And again, everyone is discussing the “first in Russia” SuperApp, this time from Tinkoff. The other day there was an anniversary for one of the first SuperApps - the “Moscow public services” application, in which you can pay for parking and fines, take utility bills, make an appointment with a doctor, see DZ and the child’s grades. Federal government services have followed in their footsteps: adding the word “super” (super services or super apps) automatically raises the “coolness” of any service. And although I don’t have warm feelings for superapps (harvesters), today’s penetration of digital public services is their merit.
What are we seeing now, the rise or fall of the SuperApps?
Part one
In the age of the Internet, everyone wanted to create megaportals - hello Yahoo! And at that moment it was right. They were replaced by "narrow" services - search engines, online stores and social networks defeated portal monsters ... And they themselves turned into these monsters. Everything was going well until the revolution happened (thanks to Steve Jobs) and the portal monopoly began to weaken. The very approach of working with the smartphone interface has simply changed - the phone window has become the same "portal" and with the set of services that the user needed. You do not need to use Yandex mail if you use only its search engine. Now the set of services is the choice of the user and the competition of application manufacturers. Control passed to the owners of the markets - Google and Apple. What does not quite suit the "service" giants - application marketing becomes more expensive, control over promotion is lost, user management is gone. And an idea came up, or rather even two:
- "market within a market"
- application "Swiss knife".
Part two
Is it possible to create a "Swiss Army Knife" App? Well, maybe partly possible. The example of public services was quite successful, but time is running out. All other examples that are often given (WeChat, Uber) still cannot be called a full-fledged “SuperApp”. These are applications that have a focus on a specific service, not even a service, but areas of life. It's like the blind feeling the elephant. For some, it's all about communication, for others it's about finances. It will be strange to receive a reminder from Oleg's voice assistant to enter the menstrual cycle into the Tinkoff application, even if it is SuperApp.
Today's launch of SuperApps from financial institutions is similar to finding out "money in the morning - chairs in the evening or vice versa." Who is more important than e-commerce or fintech in the process of consuming a product or service. Until recently, payment services were an appendage of the process, and one that can be managed (pay with a card, points, electronic money), and given the launch of their own services from Apple and Google, the problem for banks is becoming more acute.
Finance becomes "infrastructure", just like telecom operators. It is unrealistic to fight against the real creators of ecosystems - Google and Apple, so the banks decided to take "realistic rivals" as sparring partners. The method of struggle was chosen differently. Sberbank decided to buy services and take them under control. Tinkoff proposes the concept of a marketplace/SuperApp. Yandex had its own way of creating SuperApp - we will do it ourselves.
The transformation of positions along this path for Yandex and Sberbank is interesting. If Sberbank proceeded from the fact that we will “buy”, since the main resource is “money”, Yandex, which, on the contrary, has “hands”, decided to do everything itself. As a result, both of them have undergone a transformation. Already Sberbank not only buys, but also makes itself, while Yandex, on the contrary, began to buy projects. The question is who will run out of resources faster - Sberbank's money or Yandex's "hands".
In this survival strategy, Tinkoff, who is "more modest" both in terms of money and "hands", has a difficult position. As a result, Tinkoff is betting on "advertising" and its brand. But a very big question is whether it will be possible to swim out on this now or is it an attempt to sell yourself more expensively before leaving.
Part three. Final
Are SuperApps a dead end? The fact is that the most significant transformation in the way of consuming services was the revolution of interaction with a smartphone. And it looks like a revolution is brewing again. Siri, Google, Alice are the very images of the future that hint at how interaction will be carried out. If you look at the changes for developers that Apple (SiriKit) showed this year, you can understand how the very essence of working with application interfaces will change in the future - a mixture of a voice assistant, quick buttons and application elements during communication. Perhaps this will become "those" really the first SuperApp. We'll see soon...
Source: habr.com