Shulou(Shulou.com)06/02 Report--

"Mini Program now has more than 330 million DAU (daily active users). By the end of next year, Mini Program's DAU may exceed 450 million." Shi Wenlu, founder and CEO of Aladdin, recently said at the third Global Mini Program Ecology Conference, which he hosted.

Shi Wenlu also mentioned: "at least 23 Mini Program's daily DAU exceeded 10 million in 2019, and at least 100 Mini Program's daily DAU is expected to break through 10 million next year. Mini Program's trading GMV will exceed 1 trillion yuan this year and is expected to exceed 3 trillion yuan next year."

In retrospect, WeChat Mini Programs was only officially launched in January 2017, and the Mini Program ecology, which started from scratch, has perfectly staged an explosive growth miracle.

Today, three years later, Mini Program has grown from being unattended to 330 million daily active users and from worthless to GMV. In less than three years, Mini Program has created a trillion-level ecology.

But on closer inspection, Mini Program's success is not as natural as we thought.

1. The protagonist always comes out at the end

The starting point of the application form of Mini Program can be traced back to HTML5. HTML5 established its project at W3C in 2007, the same year as iPhone.

Jobs expected HTML5 to help iPhone build an app ecosystem, but because HTML5 didn't grow as fast as expected and failed to host a good mobile Internet experience, Apple had to give up the ride and focus on building its own native app ecosystem App Store.

Google officially released Chrome Web store and Chrome OS at the end of 2010, indicating that this mobile Internet application ecology, which is different from the native application ecology, has taken root, but Google wanted to use it more on netbooks than on mobile phones at that time.

The earliest "Mini Program" idea used in mobile phones was the light application put forward by Baidu in 2013 (Light App, which combines the user experience of native app and the feature that webapp can be retrieved and intelligently distributed), but Baidu has never been successful in the mobile Internet era, and the greatest significance of light application is to accumulate certain experiences and lessons for its later launch of "Baidu Smart Mini Program".

At that time, in addition to Baidu, many other giants were also interested in this. In 2015, DCloud teamed up with 360mobile phones to launch the industry's first commercial Mini Program, which 360 called it. In order to expand the ecology, DCloud donated this set of technical standards to the HTML5 China Industry Alliance, and then the alliance began to promote more super App and mobile phone manufacturers to join.

But this thing is not smooth, first of all, the user experience is not yet done, while the giants have their own demands, especially Tencent, directly want to start a new stove, so Zhang Xiaolong started the idea of WeChat Mini Programs in 2015.

In 2015, when domestic giants began to pay widespread attention to this matter, Google finally proposed that PWAs (enhanced web application, Progressive Web Apps, referred to as PWAs) intends to implement the original idea on mobile phones. But it was so slow that Google officially launched PWAs-- on Feb. 4, 2017, nearly a month later than WeChat Mini Programs.

Overall, the two most important protagonists of the show, Google, which controls the world's largest web platform and Android, and Tencent, which owns Chinese national-level apps, entered late.

two。 The ecology of Mini Program brought by the game.

When Zhang Xiaolong started to do this, he had great ambition, which was different from the ecological modification of web technology made by "light application" and "fast application". Zhang Xiaolong directly discarded the DOM and Window standards of the International Standards Organization W3C and only adopted the basic JavaScript.

This means that he needs to recreate a new development technology ecology.

On the Wechat open course PRO in 2016, Zhang Xiaolong declared this attempt to "make more APP have a lighter form" as an application, while within the team, the code name for this thing is "web+" and is expected to give birth to a technology ecology that is better than the ecology of web technology.

But technology is not a pig that can be blown off the tuyere. No matter how high the Flag is and how good the cowhide is, the code has to be typed out line by line.

After a whole year of intensive development and testing in 2016, in the early morning of January 9, 2017, things were finally ready and named Mini Program, officially launched.

Once online, WeChat Mini Programs's "no need to install, leave after the end of use" feature has received unprecedented attention and expectations from many users. The article "Hello, I am Mini Program" is popular in moments; netizens are partying "missed the official account, don't miss Mini Program"; and the topic of "killing APP" has become a common topic in the industry.

But if the expectation is too high, it is often more difficult to accept the gap.

Less than a week after Mini Program was launched, as the first batch of participants, self-media man Luo Zhenyu announced the closure of Mini Program in a high profile and posted a sentence mysteriously: "We decided not to do it." we know what Mini Program is. Haha, but can't say. "

Mini Program was frustrated at the application level and snubbed by programmers in the technology world, and by February 2017, 35.5% of developers were reported to be disappointed with Mini Program.

Mini Program's future seemed to be getting dimmer, but at that time, Zhang Xiaolong's team did not panic because they had "discussed how Mini Program would die."

In fact, once Mini Program, which relies on Wechat, appears, it is doomed not to be lonely for too long. Just like Tencent's official account launched in 2012 to promote the transformation of the new media industry, Wechat, as a national-level app, hundreds of millions of traffic dividends are enough to set off huge waves no matter which direction they tilt.

Mini Program's huge waves appeared in early 2018, and on December 28, 2017, Wechat opened Mini Game, with emphasis on recommending Mini Game "jump".

