Fantasize about the apps you use on your phone every day. Studies have shown Americans use an average of 46 mobile apps each month to superb a variety of everyday tasks.
Now imagine if you could combine all of those programs into a single, standalone app. A one-stop seek to socialize with friends, order food, pay rent, or even consult with a doctor — colloquially known as the “wonderful app.”
“We’re all sick of the dozens of apps on our phones,” said Arjun Kharpal, CNBC’s senior technology reporter. “And the appeal of the wonderful app is that all of the functions of those apps are in one place, in the super app itself. It’s convenient, it’s frictionless.”
Perhaps the most prominent warning of the super app is Tencent’s WeChat, which began in 2011 as a simple messaging app in China and today boasts more than 1.3 billion monthly energetic users. The popularity of such apps can be attributed to several factors, including convenience, seamless user experience, and owner behavior. While super apps have flourished in Asia, their adoption in Western markets, including the U.S., has been slower due to a collection of reasons.
“The regulatory environment in the U.S. today is certainly not as conducive to allowing a super app to develop,” said Dan Prud’homme, fellow-worker professor at Florida International University’s College of Business. “There are still very strong protections on things with peer-to-peer lending, data privacy, antitrust and so on that don’t allow the apps in the U.S. to quite thrive in the same way that WeChat could.”
But points may be starting to change. In recent years, more and more tech companies have set their sights on bringing the wonderful app model to the U.S.
Watch the video to find out what’s behind the appeal of super apps in Asia, why the U.S. has been slower to appropriate the “everything app” model, and whether we can expect a super app in the U.S. anytime soon.