Everyone who owns a smartphone is familiar with how apps work. They are small applications or programmes that provide a very specific service in an easy-to-use, easy to navigate way.
Whilst there are millions, if not billions of apps available since the initial launch of the App Store, they can be split into three groups:
• Apps that run natively on a device, often to provide mobile-specific features,
• Apps that run via a website, where the app download itself serves as a link to the web app, and
• Hybrid apps that can be either a web app or a mobile app using a native container.
An app development agency works with a particular brand or business to ensure that they have a streamlined, easy to use, easy to update web app that delivers for its customers directly.
However, the next great trend in mobile apps looks to push away from the simple straightforward functional nature of apps and instead aims to bring a bunch of services together using a single interface.
The earliest examples of these were created by Tencent, a huge Chinese development company that developed the massively successful WeChat “app for everything”.
Initially a basic instant messaging client, it has expanded to provide social media functionality, digital payment functionality, Voice over IP calls, AR, search engines and other functions in a single app, attempting to dominate spaces previously under the control of Baidu and Alibaba’s Alipay.
The latter actually started to develop a super-app of its own to compete, and the concept has spread, with Paypal rolling out enhanced financial tools, shopping services and cryptocurrency management into its app, and Facebook integrated a payment system into its already cluttered services.
The aim seems at odds with the initial ideal of apps to provide a single service well, instead offering a bundle of integrated services to a user and support them via vertical and horizontal integration, but social media services and payment processors are keen on the idea.
How far it will get might be tempered by the reports that Beijing’s regulators want to split up Alipay’s super app functionality, specifically with the intent of forcing Alibaba’s loan functionality onto a separate app.