The extremely simple Mini Game has set an exaggerated world record, accumulating 310 million users with one jump as of January 2018, the largest number of users of a single game in history.

It only took WeChat Mini Programs a month to set this world record. With the viral spread of social media, there is no doubt about the efficiency of terror.

In early 2018, as the shameless and limb-less "little man" jumped from box to box, the number of monthly active users and penetration of Mini Program also jumped exponentially.

When Mini Program has more than 400m monthly active users, the industry can no longer remain calm.

3. Mini Program helps Tencent push open the business door of Terminal B.

In 2017, bike sharing, the most representative product of the "sharing economy", ushered in a highlight moment in history, when more than 20 bike-sharing brands strangled each other on the battlefield.

It was also in this year that mobike gradually stood out among a number of competitors and caught up with the industry founder "ofo". The secret of mobike's success is simply to take the lead in trying to use WeChat Mini Programs.

As the first merchant to use Mini Program offline, mobike launched Mini Program in February 2017, when WeChat Mini Programs had only 80, 000 monthly active users, which was also better than nothing for mobike at that time.

But WeChat Mini Programs's influence is slowly expanding, and the benefit of mobike is becoming more and more obvious. just two months later, Mini Program has brought mobike 50 per cent of customer access and a 30-fold increase in registered users.

In Zhang Xiaolong's original definition of Mini Program, activating offline traffic was the real core, and mobike perfectly helped Zhang Xiaolong verify the idea.

This classic win-win cooperation laid a foundation for mobike's acquisition by Meituan in 2018 and a rare good end in the shared bike industry, and also provided a good reference for all kinds of online and offline merchants who flocked to it later.

For Tencent, what is more important is that it provides a good breakthrough for it to expand its B-end business.

Tencent said excitedly in its 2017 annual report that driven by Mini Game at the end of 2017, as of January 2018, 580000 Mini Program had been born, which connect users with a large number of online and offline services. it covers retail, e-commerce, life services, government affairs, people's livelihood, games and other areas.

In 2018, Tencent said that the potential of Mini Program had been fully unleashed and widely adopted by users and enterprises, establishing the industry trend of connecting online users with offline scenarios.

As a traditional social entertainment giant, the reason why Tencent's 930 reform dared to shout the slogan of embracing Port B so loudly may not be possible without some courage from Mini Program.

In its 2018 annual report, Tencent announced that its Mini Program has covered more than 200 service industries, and one of its priorities in 2019 is to use Mini Program, WeChat Pay and WeCom to strengthen ties with companies.

According to Aladdin, WeChat Mini Programs's average number of daily active users exceeded 230 million in 2018, covering about 600 million users. Behind these figures is a vibrant Mini Program ecology that has risen successfully in just two years.

4. The special honor of the initiator of technological ecology

In terms of technological ecology, the standards and languages of Mini Program in 2018 are relatively mature, and the MPVue opened by Meituan in early 2018 is a little more mature than the WePY framework released by Wechat in 2017. It is a big step forward for WeChat Mini Programs's framework.

As the market and technology become more and more mature, giants such as Alibaba, Baidu and Toutiao certainly will not turn a blind eye to this new trend. They refer to WeChat Mini Programs's standards and launch their own Mini Program one after another.

In this process, JD.com Taro framework was born to solve the problem of multi-end development and adaptation, which can help developers to write at once, run at multiple ends, and greatly save development costs.

After that, uni-app went a step further, implemented the custom component compilation mode, and made a lot of optimizations in the algorithm. It even allows developers to release Mini Program and App at the same time without changing a line of code.

At this point, the Mini Program ecology that Zhang Xiaolong originally envisioned has laid a very solid foundation. By the end of 2018, more than 2 million developers had joined the development of Mini Program, an innovation in China's IT industry that could really affect the average programmer for many years.

Even the success of Mini Program ecology has further enhanced the confidence of China's science and technology industry in building domestic operating systems. Based on the above reasons, WeChat Mini Programs won the "World Internet leading Scientific and technological Achievement" Award on November 7, 2018.

5. Pinduoduo started with Mini Program.

Mini Program has many benefits, especially for users and operators. Needless to say, the convenience of users'"take-and-go" is worth mentioning in particular, the increased exposure of operators and the reduction of development costs.

The biggest beneficiaries of Mini Program ecology are not only mobike, who has been acquired by Meituan, but also pinduoduo, who is now one of the three giants of e-commerce.

Pinduoduo's revenue mainly depended on self-made fresh and fresh sales before 2017, and was completely transformed into a social e-commerce platform after 2017. It was also in the early days of WeChat Mini Programs's release that he safely hitchhiked on this ride.

There are many ways to play Pudoduo Mini Program. "help your friends open it, you get cash", "invite friends to open the treasure box and get cash without threshold", "1 cent lucky draw, there are surprises every day", "extremely fast bargaining, one knife is not a myth", "invite friends to sign in, get red envelopes every day" …... Tricks emerge one after another.

These Mini Program games are entirely based on the logic of social group buying and bargaining. After a set of walking, the process of customer acquisition, activity and retention was completed smoothly, coupled with the assistance of the external chain, it was easy to bring these users into pinduoduo's own APP and become pinduoduo's real users.

