest in mini programs, and no one is opposed to using mini programs to explore new business and growth possibilities.

The three BAT companies have different understandings of mini programs and are making separate plans based on their respective advantages, but what is the same is that they all place mini programs in a key position in their future strategies, and this new battlefield among giants is gradually becoming clear.

Why do the giants attach so much importance to mini programs? Why do they choose to launch them now? What are their respective advantages and opportunities? Where will this competition eventually lead? What does all this mean to users and netizens?

When we try to answer these questions and string the answers together, we may be able to get a vague picture of the future of China's mobile Internet.

How did mini programs become the main battlefield?

There are two main reasons why giants choose mini programs: to release pressure from user demand and to expand their own business boundaries, and the ultimate goal is to seize the entrance to the future.

At a time when the Matthew effect of mobile Internet applications is becoming increasingly obvious and difficult to break, almost all traffic and users are concentrated in a few top apps. This solidification is an ever-increasing and irreversible process, which basically blocks the road to starting a business based on apps; at the same time, due to the trade-off between app usability and bloat, it is difficult for giants to continuously develop new businesses to meet more user needs and create new growth.

This dilemma is most obvious in WeChat, which was also the first to start working on mini programs. As the app with the highest monthly active users and the longest stay time in China, no one doubts WeChat's product capabilities, but the large user base, wide age distribution, over-reliance, too many functions, and overweight products, these side effects brought by users' love have become a burden and shackle for WeChat.

The high level of user dependence makes WeChat extremely powerful, but this excessive dependence has also become a burden and hidden danger for WeChat. People send messages on WeChat, browse WeChat, live on WeChat, work on WeChat, keep friends and family on WeChat, and keep bosses and clients on WeChat... No other social software in the world plays so many roles at the same time.

Such multi-functional requirements would make any product bloated to death just by stacking them together, and WeChat has to find ways to continuously meet more emerging new requirements on this basis.

The emergence of mini programs can solve this contradiction very well. On the one hand, it can meet the new and emerging needs of users. On the other hand, the mini program model can also prevent the App from becoming more bloated.

In addition to the motivation of "functional decompression", expanding the boundaries of their own business may be a more common and core driving force. Whether it is Alipay, WeChat or Baidu, an important driving force for the layout in the field of mini programs is that the mini program model can effectively help these super apps quickly expand their service boundaries.

Because these super apps have no shortage of users and traffic, they are naturally able to attract many entrepreneurs to develop their own mini-programs on their platforms. Also, due to the size advantage of the mini-programs themselves, these ant-like entrepreneurs and their project scenarios have strong penetration capabilities, and can almost cover most of the detailed demand scenarios in people's lives.

Faced with the anxiety of the current post-demographic dividend era of domestic mobile Internet, all products and businesses are either upgraded or downgraded, all of which are seeking new user markets and growth points. Mini programs provide these super apps with a way to explore the market with extremely low trial and error costs.

If there are only a few simple driving forces, it is obviously not enough for Alipay and WeChat to position mini programs as one of the most important strategies in the next few years. This is also the ultimate purpose behind the entry of BAT, and even Meituan, Toutiao, etc. - to seize a future entrance to the mobile Internet.

Super apps such as WeChat and Alipay play a role in the basic settings of people's Internet life to a large extent, and gradually take the right of traffic distribution from the mobile phone operating system into their own hands. According to this logic, the mini program ecosystem is enough to help these super apps have the possibility of becoming the traffic distribution entrance on the operating system, so it is no wonder that the giants have turned this into the main battlefield in the future.

BAT's opportunities and difficulties

Although all companies are investing in mini programs, each has its own strategies and thinking. Faced with such a nascent market, everyone is crossing the river by feeling the stones.

In this battlefield, how is BAT's mini-program strategy progressing? What challenges are they facing and what opportunities are they waiting for? If we try to do a simple sorting out, perhaps these questions will have answers.

WeChat Mini Programs: Success or Failure Depends on Traffic

WeChat's mini-program ecosystem is undoubtedly the most prosperous in China and even in the world. Whether in terms of application ecology, user base or development environment, it is also the most promising one. This is largely due to WeChat's huge and endless traffic base. However, it is also this huge traffic that has created some difficulties for WeChat today.

Nowadays, data from many third-party statistical platforms of mini programs are showing a similar phenomenon - games and e-commerce are "occupying" WeChat mini programs.

Because of the dividends brought by WeChat's own traffic, categories such as games and e-commerce, which have short and clear monetization paths, have naturally become popular in everyone's eyes. According to statistics from the third-party data platform Aladdin***, games and e-commerce account for more than 50% of the top 100 mini-programs, while offline retail, catering, etc., which actually involve offline scene services, only account for a pitiful 4%. The popularity and craze of games and e-commerce have made many people almost forget that connecting online and offline and harvesting long-tail traffic was Zhang Xiaolong's "original intention" in designing WeChat mini-programs.

