Tencent looks to challenge Apple in future
Isn’t it distressing when you are taking pictures with your iPhone during a pleasant trip and suddenly a notice pops up saying there is inadequate storage space? What can you do? Delete some pictures? Not one picture can be spared. Remove some apps? All of them seem to be indispensable, whether it’s for car-hailing, mapping or restaurants search. For most owners of a 16 GB Apple iPhone, this is often a dilemma.
There is a solution. This week, China’s Tencent Holdings unveiled a new feature on its instant messaging app WeChat – Mini Program. The platform within the messaging app enables 846 million WeChat users to use more than 140 indispensable mobile services for everyday life, without having to download a separate app. While an app often takes up several dozens of or even over 100 MB, a mini program uses just no more than 1MB, which means a lot of space can be saved for other uses.
The gadget has caused a huge buzz on China’s social networks. Apart from saving storage, using mini programs is also convenient in other ways. All your favorite apps can be found in one single place without the need to download them individually.
But excited WeChat users soon found many bugs. For instance, regular app services are only partially accessible on mini programs, and many apps haven’t yet developed their own mini program equivalent. Also, to find a mini program app, users have to scan QR codes or search for the exact name, posing hindrances for a fairly new mobile service.
There are many drawbacks, not surprisingly, when compared with the sophisticated apps provided by Apple. Nonetheless, many people are upbeat about this innovation. “Tencent made it possible to bypass the App Store, which can herald the death of Apple,” commented a Web user. Interestingly, the day of the Mini Program’s official debut coincided with the 10th anniversary of the iPhone.
Tencent has much work to do to improve the functions of mini programs and to attract more users. But it’s encouraging to see Chinese companies are able to deal a blow to Western tech giants like Apple. Apple has already encountered many challenges in China. Its profits in the country fell by almost one fifth in its latest financial year, a Financial Times report said in October. It is probable that in the foreseeable future, mobile phone users in China need only WeChat and several other popular apps on their handsets. WeChat will replace a majority of other apps with features like the mini program and act like an operating system. Given the enormous number of users on WeChat and an average of 90 minutes per day spent on the app by each of them, this plan can soon be realized. The popularity of the Internet has brought so many changes to our daily work and life, especially in China. A friend of mine living in Japan was recently astonished by the ubiquitous and convenient e-payment in China when he came to the country for a brief stay. “In Japan, we still use cash and credit cards,” he moaned. Tencent Chairman Pony Ma said that his company hoped to connect everything. Isn’t it nice to see that Chinese companies, which are influenced by foreign technologies, can stand up and challenge their foreign counterparts with fierce innovation? Thanks to this, we can be connected with the real and virtual world in a better way.