Why U.S. companies struggle to replicate China’s WeChat ‘super app’

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Why U.S. companies struggle to replicate China’s WeChat ‘super app’

Think about the apps you use on your phone every day.

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have shown Americans use an average of 46 mobile apps each month to complete a variety of everyday tasks.

Now imagine if you could combine all of those programs into a single, standalone app. A one-stop shop to socialize with friends, order food, pay rent, or even consult with a doctor — colloquially known as the “super app.”

“We’re all sick of the dozens of apps on our phones,” said Arjun Kharpal, CNBC’s senior technology reporter. “And the appeal of the super app is that all of the functions of those apps are in one place, in the super app itself. It’s convenient, it’s frictionless.”  

Perhaps the most prominent example of the super app is Tencent’s WeChat, which began in 2011 as a simple messaging app in China and today boasts more than

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. The popularity of such apps can be attributed to several factors, including convenience, seamless user experience, and user behavior. While super apps have flourished in Asia, their adoption in Western markets, including the U.S., has been slower due to a variety of reasons.

“The regulatory environment in the U.S. today is certainly not as conducive to allowing a super app to develop,” said Dan Prud’homme, assistant professor at Florida International University’s College of Business. “There are still very strong protections on things like peer-to-peer lending, data privacy, antitrust and so on that don’t allow the apps in the U.S. to quite thrive in the same way that WeChat could.”

But things may be starting to change. In recent years, more and more tech companies have set their sights on bringing the super app model to the U.S.

Watch the video to find out what’s behind the appeal of super apps in Asia, why the U.S. has been slower to adopt the “everything app” model, and whether we can expect a super app in the U.S. anytime soon.

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