When WeChat Mini Programs first started, a large part of its efforts were aimed at what Zhang Xiaolong called the "long-tail offline traffic" market. However, the high threshold and high cost of offline channels compared to online channels meant that many offline scenarios that WeChat had originally set its sights on did not make much progress for a long time. After all, there is only one Mini Program developer like Mobike that has its own QR codes everywhere.

Therefore, as Geek Park mentioned in the previous article "A Microcosm of WeChat Mini Programs: The Confusion and Future of "The Car is Coming", in order to activate the mini program ecosystem more quickly, WeChat released a series of major capabilities from the end of 2017 to March 2018. The core of these capabilities is to open online entrances, such as adding a drop-down entrance on the homepage, relaxing sharing restrictions, etc., so that WeChat's traffic dividend can be fully utilized by mini programs.

These measures have brought the entrance to the mini program forward, activated the social relationship chain, and activated the entire mini program ecosystem. However, it is also these measures that have made e-commerce and games so popular, resulting in the current over-saturation of mini games and e-commerce.

Due to the attraction of WeChat's huge traffic, thousands of entrepreneurs have flocked in, making WeChat's mini-programs like a car that is built while running and cannot stop. WeChat is trying hard to grasp the direction, but where it will go in the future is no longer up to WeChat itself.

Perhaps in the future, WeChat will be able to find a way to balance this "top-heavy" online and offline imbalance, and then use the most advantageous online ecosystem to drive offline development. If so, the advantages of WeChat mini-programs can continue to be maintained or even expanded. But before that, being too strong online and too weak offline will always be a headache for WeChat, and also an opportunity for other competing products.

Alipay Mini Programs - A planned economy that is unlikely to become popular

The Alipay Mini Program, which started public testing in September last year, is closely following the pace of WeChat. Unlike the WeChat Mini Program, which is more innovative, the Alipay Mini Program is more inclined to 2B services, focusing on enterprise-level cooperation and access. So far, the number of mini programs on the Alipay Mini Program platform exceeds 20,000, with 120 million daily active users and 300 million users. Although the data volume is far less than that of WeChat, the Alipay Mini Program may be the most powerful challenger to the WeChat Mini Program.

The underlying genes of Tencent and Alibaba determine the strategic thinking and product logic of all business lines of the two companies, and this continues in the battlefield of mini programs. Unlike WeChat's relatively open mini program ecosystem platform, Alipay's strategic goals in the mini program ecosystem are clearer and there is more subjective intervention from Alipay.

If WeChat Mini Programs are like a decentralized market economy that attracts developers to freely play with potential users and traffic; then Alipay's Mini Programs are more like a semi-centralized planned economy with obvious official intentions.

Perhaps it was because WeChat had paved the way, or perhaps it was because Alipay fully understood its own advantages. In short, Alipay did not make too many detours and trial-and-error attempts. In just one year, it officially targeted its mini-program strategy at the two categories of "business" and "life services", without wasting time trying other areas such as tools, games, and content.

From this point of view, we can find a very interesting phenomenon. Compared with WeChat Mini Programs moving towards online, the current strategy of Alipay Mini Programs is closer to Zhang Xiaolong’s original intention of linking online and offline.

In fact, the advantages of Alipay Mini Programs are obvious. First, its usage scenarios are very clear, such as water, electricity, gas and other life services, and most users open Alipay with a clear purpose, which makes it much easier for Alipay Mini Programs to start cold. Secondly, Alipay has long established a "safe" brand impression in financial, transfer and other transaction-related businesses, coupled with systems such as Sesame Credit, which gives many mini programs involving commercial activities such as buying, selling and leasing a natural trust endorsement, making it easier for users to accept. It may be precisely because of the above considerations that Alipay finally chose the two focus points of business and life services.

But like its advantages, the predicament of Alipay Mini Program is also obvious, that is, it is difficult to become popular. First of all, it is caused by the difference in the App itself. In addition, the difference in the strategies of the two companies for Mini Program further widens this gap.

Because Alipay is more 2B-oriented, has a semi-centralized model, and has two tracks, "business" and "life services", which means that there are no games, social networking, and content. This means that it is almost impossible for Alipay's mini-programs to have a phenomenal hit. Most of the time, everyone can only rely on natural growth or official traffic. This will undoubtedly reduce the willingness of some small and medium-sized entrepreneurs to settle in, and the application ecology and development environment will be left further and further behind WeChat in terms of prosperity and growth rate.

