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What's going on in Apple vs. wechat? Who will win in Apple vs. wechat

4hw.org: Recently, Apple's wechat has been ripped open, causing a lot of netizens to watch. One is the Chinese social giant and the other is the world's top consumer electronics company. Netizens said: if both sides don't step back, they will lose both sides.

The cause of the incident is Apple's dissatisfaction with the reward function in wechat. Apple believes that the app downloaded in Apple's app store must comply with the regulations. If customers want to buy virtual products, they must pass Apple's regulations, or they will be taken off the shelf. To be frank, they can use the reward function of wechat, and they must buy it through Apple's store, or wechat will be taken off the iPhone At present, wechat has stopped updating in Apple store.

In Apple's latest rules, apps are required not to include buttons, external links or other call to action words that direct customers to purchase using non IAP mechanisms. The subtext behind this is that Apple believes that the reward mechanism in the WeChat public number is a virtual payment. In Apple's regulation, virtual payment must only take the apple channel, that is, recharge the apple account and buy it again.

For the content entrepreneurship that is emerging in China, this is absolutely bad news. This means that countless self media, which take user appreciation as a profit model, lost their 'love support' overnight. Among all the content platforms, the WeChat public number is firmly in the top position because of its strong social attributes and personification. Relying on wechat platform, content entrepreneurs also have space to expand new forms and expression patterns.

For self-Media, the disappearance of appreciation function is the loss of a social channel that deeply interacts with users; for wechat platform, it is the loss of an effective channel that can not only feed back producers, but also improve users' stickiness.

So, why does Apple want to start with wechat? First of all, on the IOS platform, Apple's management style is private garden style, and its own app store must be the only entrance. Wechat's appreciation function wanders in the gray area of the terms of Apple's overlord: you can define it as an internal purchase or a transfer platform.

And yesterday's two news, in fact, there is a certain logical connection. Wechat is no longer a social tool, but an all-round platform of China's Internet: content distribution, financial payment, life services, social chat and even entertainment games, almost all inclusive.

Once wechat apps are popularized recently, the direct consequence is to replace Apple App store and become the Internet access for users: when users no longer need to buy apps in the app store, Apple's position will be greatly challenged.

Behind the disappearance of appreciation function lies the increasingly ambiguous and complex relationship between Tencent and apple. When Tencent entered apple as a software developer, the two sides were a kind of mutually reinforcing relationship between platform and app development company; however, after the rise of wechat, Tencent is more and more like a platform company, this positioning and function is exactly what Apple cannot allow.

Past experience has proved that the war of Internet companies is the war of entry. Jobs has long defined apple as an excellent software company, so he makes his own hardware. Mobile phones, computers and other hardware are just Apple's traffic portal as an Internet platform. The real ambition is in the app store. Wechat is also growing into an entry point, and is increasingly replacing Apple's app store.

So, although it may seem strange, it is likely that Tencent and Apple will have a fight in the future. What Apple should probably admit is that the wechat model is more representative of the future. Even Facebook is developing small programs, from social to platform, which is an inevitable trend of mobile Internet evolution. It may be out of date to build moats with closed private garden system. It is easy to cancel the function of appreciation, but how to evolve and upgrade to deal with the future is even more difficult.