App set off a "slimming" tide, it is time to learn to do "subtraction" | Q recommended

Author | Zhang Yawen

The mobile Internet has gone through a turbulent decade, and the most lively thing to say is the scuffle between major apps.

In order to attract traffic and become the first to become the entrance, enterprises can be said to show their skills and continue to expand new features for the app. However, more and more features, instead of bringing much traffic, the app has to carry the weight forward while becoming more and more bloated. After several big waves, except for a few giants that have successfully built their own products into super Apps, most of the products are gradually marginalized.

The data shows that only 0.1% of Top-level apps in the Store account for 55% of downloads in the entire Store. The Matthew effect is so obvious, in the field of mobile Internet, small and medium-sized enterprises do not have opportunities?

The answer is no.

The advent of the era of light applications declares that the battle of the second half of the mobile Internet has begun. Lightweighting may become the "second curve" and a new breakthrough in corporate growth.

1

WeChat Mini Programs have become the de facto standard for light applications

The mobile Internet field has long been looking for a technology that can not only match the user experience of Native Apps, but also has the characteristics of Web App retrieval and intelligent distribution, and has made many attempts in the process.

In 2013, Baidu first proposed the concept of light applications, that is, users do not need to download Native Apps, and they can directly search and use through the search box. Once the concept of light application was proposed, it caused an uproar in the industry, and some people even boldly predicted that light applications would replace native APP as the mainstream of mobile application development in the future. Unfortunately, due to many reasons such as imperfect ecological construction at that time, the "debut" of light application ended in failure.

The return of light applications to the public eye was in 2016. Zhang Xiaolong, president of the WeChat business group, proposed the concept of WeChat Mini Programs, which quickly landed in 2017. Zhang Xiaolong described the prospects and future of Mini Programs as follows: "Mini Programs are applications that can be used without downloading, which realizes the dream of applications 'within reach', and users can open applications by scanning or searching." Backed by the huge traffic and ecology of WeChat, Mini Programs quickly occupied the market.

Drawing on the successful experience of WeChat Mini Programs, in March 2018, xiaomi, Huawei, OPPO and dozens of other domestic mobile phone manufacturers jointly held a quick application standard launch conference and established a fast application alliance. Fast application is a light application form based on the mobile phone operating system, and the standard is formulated by the fast application alliance composed of mainstream mobile phone manufacturers, aiming to form an ecology on the mobile phone hardware platform without relying on any super APP.

For the development of fast applications, Fantai Geek co-founder & CTO Yang Tao said that he was not optimistic. He said: "The monthly active activity of WeChat Mini Programs has reached more than one billion, there are already six or seven million Mini Programs on the market, the developers of Mini Programs have reached two or three million, and the Mini Program platforms of major domestic Internet companies, such as Alipay, Toutiao, JD.com, etc., are almost all following the standards of WeChat Mini Programs. From this perspective, mini programs have become the de facto standard for light applications. ”

There are small programs and fast applications in China, and the exploration of light applications abroad is also in full swing.

In 2015, Google proposed a form of Web App called PWA (Progressive Web Apps). PWA intends to allow the Web to achieve an app-like user experience offline, interactive, notification, and more while retaining its essence (open platform, ease of access, indexability). Although PWA is based on HTML5 technology, it can get rid of the shackles of the browser and add PWA websites to the user's desktop, with an experience comparable to native apps. But the problem is that servers deployed with PWA require HTTPS, ServiceWorker involves many APIs, needs to be learned separately, has a certain threshold for developers, and on the other hand, its browser support is not comprehensive enough. At present, PWA has more applications abroad and has not received too high recognition in China.

After Google, Apple finally launched App Clips in 2020. The goal is to provide lightweight apps, save the trouble of downloading native apps, let users experience some of the functions first, and integrate into various consumption scenarios, so as to drain the native app. Despite the countless expectations of geeks, App Clips has not performed as well as it wishes, and has not stirred up any splash in the market so far.

Domestic fast applications, mini programs, foreign PWA, App Clips, or not, its essence is a form of light application, aimed at continuously optimizing the user experience and expanding the application scenario. As far as the current development is concerned, mini programs can indeed represent light applications to some extent.

2

Mini Program technology opens up a highway for apps

Although when it comes to Mini Programs, many people's first reaction is still WeChat Mini Programs, but as a technical form of light application, its value has long exceeded the original intention of "no need to download, that is, search and use" originally described by Zhang Xiaolong.

Mini programs are suitable for building a digital ecosystem, and the light application technology that helps social sharing and dissemination can not only run on the mobile phone, but also be applied in various fields such as 5G messaging, in-vehicle systems, IoT, and enterprise software. At the beginning of the year, the "2021 Annual White Paper on the Development of the Internet of Mini Programs" released by the Aladdin Research Institute said that mini programs, as one of the important new infrastructures of the mobile Internet, are rejuvenating new vitality and becoming an important position in Internet business.

As one of the new infrastructure, what are the unique application scenarios of Mini Program technology?

