Has the popularity of WeChat reduced Apple’s sales?

A new survey data released by market research organization Stratechery puts forward a new point of view: the popularity of WeChat has reduced the interest of Chinese people in buying iPhones to a certain extent.

Ben Thompson, founder of Stratechery, believes that in the Chinese mobile phone market, applications are the most important, and operating systems are not that important. For example, WeChat is already ubiquitous, and can be used on both iOS and Android. Not being restricted by operating systems means that if Chinese consumers like an application, giving up the iPhone will not cause big trouble.

In fact, after WeChat issued a "helpless" announcement about shutting down the iOS reward function, there have been many speculations about how to choose between WeChat and Apple. Although it is difficult to directly link this struggle two months ago with Apple's five consecutive quarters of revenue decline in Greater China, the continuous improvement of the influence of the super app ecosystem and the fading halo of iOS are worth thinking about.

"WeChat is a lifestyle." This can be seen as WeChat's official positioning of itself. Released in 2011, WeChat is the first mobile instant messaging application to integrate multiple services such as food ordering, payment, and games. The "Mini Programs" launched this year are still expanding its reach. According to Tencent's latest financial report, there are currently 938 million monthly active WeChat users on iOS and Android platforms.

In the "2017 Internet Trends Report" released on June 1, "Internet Queen" Mary Meeker pointed out that Chinese users spend an average of about 3.1 billion hours on mobile applications every day, of which about 900 million hours are spent on WeChat. WeChat almost eats up 30% of the mobile application usage time of Chinese users, and the usage time of WeChat far exceeds that of other applications.

The popularity of WeChat reflects consumers' deep dependence on it. From Stratechery's report, we can see that such super applications are weakening domestic consumers' loyalty to hardware itself. To a certain extent, consumers are shifting from pursuing mobile phone brands to pursuing applications.

One clear example is that Apple has been losing money in Greater China for five consecutive quarters. In the second fiscal quarter of 2017, Greater China was the only market in the world to decline, with revenue down 14% year-on-year. In contrast, the US market rose 11%, the European market rose 10%, and the Japanese market rose 5%.

Of course, in addition to the change in consumers' mindsets about mobile phone brands, there are other complex reasons for Apple's decline in the world's largest smartphone market. As we all know, Apple faces fierce competition from the strong rise of local brands such as Huawei, OPPO, and vivo. Among the top five global mobile phone shipments in 2016, three are Chinese manufacturers, and their growth rate is much higher than that of other manufacturers. Local manufacturers have fully consolidated their products, brands, and channels, continuously impacting the high-end market and diverting a large number of users in the mid-to-high-end market.

According to a 2016 analysis report on user loyalty of mobile phone brands in the domestic market by Jiguang Data Research Institute, in the first three quarters of 2016, Apple was still the brand with the highest user brand loyalty in the Chinese market, but user loyalty declined significantly in Q3. In Q3, 34% of Apple users who changed their phones continued to buy iPhones, while this proportion was 49% in Q1. Of course, this trend is affected by the release time of Apple phones with fewer models and the peak and off-peak seasons. In addition, the report also shows that the second choice of Apple users for changing phones is Huawei phones, and the proportion of users who choose Huawei phones has increased quarter by quarter, and the proportion of users who choose OPPO has also increased significantly.

In this era, the days when a piece of hardware alone can win are gradually gone. In addition to hardware, software and services are more competitive. Although Apple has built a complete iOS ecosystem and successfully locked users in, native applications are not irreplaceable. At the same time, the Android system is constantly being optimized, and the experience brought by applications is becoming more mature and richer.

According to Li Rui, a senior analyst at Sino, when consumers choose mobile phones, they consider price, appearance and functions more than operating systems and applications. Although the Android and Apple operating systems are born with different logics, they have the same goal, which is to become more and more simple, fast and secure, and will become more and more similar in the future.

From this perspective, it is not just the powerful WeChat ecosystem that has narrowed the gap between hardware platforms in China. With the continuous optimization of Android in recent years, the gap between Android and iOS is shrinking. As its user experience becomes more and more similar to that of iOS, consumers' choices will become less and less restricted.

Apple is expected to bring the much-anticipated 10th anniversary edition of the iPhone this fall, and analysts have given it high expectations. In order to start the "super Apple cycle", Apple seems to need more selling points besides hardware.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.