Ignition Dimension (ID: chaintruth) original
Produced by Burning Finance
Author 丨 Yan Junwen
Editor 丨Rao Xiafei
In the Internet era, an excellent product manager has a great chance to open his own new era with the help of an APP, such as Zhang Yiming.
In 2007, Apple's mobile phone was launched, and its own App Store opened the golden age of mobile APP startup development, in the United States, formed the FAANG kingdom (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google), and in the Chinese market, it formed the kingdom of BAT and TMD, they occupied the advantages of talent, channels, funds and so on.
In China, around 2012, it was the golden age of APP entrepreneurship, and before and after this, many national-level APP was born. For example, WeChat, which was born in 2011, Momo, which was born in August 2011, Pulse, which was born in 2013, and Douyin, which was launched in 2016.
In 2018, when the middle-level leader of an Internet company in Hangzhou took the user data on the Mini Program to the investor, the investor said to him, "We don't look at the Mini Program, we only look at the data of the APP client, and only the users on the APP are considered to be real user data." ”
"In the eyes of product managers, there is only the measurement of customer acquisition costs and customer value, as for where it comes from, we don't care, but investors are very concerned." The above-mentioned middle-level leaders said.
But today, the golden age of APP entrepreneurship has passed.
According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, in 2018, the number of apps in China's mobile phone market reached a historical peak, about 4.49 million models. By November 2021, the total number of apps offered by App Stores in China had dropped to 2.72 million. Despite a large number of new apps, the number of new apps cannot offset the number of removals, and in October 2021, China's app stores added 110,000 new apps, but the number of removals was 130,000.
The game of the largest distribution center for APP entrepreneurship has not escaped doom. According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the number of game apps in China fell to 679,000 in October 2021, compared to 909,000 in December 2019. According to GameLook's statistics, the total number of game numbers issued in 2020 is 46.26% lower than the 1405 game versions issued in 2020.
"The most common reasons for removing apps are non-compliance, such as social apps that do not have the option to log off their accounts and the mode of youth, or they will be removed because they do not handle user complaints well." A social app entrepreneur said.
Strong regulatory policies show the role of "valves". In December 2021, 106 apps such as Douban, Sing Bar, and Love Recycling were removed on the grounds that the APP infringed on the rights and interests of users. In November 2021, the Personal Information Protection Law came into effect, which was regarded by the outside world as a red line between Internet companies and citizens' personal information. Earlier in 2021, Tencent, Alibaba, and ByteDance were required by relevant departments to provide users with a convenient option to turn off algorithm recommendation services, and to some extent, restricting the application of algorithms will affect their advertising revenue.
At the same time, the mobile phone market is still continuing to expand, according to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology data, in 2021, the overall shipment of mobile phones in the domestic market accumulated 351 million units, an increase of 13.9% year-on-year, of which 5G mobile phone shipments of 266 million units, an increase of 63.5% year-on-year, accounting for 75.9% of mobile phone shipments in the same period.
Although the hardware market is expanding, the application market has matured or even solidified, benefiting from giant Internet companies such as BAT and TMD.
Internet industry observer Wei Xi even pessimistically predicted that in 2022, China's mobile Internet will not appear a new product with a DAU of more than 10 million (excluding games), "APP factories have been put forward in the era of assembly lines, and the layout of large factories has long been completed, there is no need; small factories have limited capacity resources and are impossible." He wrote in the article.
The New Kingdom is strengthening like never before, and in contrast, the glorious myth of the mobile APP and the ordinary migrant worker product manager breaking the circle seems to be coming to an end.
After going through web pages and applications, people have imagined the form of Internet products to the metaverse and the Web 3.0 era. Beyond the entrance of the current mobile APP, people's imagination of the Internet has spread to glasses, cars, and even helmets, and to this extent, new opportunities and new markets are brewing.
However, the Internet, which has lost its innovative power, has not yet explored this new opportunity, which is obviously not an easy process.
Young people don't love apps anymore?
Li Rou likes all kinds of flowers and plants, travels to different cities to see flowers, takes pictures, and then makes them into booklets for collection. But she has a trouble, she can't all say the name of each kind of flowers and plants, especially when sharing with WeChat friends, she has to jump out of WeChat, use an APP to identify flowers and plants, but jump around, she feels the consumption of time and inconvenience.
In an accidental search, she found a small program, "no need to jump, after taking a photo of a friend, you can immediately use the small program to identify it, so that it will not be embarrassing to chat with friends." Li Rou said. Later, I found that many small programs are more convenient to use than APP. ”
After 00, Xia Xiao's mobile phone downloaded fewer and fewer APPS, she deleted a lot of APPS, "There are many APPS with small programs, no need to download separately." In Xia Xiao's view, various APPS make mobile phones more and more bloated, "many APP functions, small programs can be realized, and many APP downloads, not much use, occasionally used a few times." ”
There are not a few people who think the same as Xia Xiao.
