The highly popular social messenger app is playing a massive role in shopping and spending.
WeChat has a massive 600 million monthly users and has become a regular part of everyday life in China not only for sharing pictures and updates with friends and family, but also presenting enormous mobile commerce opportunities as people tell each other what they’re buying, where they’re eating and are even using it to hail a taxi when they’re ready to head home at night.
With this considerable opportunity in front of them, retailers are using this mobile app to reach consumers.
It isn’t just relying on mentions from users anymore. Mobile commerce has become a central component of the WeChat experience, as people send their orders to the nearest coffee shop so that it will be ready when they arrive, they are browsing the latest designer fashion collections, and are even designing their own custom pairs of Nike shoes. It can be used to plan vacations, count the number of steps taken every day, share photos, order meal deliveries, keep up with the news, and take part in a conference call.
This mobile commerce experience over the WeChat was originally founded in 2011 by Tencent.
It has risen to a point that is much larger than the experiences that are commonplace over m-commerce in most other parts of the world. In fact the experience offered to consumers in China who are often mobile-first, seems as though it is completely futuristic to areas of the world that have the same device penetration but that are not adopting mobile shopping to nearly the same degree.
According to McGann-Zhang co-founder and native of China, Yichi Zhang, “It’s an ecosystem,” adding that “In China, you have to use it.” Zhang explained that the user experience that is provided over WeChat is exactly what developers in every American industry – from retail to technology and publishing – have been attempting to create within the smartphone environment.
Bomoda CEO, Brian Buchwald, stated that when it comes to mobile commerce over WeChat, “They’re doing things we’re simply not doing in the U.S.” He also pointed out that China is doing exactly what they need to do to access its markets through mobile payments and apps for the first time, in the same way that one would “if you were going to start a city from scratch.”
The BlackBerry’s messenger service has proven itself to be tremendously popular.
BlackBerry is finally enjoying some time in the spotlight for a positive reason, which is connected to the popularity of the release of its BBM apps for Android and iOS device users.
The messenger service was recently released for those two operating systems and is being downloaded by the millions.
The BlackBerry devices may not have been selling at the rate that they had hoped, but its messenger apps are a huge hit among Apple and Android smartphone owners. According to the company’s own data, there had already been more than 10 million downloads of the BlackBerry Messenger service within the first 24 hours of its initial release to users of devices that were not from that manufacturer.
BlackBerry said that its apps are now processing approximately 500,000 new users every hour.
Jeff Gadway, a spokesperson for BlackBerry, said that “We have absolutely incredible demand we’re trying to manage.” He added that “We’re off to a really good start.” This hype and popularity for the apps is very welcome news for the Canadian company, which has been fighting a losing battle with its competitors in the smartphone marketplace and has put itself up for sale.
These new millions of users of the apps are in addition to the 60 million BlackBerry users who are already using the BBM service. That said, it is not yet clear how the manufacturer will actually generate any money from this popular new service. The application, itself, is free, and there is competition within the instant messaging sphere, to the point that BBM is not currently the leader.
Among the BBM apps, the one designed specifically for BlackBerry users was the very first instant messenger created specifically for smartphones, and it rapidly became exceptionally popular in the last half of the first decade of the 2000s. It provides users the ability to keep their identities secure through a unique and protected anonymous code, and to know when their messages had been delivered to the recipients, and when they had been opened. Now, despite a large number of alternatives, other device users are beginning to enjoy this same benefit.