Talking about the use scenarios of Mini Program technology, Yang Tao talked about the original intention of Fantai Geek to launch FinClip. FinClip is positioned as a light application platform based on the mainstream Mini Program technology of the Internet. Originally, running small programs is the ability of technology manufacturers, because WeChat has not opened up this part of the ability, so for small and medium-sized enterprises, can only be envied. The FinClip Mini Program platform fully follows the standards of mainstream Mini Programs, and through the technology provided by FinClip, any APP can quickly gain the ability to run Mini Programs.

FinClip was originally born to solve problems faced within Fantai Geek. Initially, fantay geek's development team used a native development approach. When it comes to app development, IOS and Android systems usually require two completely different teams, resulting in high development costs, not only that, but every time even a small bug is fixed, it is necessary to recompile, package, regression test, apply to the app store for listing, and get approved for several days, resulting in inefficiencies. In this situation, Fantai Geek began to think, is there a way to achieve rapid development, iteration, and reduce development costs? Soon, Fantai Geeks focused on lightweight, simple mini program technology.

The solution is to use Mini Program technology to turn each functional module into an independent Mini Program when developing an App, so that it has an independent life cycle and can be managed independently. The advantage of this is that each mini program upgrade does not affect other functions, just like Lego blocks, the parts are loosely coupled and do not interfere with each other. In addition, the use of WeChat Mini Program standards for development, the threshold for developers is also lower, developers do not need to re-learn a new set of cross-end technology, easier to get started, for enterprises to employ lower costs.

After the success of internal practice, Fantai Geek quickly "opened" this ability to enterprises. Yang Tao summarized the use scenarios of the FinClip light application platform into the following three points.

First, for apps that already have a certain amount of traffic, they can quickly build their own ecology through Mini Program technology. For example, if the bank APP wants to carry out life services, through the Mini Program technology, the partner's WeChat Mini Program can be directly introduced into its own APP, avoiding repeated development, and creating an APP ecology at a very low cost.

Second, for small and medium-sized enterprise APPS with general traffic, mini program technology can achieve cost reduction and efficiency improvement in the process of development and function iteration. Significantly reduce development costs and shorten the development cycle to the shelves.

Third, for some companies with strict security compliance and data privacy protection requirements, through the security sandbox of mini programs, data can be protected and isolated, effectively solving the problems of privacy protection and data security.

In fact, for the FinClip light application platform, Fantai Geek not only positions it on the mobile phone, but also positions it as a full-platform infrastructure. At the end of last year, FinClip officially announced support for the Linux platform, truly realizing the multi-port, all-platform operation of Mini Programs. This means that as a developer, you can completely shield the differences between different platforms and systems, as long as you develop in accordance with the specifications of the Mini Program, you can run seamlessly on the mobile phone, computer, and even the IoT terminal, truly achieving one development and multi-terminal operation.

3

The future of light applications

As the underlying infrastructure, the light application platform based on Mini Program technology has many functions that native apps do not have, as well as unique and rich application scenarios. So, will light apps replace native apps?

For this problem, Yang Tao believes: "The light application platform is more like a highway opened up for app, it will subvert the traditional APP, but it will not replace it, and the two will coexist in the short term." ”

Why do the two coexist in the short term?

First of all, light applications in some scenes cannot completely replace native apps. For example, in the case of users viewing the stock market, it is difficult to use light applications because the market changes very quickly. Its own architectural design is small and lightweight, resulting in rendering speeds that cannot be matched by native apps.

Second, barriers between companies still exist. As just mentioned, Mini Programs have now become the de facto standard for light applications. If you really want to replace native apps with light apps, are other apps willing to introduce all their users to WeChat? The answer is self-evident.

Third, the problem of user stickiness. The fast application of the Android Alliance hopes to cross the super app and form an ecology on the mobile hardware platform. However, only by relying on the standards formulated by more than a dozen mobile phone manufacturers, on the one hand, they are not convincing enough, on the other hand, in the case of small programs that have formed a huge ecology, user habits are difficult to change, and whether the standards are formulated, whether anyone is willing to follow the standards is also a problem.

From a long-term perspective, if you want to solve the problem of inter-enterprise barriers and user stickiness faced by light applications, the core is to define a common standard, which is the most fundamental solution.

Who sets the standards? Chinese mainland mobile phone manufacturers to determine, obviously not neutral enough. In fact, the light application technology represented by small programs has achieved great success in the Chinese market, and after the innovation has been proved, it has also attracted international attention.

In 2021, under the impetus of a number of Chinese technology companies, W3C (World Wide Web Alliance) set up a working group on the standardization of light application technologies MiniApps-W3C, and the Internet technology bred by Chinese manufacturers entered the international standard platform. The working group not only includes Chinese companies such as Alibaba, Huawei, Baidu, and Xiaomi, but also google, Microsoft, Intel, and other companies. Earlier this year, Fantai Geek also became a member of the W3C and joined the MiniApps working group to promote the standardization of light application technology.

Yang Tao believes that it is feasible for the W3C to promote standard setting. On the one hand, common international standards can ensure sufficient neutrality for different mobile phone manufacturers; on the other hand, light applications are built on the operating system and do not rely on a specific app.

At present, this set of standards for W3C light applications is still in the swaddling stage. Because it involves different vendors, developers, various feedbacks and multi-faceted arguments, from the drafting and discussion of standards to the release, to the collection of feedback, it is a long process, and it takes a year or two.