In this case, the Alipay Mini Program may become very passive and have to face the invasion of more other Mini Program areas and service scenarios by competitors.

In fact, it is understandable that Alipay has chosen "commerce" and "life services" as its focus. This is also the right choice, because of the characteristics of Alipay itself, and because of the inherent advantages of Ant Financial and Alibaba in offline channels, business paths, and financial services. It is more rational to first play to one's own strengths and do a good job in one service than to lay out everything.

In the future, Alipay Mini Programs will inevitably enter more fields and tracks. Whether it can operate the current two tracks well and thus have the ability to expand its business in the future is Alipay’s current primary goal.

Baidu Mini Programs - Belatedly realized, the idea needs to be clarified

Baidu was the last of the three BAT companies to start developing mini programs, and it was only launched on July 4 this year, which makes it the most special of the three.

According to the data officially disclosed by Baidu, the monthly active users of Baidu Smart Mini Programs have just exceeded 100 million, and Baidu's "search + information flow" business logic has basically run smoothly. This is actually a strategic direction based on Baidu's own business needs. Baidu, which has just shifted its business focus from AI to information flow, naturally needs more service scenarios to help its AI business be better implemented and reach ordinary users more smoothly.

Compared with the previous two, the boundaries of Baidu's mini programs are more blurred, because Baidu provides global traffic for this business. Developers only need to simply change the code to allow their own mini program scripts to be included in Baidu's entire product line including Baidu Mobile, Baidu Tieba, Baidu Maps, and Baidu Netdisk; Baidu even supports developers to publish smart mini programs in other APPs.

But at present, Baidu's mini program strategy seems more like a plan that was forced to be launched temporarily, and it is more to keep up with the progress of Tencent and Alibaba. Therefore, at present, Baidu's mini program business is still in a state of unclear thinking in many aspects, including key strategic directions, strategic roles, etc., which are still very vague.

Originally, it was a bit far-fetched to put Baidu's mini program together with WeChat and Alipay, and there was not much comparability, but the belated Baidu Smart Mini Program has two variables, which to a certain extent gives Baidu more possibilities.

The first is "intelligence" . As we all know, Baidu has been working in these two fields for a long time and has many advantages. This enables developers to call on technologies such as big data algorithm recommendation, natural language processing, image recognition, AR interaction, and combine them with their own mini-programs at low cost.

The second is "open source" . If nothing unexpected happens, Baidu, which entered the mini program market the latest, may become the first company to open source the mini program. As early as the beginning, Baidu officially determined the strategy of fully open source Baidu smart mini program in December 2018. Now it has begun to form an open source alliance, including Bilibili, iQiyi, Kuaishou, Moji Weather, Perpetual Calendar, 58.com and many other apps have confirmed to join. In the future, DUER OS and Apollo will also support it.

However, although Baidu has played a good role in the "open source" strategy for PaddlePaddle and Apollo, Baidu is a latecomer in the mini-programs after all. It is hard to say whether this open source strategy can still help Baidu become an industry rule maker and thus catch up.

In the field of mini-programs, Baidu has slowed down a lot. Meanwhile, Baidu Mobile does not have any obvious advantages compared with WeChat and Alipay, so the prospects are not optimistic.

From C to B, the upgrade war of interface efficiency

Starting with mini programs may officially mark the beginning of the second half of the BAT battle, a battle that shifts from users and traffic to penetration and interface efficiency.

The lightweight and fine-grained nature of mini programs can help giants tap into more traffic and value in the existing user market; at the same time, the roles of super apps are gradually changing, transitioning from serving C-end users to serving B-end developers.

After the existing traffic has been divided up by the giants, the redistribution of the existing traffic is inevitable, and each redistribution of traffic will replicate the business opportunities of the previous mobile Internet. The "super App Internet" based on mini-programs such as WeChat, Alipay, Baidu Mobile, Toutiao, and Meituan is likely to become a new opportunity platform, and this time the distribution of opportunities will be wider and deeper.

So now the goals of Internet giants and super apps are no longer just users and traffic, but penetration and efficiency.

As a provider of platform services, super apps need to think about how to provide a better platform environment and attract more developers to create mini-program entrances on their own platforms? It is just like the competition between Android and iOS at that time, but the super apps that grew up from Android and iOS at that time now play the role of Android and iOS back then, giving birth to new giants.

WeChat's decentralization, Alibaba's planned economy, Baidu's open source strategy, and Meituan and Toutiao's covetous eyes. The competition for mini programs has just begun, and it is far from the time to talk about winning or losing.

This battle may last for some time, and as an ordinary user, you may not have an intuitive feeling. If you do, you will only feel that life with mobile phones is becoming more and more convenient.