除了模仿苹果,微信是如何在中国推出第一家应用程序商店的
市场回升的时候,每个人都是天才。“只有当潮水退去,”沃伦·巴菲特警告他的投资伙伴,“你才知道谁在裸泳。”过去三十年来,中国的市场持续升温,中国企业似乎不受中国境外发生的全球动荡的影响。这种情况一直如此,直到最近“苹果热”逐渐退潮。苹果公司17年来首次下调销售额预测,理由是中国经济衰退的“幅度”出乎意料.
纵使业余观察家也能注意到,苹果在中国面临的挑战超出了其对中国宏观经济的担忧。该公司的创新引擎似乎杂乱无章;就创新能力而言,其他来自中国的后进公司已经赶上甚至超越了苹果。
微信是中国使用频率最高的应用程序,拥有超过10亿的用户。2017年,微信开始提供来自第三方开发商的应用程序内“小程序”。自那以后,微信用户无需离开微信平台,就可以实现滴滴预约车辆,京东商城购买礼物,或者从摩拜租一辆自行车,用户可以在一个应用程序中使用超过一百万个其他的“小程序”。2019年,就在两周前,微信启动了一项新设计,改变了小程序的呈现方式。
咨询公司 China Channel 的联合创始人兼董事总经理Matthew Brennan在推特上说,微信为你的手机提供了“一个新的主屏幕,可以通过小程序为你的手机提供所有应用”。因此,它提供了一个真正的苹果应用程序商店替代品。“微信小程序带来的优势不仅是将应用程序集中在一个受欢迎的(平台)上,它的最大优势在于非常吸引资源有限的开发者,尤其是初创公司和独立运营商,使其把注意力集中在一个‘应用程序商店’上,”技术研究公司 Canalys 的分析师TuanAnh Nguyen在接受美国全国广播公司财经频道(CNBC)采访时谈到.
微信在三年内积累了100万个小程序,体量相当于苹果应用程序商店的一半,这可是 Steve Jobs 和 Tim Cook 花了十多年时间才建成的。微信是如何在短时间内完成如此之多的成就呢?
市场的反馈推动了小程序的发展,就像微信的许多发明一样。在微信业务用户中,最受欢迎的选择是企业主向消费者发送在线信息,如促销材料或折扣券。微信一直希望鼓励企业主使用小程序来提供真正的服务或在线交易,但却收效甚微。更重要的是,微信曾想在小业主中开拓下一波增长浪潮.
小程序背后的目的是降低应用程序开发者的维护成本,并消除消费者下载额外应用程序的负担。“如果你从头开始构建一个应用程序,你可能会花费70%或更多的精力来整理后端编程,这是一个最终用户看不到甚至不会注意到的操作。一位微信高管告诉我:“我们认为开发者应该把大部分精力投入到提供给客户的内容和服务上。”。“现在,一位应用程序开发者要花费多达十万美元来构建一个iOS或安卓两者兼用的应用程序原型。我认为,作为额外的快速部署选择,我们可以比开发者做得更好、更快。”
据《福布斯》报道,“与苹果的iOS应用生态系统一样,小程序是采用专有语言开发的:WXML和WXSS – 类似于常用的HTML5和CSS,但不兼容。”通过将常见的用户界面组件(如滑动、跳转到下一项或下拉菜单)打包到标准模块中,开发者可以更专注于构建内容.
当然,高级开发者可能会嘲笑这些限制,因为他们习惯了嘲笑任何简单易用的标准。他们可能会指责这些限制约束了他们的创造力,导致移动应用程序不得不采用普通格式。尽管如此,小程序的价值主张仍然是:降低小型企业的入门门槛,直接开启它们的数字化战略.
开放平台小程序团队的产品经理Chale Chen说道.
“我们有一位调频广播公司的工程师,他曾决定尝试开发一个小程序。基本上来说,他花了一个周末学习如何编写代码,并在下周一发布了新的应用程序。这正是我们努力实现的目标:消除企业家推出自己应用程序的障碍。”
每一个智能手机用户都可以证明,最终用户在某一天往往只使用少数几个应用程序。然而,我们大多数人都在设备上存储了几十个应用程序。根据市场调研公司 Localytics公布的结果,在通常情况下,四分之一的智能手机用户下载使用新应用程序一次后就将之遗弃。这就是为什么微信内的所有小游戏都被设计成无需下载或安装即可立即访问的原因。这些小游戏玩起来既简单又方便。用户可以和他们的微信朋友一起玩耍、对战,或者看其他人玩.
毫无疑问,微信实际上将脸书、推特、WhatsApp、Zynga、Instagram和苹果支付的功能融为一体。人们当然也可以继续争论:即使微信已经在中国证明了自己,但世界其他地方是会接受它的先驱性商业模式,还是会拒绝它的产品,还有待观察。然而,苹果有很多需要担心的问题:微信小程序的推出不再意味着是对苹果未来的警告,而是意味着苹果已经对其最重要的国际市场逐渐失去控制.
Howard Yu是《跨越:如何在一切都可以复制的世界中茁壮成长》的作者(公共事务类,2018年6月),IMD 的LEGO管理与创新教授。2015年,Yu被Poets&Quants评为40岁以下的40名最佳教授之一。他还入围了2017年Thinkers50创新奖,并在2018年出现在Thinkers50雷达名单入围了30位管理思想家的称号,“最有可能对未来组织的管理和领导方式产生深远影响。”Yu在哈佛商学院获得了管理学博士学位.
本文章最初发表在《对话》上
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