An app for everything

28 November 2024

In Asia, so-called super apps, which let you write messages, order takeaway food or shop in just one app, are extremely popular. But Western tech companies are also seeking to expand their range of digital “Swiss Army knives”. Read on for an overview of the all-in-one apps that already exist, what they can do and whether they might actually catch on in the US and Europe too.

When Elon Musk took over Twitter in 2022, he announced some high-flying expansion plans: Under its new name, “X”, the short message service was to be developed into a super app that users would never need to leave to get all manner of things done. The idea was for “comprehensive communication capabilities” to be added to the platform, as the boss of Tesla and SpaceX wrote on the occasion of the official renaming in July 2023. Users were also to be given the opportunity to organise and manage their “entire financial world” via the X app. A plan that Musk had already pursued in the early 2000s with his then platform, X.com.

The richest man on Earth is now considered the world champion of announcements, whose extravagant plans are often realised later and on a smaller scale than originally promised. Hardly surprisingly, X’s development into a super app is also progressing more slowly than planned. But the company has already taken first major strides in its chosen direction: Up to and including August 2024, X had been granted a licence to operate as a payment service provider in a total of 33 US states. If the other 17 states also give the green light, users will be able, among other things, to send money to other via the platform.

Musk is candid in declaring that major role model for his super app is China’s WeChat. Originally launched in 2011 as a competitor to WhatsApp, the app run by Chinese tech giant Tencent has long since developed into an indispensable digital Swiss Army knife for all areas of life in the Middle Kingdom. More than a billion users use the WeChat Pay payment function to send money to each other or to pay online or in analogue stores. Over the years, the company has invested in other large companies and developed so-called “lite apps” to integrate their services into WeChat: For example, food, taxis or cinema tickets can now be ordered without leaving the app. By integrating public services, users can even pay electricity bills and fines.

WeChat is the largest, but not the only super app in the Asian region. According to media reports, 70 percent of Japan's population uses the Line app. Line also entered the market as a messaging provider in 2011 and has since expanded into those business areas largely dominated by WeChat in China. As well as having a payment function, users can use Line to read the news, buy clothes, book doctor’s appointments and keep digital vaccination passports.

In South Korea, the top-dog service is called KakaoTalk, which was used by 47 million of the country’s 52 million inhabitants as of 2022. Like WeChat and Line, the KakaoTalk app, which was launched in 2010, also offers its users various other services – partly within the app, partly via linked standalone applications.

The downside of this sort of functional concentration is that the more indispensable an app makes itself, the more serious the repercussions are if it breaks down. When a KakaoTalk data centre caught fire in October 2022, it caused nationwide chaos and paralysed parts of the economy. Even President Yoon Suk Yeol spoke out, talking in terms of a “fatal blow to national security”.

Even though the app hasn’t failed since then, doubts persist as to whether the success of general-purpose applications can actually be replicated in Western industrialised countries.

WeChat’s triumphal march in China is in no small measure due to the fact that US digital giants such as Facebook, Instagram and X are banned there, meaning that they are no longer competitors. And China and other emerging markets where the super apps have become established are what are known as mobile-first companies. Many people in those markets didn’t or don’t have a credit card but they do have a smartphone, which has opened up the possibility of Internet-based payment for the first time. In the US and Europe, on the other hand, with their established bank and credit card systems, the need and demand for mobile payment systems are much smaller. New providers first have to assert themselves against Visa and Mastercard as well as PayPal and the like by offering greater convenience or better conditions and thereby gaining the trust of potential customers.

But stricter antitrust laws and regulatory requirements for banking and payment services are also obstacles to the growth of super apps in the US and Europe. In the EU in particular, there are strict data protection rules – not to mention the tradition of greater user scepticism when it comes to entrusting a tech company with all their sensitive data in one go.

And, last but not least, building a super app from scratch is a huge and bold undertaking with a very uncertain outcome. Today’s successful all-purpose apps all came to maturity in the early 2010s, i.e. in the pioneering days of the smartphone era, and were subsequently able to expand their already established user base with further offerings. But the days when just a few apps were on hand to respond to a growing appetite for digital services are long gone.

In the light of the above, Musk’s approach of building his super app on the existing user base for his short message service basically makes sense. But even though X is one of the best-known social networks, it is much smaller than Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and WeChat. The platform has also lost trust, advertisers and users due to Musk’s unsubtle restructuring measures, in the wake of which hate speech and fake news have mushroomed. Not exactly the best conditions for it to implant itself as a super app on the smartphones of millions and millions of new users and to make itself indispensable.

Moreover, the supposed gains in convenience and time that the all-in-one apps promise may be modest at best for consumers who have been socialised in the West – something that digital expert Nicolas Zahn, for example, is convinced of. Zahn's reasoning in the financial magazine “The Market“ can be summarised as follows: Competition invigorates, whereas monopolies make companies sluggish and give rise to half-baked multifunctionality. “Consumers will be happier,” the expert confidently predicts, “if they can choose from a variety of digital services for a specific task than if they’re trapped in an ecosystem that offers only mediocre services.”

In his view, apps for everything would be analogous to the fast-food delivery service from which you can get burgers and pizza as well as kebabs: There is something for almost everyone – but next time around people prefer to order from a proper maker of burgers or a genuine Italian restaurant.