Lin Lin after 95 is a shopping expert, lingering on major shopping platforms every day, since the second half of 2021, she has begun to change her shopping habits, "There are many brands that have opened their own mini programs, sometimes mini programs exclusive offers, the same style, can be a lot of discounts." "Lin Lin later found that sometimes some styles in the mini program are not new on other platforms." A lot of my friends have started buying things on mini programs. ”
In fact, more and more young people are beginning to prefer mini programs instead of downloading various apps, and these young people, especially the young people of Generation Z, have become a key variable in the development of apps.
Dai Bin, head of APP Annie Greater China, said in a public sharing, "Generation Z is not playing games to play games, using shopping apps is not for shopping, and using financial apps is not for saving money and managing money." They have their own demands, pursuing visual experiences, social experiences, and trendy experiences. ”
This means that the channelization and tool attributes of the APP are more obvious, and it also means that the APP can be replaced.
In 2017, WeChat launched a Mini Program, and Zhang Xiaolong concluded that WeChat Mini Programs do not need to be installed, within reach, used up, and uninstalled. This is in line with Zhang Xiaolong's product concept of "use up and go".
"In essence, we prefer that users can get services more quickly in the smartphone, but his experience is much better than the website, and his degree of trouble is much better than downloading an APP, it is not as troublesome as downloading an APP, this is the positioning of the small program." Zhang Xiaolong said publicly.
In the third quarter of 2021, the number of app installs per capita of mobile netizens remained stable at 66, an increase of 10 over the same period in 2020. The more services provided by the APP, the more memory it occupies, the higher the memory and performance requirements of the corresponding mobile phone, which makes the cost and price of some mobile phones also rise.
The Applet tries to solve this problem. For example, many merchants have developed their own mini programs, which are installed in WeChat.
In 2021, beauty brand Watsons launched a number of sets of lightbox advertisements in the Beijing subway, which read " Carefully selected for fear of fakes Watsons Mini Program, one-click cross-border, beauty and skin care genuine products at your disposal", to the Mini Program drainage instead of Tmall stores or Douyin stores, which represents the merchants' deep insight into the trend.
With the instant messaging function and the circle of friends social function, coupled with WeChat pay, the Mini Program transaction is becoming more and more exuberant. The "White Paper on the Development of mini programs in the first half of 2021" released by the Aladdin Research Institute predicts that the GMV of mini programs in 2021 or more than 3 trillion yuan, this data is similar to JD.com, Jingdong 2.6 trillion yuan of GMV in 2020, more than Pinduoduo's 1.7 trillion yuan.
In the 2022 WeChat open class, Zeng Ming, head of the WeChat open platform, said that in 2021, the daily active number of Mini Programs exceeded 450 million, the number of active Mini Programs increased by 41% year-on-year, and the average number of daily uses increased by 32% year-on-year.
However, doing WeChat Mini Programs is not a stable profit, it is built on the WeChat ecology, must comply with WeChat rules and regulations, "Mini Programs are too many, zero tolerance for acts that infringe on the interests of users, so it compresses the space for exertion." A small program developer said.
In fact, not only small programs, but also "shared documents" are also beginning to play an important role among young people. In 2021, many people have been exposed to Henan disaster relief information and double 11 shopping guides through the "Tencent Documents" circulating in the circle of friends and WeChat groups. These documents are similar to Wikipedia's pattern, initiated by a single user, but edited by anyone, such as adding or correcting information.
APP entrepreneurship is no longer good business
"APP is not so important anymore, there are many forms to replace." This also makes APP entrepreneurship no longer a good business.
In 2019, Li Wei left a marriage company and developed a marriage app. In the second month of entrepreneurship, I encountered the outbreak of the new crown epidemic and went to the company to develop products against the epidemic lockdown.
"My entrepreneurship this time is still in the game, and it is still too early to talk about success." Li Wei said. "It's been a really hard 3 years."
In Li Wei's view, the reason why it is getting more and more difficult is because CAC (user acquisition costs) are getting higher and higher.
The logic of a successful entrepreneurial project is that in addition to the positive unit economic model (UE), it must also ensure that the customer lifetime value (LTV) must be greater than the user acquisition cost (CAC). This truth is easy to understand, if the user acquisition cost is too high, high enough to be greater than the customer's lifetime value, then get one more user, you will lose more.
"In this case, the logic of entrepreneurship must not be true." Li Wei told Burning Finance that the reason why the cost of customer acquisition remains high is because the cost of traffic is getting higher and higher.
