Mobile Dev Strategy: Architecture Trends (Super Apps)

 Your Mobile Strategy and Super Apps

At this point, we've covered the development aspects and the organizational considerations which go into evaluating what mobile development strategy is likely to best fit your organization's needs and why.

In this post, we'll move away from development strategies and look at mobile app architecture.

This is the first of a two part series where we're going to take a look at some of the mobile app trends we're seeing in the industry today.  Primarily, in this first part we'll talk about 3 points:

• Current Mobile Apps

•  Super Apps
• Partnerships

• App adoption

Current Mobile Apps:

There has been, and continues to be the design philosophy that a mobile app should "Do one thing, and do it well!"  Admittedly, this is a very wise mobile app philosophy.

Typically, mobile apps have been purpose focused. ie: It solves a particular problem, or very specific and focused related problem set - email, health & fitness, password protection, etc...

Also, mobile apps must always be extremely aware of their performance and resource management.  This is enforced with some very tight consumer acceptance constraints which app developers must always be aware of.  Simply put, the mobile app needs to download fast and take up as little room on the device as the user is going to accept.

That last point just means: the more useful the app is for the user - the higher the tolerance the user has for it taking up resources.

There's nothing too new or Earth shattering about the information above.  However, it will tie directly into our discussion about an emerging, and what's sometimes considered an absolute contradicting mobile app architecture regarding what constitutes a mobile app user's will adopt.  

Let's first take a look at what a mobile app's capabilities should be.  The figure below lays out an outline for this:

While there are always exceptions, almost all mobile apps should be following these general guidelines on some level.  This is regardless if it's a focused single purpose mobile app or a Super App.

Super Apps:

And so we come to the Super App!  A typically huge mobile app that is almost anything but singularly focused.

OK, so if both a Super App and a single purpose mobile app should follow these exact same rules, what's the difference between the two?  What exactly is a "Super App?"

First, both type of mobile apps must try to be good stewards of the user's device and data resources.

Second, while there's no one specific definition, essentially a Super App is a single mobile app which offers a multitude of services to its users.  One point which as emerged within the Super App eco system is that all the services aren't necessarily "directly" related, but instead tend to fall under a very wide umbrella of functionality.

Let's give a simple example to use as a springboard into the rest of our conversation.

Imagine PayPal integrated all the following services (some of which they already offer):

• Credit cards

• Provide Loan through their app

• InStore payment - rather than piggybacking off Apple or Google pay - they took on the giants to offer their own pay

• Now imagine they bring in their own ride-share and give credit for using their drivers

• Add in travel and payment all in one fell-swoop

• Add in some massive spending behavior of their demographics spending to give restaurant reviews based on return purchases

• Throw in reservations accompanied with a financial deposit to ensure your table will be available

• etc...

You start to get the idea. Within this partially fictitious example, as PayPal does offer some of these services already, but taken as a whole, you start to see how a provider of a single service could expand.

Essentially, we're seeing organizations leverage the capabilities of an initial dataset to expand in unique ways - ie: Super Apps...

Depending on where you're reading this from may determine your level of familiarity with Super Apps. Why?

Because Super Apps such as China's WeChat or Alipay, India's PayTm or TataNeu, Singapores's Grab App (Which has the slogan: The Everyday Everything App),  or Indonesia's Gojek are some of the biggest Super Apps in Asia.  However, you don't hear near as much about Super Apps in either the EU or US markets.

Speculation as to why this is the case - a couple of reasons:

• More saturation from a large tech competitive market

• Stricter data regulations

Competitive Market:

Regarding the competitive market - is this to say countries such as China don't have a competitive mobile market?  Absolutely not!  To the contrary as a matter-of-fact.

What this is to say is that in markets such as China, there are restrictions on large global organizations' toolsets.  This includes large tech such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc...

This is important because as those large companies aren't able to penetrate the geo-political boundaries,  it leaves open internal markets.  Here, players like WeChat can more easily become the prominent chat app and expand from there into a Super App.

