38 min
Superapps: There can be only one Quartz Obsession
-
- Business
Apple’s early App Store ads famously proclaimed, “There’s an app for that”—anything you wanted to do on your phone, the company insisted, you could do through an app. That marketplace ethos still holds today. But when smartphones came to China, there was just one app that really mattered—WeChat, the self-styled “superapp.” In China, people use WeChat for just about everything, so why did the US and Chinese embrace such different mobile ecosystems? And why is the dream of building a superapp in the West so persistent?
Presented by Deloitte
Episode art by Vicky Leta
Apple’s early App Store ads famously proclaimed, “There’s an app for that”—anything you wanted to do on your phone, the company insisted, you could do through an app. That marketplace ethos still holds today. But when smartphones came to China, there was just one app that really mattered—WeChat, the self-styled “superapp.” In China, people use WeChat for just about everything, so why did the US and Chinese embrace such different mobile ecosystems? And why is the dream of building a superapp in the West so persistent?
Presented by Deloitte
Episode art by Vicky Leta
38 min