Thanks to this, the number of users of Pinduoduo has expanded rapidly like blowing balloons, and in less than a year, pinduoduo has grown into a billion-class APP.

Not only the aforementioned "jump" Mini Game, living services like mobike and e-commerce like pinduoduo, but also many other content and information, leisure and entertainment, travel, and utility Internet enterprises, also quickly stood out in the Wechat ecology.

6. Mini Program helps medium-and long-tail enterprises alleviate traffic anxiety

Compared with native APP, Mini Program's development cost advantage is very obvious. From the configuration analysis of basic developers, Mini Program is equipped with at least one designer, one front-end staff, and one server-side developer, and three people can start work; to do a native APP, at least you need to be equipped with an ios front-end or android front-end developer on this basis.

At the same time, Mini Program is much easier to do than native applications, the development cycle of Mini Program will be much shorter than native application development, and the development cost will be further reduced.

For medium-and long-tail enterprises, the significance of Mini Program cost advantage is particularly prominent.

According to the statistics of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the total number of App detected in the Chinese market reached 4.49 million in 2018, including more than 2.68 million App in the local third-party app store (Android) and about 1.81 million mobile apps in the Apple Store (China).

However, from the perspective of the usage habits of Chinese users, the maximum number of APP installed in mobile phones will not exceed 100,30 per month and no more than 10 per day. In other words, with the exception of a very small number of APP on various lists, millions of APP are doomed to be unattended and impossible to realize, and their development costs may be worth tens of thousands of yuan or more.

The situation of Mini Program is very different. According to Aladdin, the number of Mini Program exceeded 2.3 million in 2018, between Apple and Android, of course, many of them will be silent, but the development cost is much lower. The loss of these medium-and long-tail Mini Program will be much smaller.

On the other hand, Mini Program itself has a zero-burden user experience, a wide range of scenarios and 100 million-level traffic pools such as Wechat, which also makes it easier for medium-and long-tail Mini Program to get customers and increase the chances of appearance.

Therefore, by 2019, the ecology of Mini Program will be more prosperous. Although it has not realized the fantasy of many people to "kill APP", it has already built an industrial ecology that covers everything from the platform side to the operator side and then to the service side.

It's too early to say that Mini Program ecology will replace native app ecology, but a dynamic and potential alliance ecology of "head APP+ medium and long tail Mini Program" is firmly established.

7. The Giant hegemony behind prosperous Ecology

Initiated by Wechat and continuously promoted and followed by other giants, Mini Program seems to have achieved a win-win situation with one stone and several birds.

First of all, users get an excellent "take-and-go" experience. For many services with single use and low frequency of use, they can immediately enjoy the service when entering the scene without leaving any trace when they exit the scene.

Secondly, a large number of medium-and long-tail and start-up Internet companies have obtained a new channel of drainage with low cost and good effect.

In addition, the giants that launched Mini Program, especially Tencent, which has a clear first-mover advantage, have more opportunities to extend their tentacles to the B side.

But there is always a question that people always care about, that is, the giants have spent so much effort to build Mini Program ecology, in addition to expanding the contact area with B, is there any other deeper plan?

Given the existence of Ali, which has a deep B-terminal gene, the answer to the question is looming.

Now efforts to promote Mini Program of these giants, especially the earliest construction of this ecological Wechat, has a most fundamental purpose is to build "ecological hegemony."

What is "ecological hegemony"? Take Google's Android system as an example. According to the latest data from IDC, the global market share of Android phones has reached 87% in 2019, close to 90%.

The system was originally developed by Andy Rubin and was acquired and funded by Google in August 2005. in November 2007, Google formed an Open Mobile Alliance with 84 hardware manufacturers, software developers and telecom operators to develop and improve the Android system, and then Google released the source code of Android under the Apache open source license.

But Google's "open source" is obviously a fake open source and a real monopoly, which deeply binds the Google service framework to Android. In Android, as long as the services provided by Google, such as Gmail,Youtube, maps and search engine, have a crushing advantage over other service providers, so in Android, Google has naturally completed its own upgrade and downgrade to its competitors.

The Mini Program field has not yet formed a solidified pattern similar to that of the smartphone market, but Tencent, Ali, Baidu, Byte Jing, and other players who have not built this Mini Program ecology, of course, will also open a growing gap.

This is a very high threshold, and if you cross it, you can build a "self-oriented" barrier. For example, Ali's Mini Program mainly focuses on life services and commercial services, while the headline Mini Program focuses on consumption, life services and games. Giants can fight against dissidents within the barriers and compete ecologically with other giants outside the barriers.

If you fail to cross this threshold, you can only integrate into the ecology of the giants. It is not worth mentioning that the later Internet entrepreneurs fell into silence, and the best result is to rise overnight like pinduoduo and then accept the control of a giant like Tencent. The difficulty of operation will be reduced, but the upper limit of growth will also be reduced.

This will become a new normal in the development of mobile Internet.

(official account of Liu Kuang / tr. by Phil Newell) ID:liukuang110

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