The new APP no longer believes in CPA (pay by registration), believes in CPS (pay commission by transaction), for example, in the developed APP, if there is a registration to become a VIP, it will give the channel a 90% share, if it becomes a diamond, it will be divided into 30% to the channel. "Now the APP is actually working for channels, especially large companies, and can only make small money."
Li Wei's startup currently consumes more than 1.2 million yuan per month online, accounting for 60% of the total cost. According to his calculations, online 15 yuan for a user, while offline is about 9 yuan, their strategy in 2021 is to shift to offline customer acquisition.
However, Li Wei said that when the Internet manufacturers develop and popularize the entire market, they will also leave opportunities for segmentation, and these opportunities allow some APP entrepreneurs to take advantage of, "but to make a lot of money or want to quickly get rich and free, this opportunity is gone." ”
"I used to do a blind date APP in Shenzhen, burned more than 1 million yuan, but did not run out, and now the servers are retired, and I have changed careers to sell alcohol." Another entrepreneur also looked at the popularity of APP entrepreneurship, but the money burned out, the industry did not succeed, and he finally chose to change careers.
He blamed the failure on burning money too slowly and making decisions that dragged on. "Some marriage and love APP to sweep the street, pull people's heads, 5 yuan 1, too much money, I thought at that time, wait for everyone to burn almost again, in fact, at that time, the user already had a higher subsidy expectations." Said the entrepreneur.
In the eyes of many entrepreneurs, the best way out of APP entrepreneurship is to attract the attention of large Internet companies and sell them to large manufacturers. But the road is being blocked.
In the 2010s, making an APP in the Internet industry was the dream of many product managers, connecting supply production and user consumption, creating new market demands, telling investors a new vision, and then selling to large companies.
But the traffic story has passed, and the entire Internet market has undergone major changes, such as the strengthening of regulatory policies, such as the growth of the entire Internet user to the top.
"Tencent has swept very thoroughly on the social track, in addition to almost missing SOUL, other projects have been self-developed or invested, but most of them are self-developed, doing social networking, no one can compare with Tencent." One investor said.
In 2016, Alibaba acquired Youku to share the online traffic entrance, and in April 2018, Alibaba wholly acquired Ele.me for US$9.5 billion, trying to occupy the local life traffic entrance. Including since 2017, Tencent has invested in Kuaishou for 5 consecutive rounds, and everything around it is "traffic".
A founder of an AI company regretted not being able to catch up with this wave of enthusiasm, he told Burning Finance that when the mobile Internet rose, he was cautious, feeling that the technology was immature, the terminal was very poor, and the network was not good. At that time, I thought, wait for the technology to rise and do it. Looking back now, this is a very wrong decision, and the mobile Internet initially delineated the situation in 2010.
This window period is destined to belong to a few people, such as Zhang Xiaolong, who founded WeChat in 2011. According to data from the beginning of 2021, 1.09 billion users open WeChat every day, and 780 million users enter the circle of friends.
But the genius idea of the product manager is not worth the capital war. Whether it is the thousand broadcast war, shared taxi or community group purchase, people have found that the innovation of Internet product functions and forms has given way to the capital and subsidy war.
Now, some product managers on the internet are fleeing the cause they love.
In 2021, a product manager at SF quit his job to start an MCN business in Shanghai, saying, "This job has not made me passionate, all the ideas have been consumed by procedures, superiors, budgets, etc., and the position of product managers within the company has become less important." ”
Even the product managers of the big factories are compressing their dreams. Sandwiched between back-office technology and front-end design, they sometimes wonder why the world-changing gold fingers didn't fall on them.
Big manufacturers are also reluctant to do new apps
Not only are small companies reluctant to do APP entrepreneurship, in 2021, the market will see new apps launched by several big Internet manufacturers.
ByteDance, which is known as the "APP factory", will launch in 2021 in addition to the "vibrato box", which is lackluster on the application side. It has previously vigorously laid out Wukong Q&A, Fly Chat, etc. disappeared in the app store, even vigorous education has also folded, although Qingbei Online School, Guagualong and other APP are still in the app store, but you shoot one, GOGOKID and other products have been completely suspended.
The takedown of Wukong Q&A proves the boundaries of algorithms, which are not omnipotent, but a reflection of increasingly reinforcing regulatory policies.
In 2021, ByteDance made organizational structure adjustments, from the previous middle office architecture (technology department, user growth department, commercialization department) to business BU, setting up six major business sectors of Douyin, Vigorous Education, Feishu, Volcano Engine, Chaoxi Lightyear and TikTok, of which Douyin covers today's headlines, watermelon video, search, encyclopedia, and domestic vertical service business.