However, with Apple, Google, Facebook, and others providing a massive offering to their customers - seeing a single one of these players, or a new player becoming the prominent consumer option over all the others, in a much tighter environment - isn't likely.  At least it hasn't happened yet.

Additionally, Indonesia is another country with a huge Super App success story - Gojek / GoTo.  This started out as a ride share app and has exploded into food delivery, payment methods, banking, and is moving into health care. 

One of the methods they used to penetrate the ride share market was to provide loans to their drivers who couldn't afford a phone.  I'll give you two guesses who drivers wanted to work for...  

Of course, this gave them the leverage to not only have loyal drivers for ride sharing, but that same base was now delivering food, medicine, etc.  Thus, Gojek "knew their market" and this gave them a huge advantage to expand.  Would this have given them the same advantages in the US or EU markets?  Maybe - maybe not.

Regardless, Gojek is the prominent Super App in Indonesia and is contributing significantly to the country's GDP - it's huge! 

Regulations:

Regarding strict regulations - this isn't about Super App regulations where the US or EU don't allow Super Apps.  No, this is referring to personal data regulations.

Why should this matter more for a Super App than any other mobile app?  Simply put, Super Apps typically have an enormous reliance on user data - and a lot of it!

Of course this isn't to say the countries where Super Apps are currently popular don't have regulations on personal data.  Of course they do.  However, many of the countries where Super Apps are exploding may have data regulations that allow a bit fewer restrictions which lead to company's moving quickly with the development of their Super Apps and collecting user data to feed that Super App.

The Super Apps:

All this being said - Super Apps are coming to the US and EU markets.  Uber is likely the closest we have right now, but others such as Spotify, with its move from music to including podcast makes Spotify a real potential Super App as well.  

Of course, Google with all its services and data - I could easily see that Super App succeeding in the US and EU markets.

Again, Super Apps normally moving from a single service with a large user base  to building in additional services - I think it's safe to say Google and Uber both fall into this category.

The good and the bad:

As with all things - Super Apps have both unique advantages and disadvantages.  The level of impact each carries is going to be dependent on your organization's business and mobile strategy and your customer base.

Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages to consider when determining how a Super App may or may not serve your organization's mobile strategy:

Some Advantages:

• Users don't need to swipe through multiple apps to get what they need

• Users don't leave your ecosystem so readily

• Business partnership opportunities potentially explode!
• ie: Companies coming to you to have their services integrated into an app almost everyone is using

• User onboarding for new features & services becomes almost trivial with virtually no additional advertising or cost since you already have the user in your ecosystem

Some Disadvantages:

• Large amounts of user data in one place

• Become a huge target for attackers

• Enormous code bases

• May need several teams - each with different sets of expertise to make certain each feature provides the appropriate functionality, security, and user experience. 

• Users may only want to use a very small portion of your larger app and not have the tolerance of your Super App's large mobile resource consumption

A word of caution: Avoid the trap of going out and finding a bunch of 3rd party SDKs which provide services you want in your super app and throwing them all in like pieces of a puzzle.  This is a recipe for disaster!  Again, just a word of caution. 

Conclusion:

In closing out this first part of our discussion about today's trending mobile architectures, I want to elaborate a bit on each of the final points from the two lists above.

From the first list about onboarding - when diving into your mobile strategy, you will need to take into account just how incredibly difficult app adoption is today.  

The mobile app market is extremely, if not outright overly saturated with an average user app download per-month hovering around zero.  So, if you already have a user-base using your app,  making it into something like a Super App may server you well. 

However, for users not wanting all 5,000+ features of your Super App - this too is a real problem.  Though you may get some users because they want one of your services - you may hook them onto more of your services.  But if not - they will uninstall your huge app when someone else provides that one service in a single purpose app.

Like all things in business, there's a balancing act.  

So what's the balance between so Super App or Single focused?  Obviously it's different for every organization.  However, there is something that can help...

In the second part of this discussion, we'll address that point in a discussion around App Clips and Instant Apps.