What happens when there are competing smartphone app stores

Many Android app stores in China

Consolidation is happening:
- ~7500 in 2012
- ~400 in 2015
- ~200 in 2017
There are ~100 that matter… and ~20 that really matter.

Different stores have different requirements

Devs respond by:

Hosting their “canonical” APK on their server, which app stores monitor closely and scrape (if popular).
“Claiming” their apps on the stores.
Publishing to the top -10 stores, and letting it be scraped by the long tail.
Outsourcing the publishing complexity to someone / something else.
Building dedicated BD relationships with app stores.

AiC devs get less revenue split for their efforts

3P Stores shout ever louder to get users’ attention

Store notices it has a newer app version no. than what’s on device …
… and fires off notifications to the user to “omg update!”

Here’s a screenshot of what your phone would look like after you download a few 3P stores.

Each one of them (in this case, Baidu store, Tencent store, and 360 store) maintains its own persistent notification, and they also consistently monitor the app versions on device and matches that to see if they have a newer version in their catalog. If they do, it is a mad rush towards prompting the user to “zomg click me to update!”

OEMs actively divert users to their own stores

Apps initiate their own updates

The easiest way that apps can take things into their own hands is… to distribute their own app themselves!
Take for example, e-commerce giant Taobao (owned by Alibaba).

In this series of screenshots, when the user opens the app, Taobao does the following:
Prompt the user to update (in this example - “big sale upcoming!”).
User shows intent to update by clicking through the dialog prompt….
Downloads the APK, then prompts the user to click install…
which begins the sideloading of the app. …
which brings them to the OS’ untrusted install warning screens.

Not perfect as OEMs are still in the critical user journey, but at least now the app has more control of its UX.

Rise of 3P WebViews

Apps use WebViews to bridge the gap

Apps dynamically update their own code

“Device Optimization” apps try to save battery

“Device Optimization”.Apps reach ~550 M users in China
These apps typically use Systetri Ul Settings and Accessibility API :
- Add floating screen widgets an the screen for users to quickly “clean” their device.
- Automate force clicking and stopping of apps.

Many Push Service Providers in China

3P Push Service - Poor Delivery Rates

Tries to get services to stay alive by:
- Maintaining long-running service
- Sending broadcast to wake up all other apps running the same SDK (known as “chain-starting”)
Relatively low delivery rates due to aggressive killing of services by OEMs

Apps “Chain-Starting”… and OEMs’ fight back

Xiaomi’s MIDI 8 headline:
- User can disallow “chain starts” via settings
- Xiaorni continually building out ruleset to determine what broadcasts qualify as “necessary”

Devs (try their best to) send push messages by:

Integrating with a small number of OEMs Push SDKs,
Keeping a lightweight app/service running consistently
Might also integrate with 3P push services and aggregators
Working through BD channels to get each OEM to whitelist their apps
- If you’re a super-app like WeChat, OEMs might just automatically whitelist you

How do AiC devs actually send push messages in China then? It’s essentially a list of switch statements…. If the device is a popular OEM like Huawei or Xiaomi - integrate with the OEM’s push SDK!
Else, try to keep a long running service up, and/or integrate with a some 3P push service. This is not very effective, but hey, you gotta try…. Else, you might also ask your BD team to go talk to OEMs, and get your app whitelisted in their devices. Money might change hands here.

The kicker here is that no OEM wants to sell a phone where the most popular apps don’t work as expected. So…. WeChat is pretty much always whitelisted by default, and so their own in-house push solution works great.

Two main culprits for App Incompatibility

Devs obfuscate their code out of necessity

Enforced by gov’t regulations on finance / utility apps (not just within China)
Protect apps from being modified and re-uploaded to all app markets
- Monetization channels could be changed by hackers to benefit from pirated apps
- Almost impossible for original developer to track and request each app market to turn down the pirated apps
- It was a big dark business a few years ago!
- Details: go/china-obfuscation-report

Obfuscators are VERY popular in China

Other 3P Whales’ view of WeChat’s ubiquity

“We actively look for WeChat’s in-app browser’s user agent string, and try to get users to leave It.”

-Liu Jingyang (刘进洋), PM Lead for Alibaba

Funneling users to other apps (Huawei)

“Smart Push service’ on some Huawei’s Honor Magic devices actively monitor users’ WeChat messages
Interesting text snippets (e.g. restaurant names, product listings, etc.) are changed to become links that take users outside of WeChat
Both sides get lawyers involved

Funneling users to other apps (Xiaomi)

Xiaomi’s MIUI9 actively monitors users WeChat messages
Popup dialog shows at the bottom when interesting text snippets (e.g. restaurant names, product listings, etc.) are detected on long-press

Recording WeChat Payments (Xiaomi)

Xiaomi’s MIUI9 actively monitors users’ P2P WeChat payments
When a P2P transaction is made, Xiaomi records the transaction on behalf of the user
User sees this information in various Xiaomi surfaces like Xiaomi’s Assistant and “My Expenses” app

Another Xiaomi example, also on MIUI9.
Users get their WeChat payments automatically recorded into a Xiaomi app. User Experience
0:03 - User sends ¥0.02 to friend thru WeChat
0:07 - User confirms transaction
0:10 - Notification from Xiaomi’s “My Expenses” app that “transaction is recorded”
0:13 - Xiaomi’s “My Expenses” app shows transaction recorded
0:16 - Transaction also shows up in Xiaomi’s GSA equivalent

来自 https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/1399292996823269377
声明：本人仅从以上链接整理了相关内容，并不代表我赞成本文的所有观点。

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