This kind of businessization represents the end of the past APP go hand in hand mechanism, and what comes with it is the concentration of superior resources to advantageous APP services.
When commenting on the cooperation between Meituan and Kuaishou, Pan Chao, an Internet technology author, put forward the concept that Tmall is equivalent to Taobao, which is equivalent to Pinduoduo to WeChat. The development and growth of Pinduoduo has actually diluted the commercial value of WeChat, for example, merchants may have entered WeChat Mini Programs or invested in WeChat advertisements, but now they will choose to advertise on Pinduoduo.
If you use this perspective to look at the prospect of "Douyin Box", it is not clear, Douyin e-commerce is rooted in the content information flow of Douyin, without the support of content, a single e-commerce model has been proved unworkable by the bankruptcy of countless e-commerce platforms. By extension, any functional extension APP that differentiates from Douyin must consider the risk of weakening the commercial value of Douyin.
But on the other hand, repeated wheel building is no longer suitable for the current market, interconnection, mutual open cooperation is the best solution. For example, Kuaishou handed over the things it was not good at to meituan, which not only solved the problem of kuaishou's supply chain, but also alleviated meituan's traffic anxiety. For example, at the end of 2021, Tencent Animation will authorize a part of the animation IP to be used by NetEase Games.
Other big players, Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, etc. will also be stopped in 2021, in addition to games. Tencent launched more than 60 games in 2021, and NetEase also launched new games such as Harry Potter: Magic Awakening and Eternal Destruction. In addition, Tencent also launched a "doX" social APP, but it did not trigger a long-term response. Baidu, on the other hand, took advantage of the "meta-universe" and launched the "Xi'an" APP; Alibaba's community group buying (Tao Cai Cai), Tao Te, etc. turned the focus to mini programs.
The biggest move of these giants in the product line in 2021 is to launch or strengthen the "teen mode" and standardize the algorithm recommendation function.
The loss of creativity may date back to the year when China's last super app was born, 2016. Burning Finance pointed out in "After Douyin, the Internet Lost Creativity" that after Douyin in 2016, a national-level application was never born. It also means that in recent years, the Internet has lost its creativity.
The reason for the loss of this creativity may be either a change in the Internet environment or a trend of platformization of head products. For example, the growth of Internet users has peaked, and the stock has replaced the incremental market. Wang Xing, the founder of Meituan, said in 2016 that the Internet dividend ended and the beginning of the second half of the Internet, and pointed out its 3 major paths, high technology, "Internet +" and internationalization.
Xu Xiaonian said in the book "The Nature of Business and the Internet" that the advantages of the barriers that are constantly accumulated on The Internet platform have made it more and more difficult for latecomers to surpass the head.
This is due to the bilateral market effect of the Internet and the Metcalfe effect, the former such as Tmall and Meituan, Didi Dache, the more the suppliers on their platform interact with users (transactions), the deeper the barriers; the typical representative of the Metcalfe effect is the social platform, such as WeChat, Facebook is often updated functions, add new sections, stimulate interaction between users, advertising, games, film and television into economic value, constitute a barrier to competition.
The above two effects mean that the current super APP will further increase its functions and try to lock users in the platform, such as WeChat launching a test video number in January 2020, Douyin launching graphics, paid live broadcasting, paid short dramas, etc. in 2021, and even restarting Fei Chat.
At the 2012 product sharing conference, Zhang Xiaolong shared its product concept, "never consider the web form, all considerations are based on app", "an APP only does one thing, a large and complete APP means total mediocrity".
Now it seems that new apps that conform to this product concept have been difficult to appear.
Whether it is Tencent, Alibaba, Ordance, in 2021, BAT, including Byte, has increased investment in hard technology, intelligent manufacturing, medical and other industries. For example, in August 2021, ByteDance acquired Pico at a premium of 9 billion yuan, which was founded in 2015 as a startup specializing in VR all-in-one machines. At the end of 2021, Tencent led the investment in Rock Technology founder and CEO Chang Jing's car project Luoke Automobile, with an investment of more than 50 million US dollars (about 320 million yuan).
In 2020, in Tencent's internal publication "Three Views", Ma Huateng put forward the concept of "true Internet" for the first time, "the development of mobile Internet in ten years is about to usher in the next wave of upgrading, which we call the true Internet." ”
From this point of view, the form of the mobile phone-based APP will definitely not be what it is now, and it will evolve, but this evolution has not yet had a clear direction.
*The caption and the illustration in the text are from Visual China.
*Li Rou, Xia Xiao, Lin Lin, and Li Wei are pseudonyms in the text
*Disclaimer: In no event shall the information herein or the opinions expressed herein constitute investment advice to any person.