The world of mobile marketing and functionality continues to grow at an incredible rate as our idea of how to educate and inform through digital technology changes. In the early days of mobile marketing most forms of advertising had been ported from other platforms and media, while today its been focused directly on the consumers needs based on what their doing. As the world increasingly expects applications to be free, content creators need to deliver value in a form that also generates revenue. While at the same time social media tools rely on users generated content, initiating, integrating, individualising, and involving its users.
As for the future and developing landscape of mobile, the whole idea of using a phone is transitioning into using services that deliver everything for you no matter where you are. WeChat for example is designed to be one online destination that keeps you within the app. Similar to shopping in store the longer your within the application the more likely you are to make a purchase. The government promotes the product in an effort to create a powerful citizen identification system. Opening up many possibilities for big data and consumer individualisation.
WeChat essentially took the divide between various mobile platforms such as android / IOS and the separate individual apps and created a service where you could interact with friends, book dinner, hail a taxi, play games while you wait, pay in store and far more all without leaving the app. Yet the app gained its following and power through government subsidisation and the elimination of competition within their market.
The app offers businesses ways to pull in views through various marketing classifications such as patrons through subscriptions, and direct messages to consumers with coupons, discounts, reminders, and qr codes. With one of the major methods used including celebrity endorsement through influential individuals with wide reaches.
Is it possible for such services to arise in the western market?
Does competition and increasing consumer awareness to privacy slow western progress in developing mobile services, designed to simplify life while collecting and using big data to market to its users?
Is the global market likely to accept a world without privacy as it and its services grow in popularity and functionality, or will technology shift towards encrypting data, in an effort to differentiate itself from competition?
RMIT Assignment 3 
Hey James! I never actually used WeChat personally, but I have heard about its multitude of functions and services it provides. It’s pretty interesting that it has taken off so much in China and is one of the most widely used apps; I feel that this is partly thanks to the proliferation of WeChat but the Chinese government and especially the fact that a lot of apps from the Western world are prohibited, such as Facebook and Twitter. As a result, people really have no choice, right? If everyone has flocked to the same app, it’s more convenient to join that app yourself, for convenience in communicating on the same platform as others, and also to not be left out socially too.
I can’t say for sure how successful such a conglomerate app like WeChat would be in the Western world however; yes, apps like Facebook are growing to have functions like the Marketplace for selling, and the “Watch” section that somewhat imitates video streaming like YouTube. But it seems that people in the Western world are perfectly happy with their separate apps that specialise and focus on particular services, making things less cluttered than having them all on the same app; for the time being, anyway!
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Yes, but sometimes apps run into the extreme case where they are so specialised for a particular function that they lack other features that would greatly benefit them. So, by making things less cluttered within an application, the phone itself becomes more cluttered. I guess it’s a fine balance that requires thorough research, development and testing before an app is launched. Unfortunately this is partially skipped. As you have pointed out, it really depends on the wants and needs of the target market.
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It definately is a fine balance. WeChat is mainly only able to get away with it due to lacking competition. You definitely can have applications that get too cluttered and confusing (Google home app), but at the same time we don’t really want small seperate apps that only have one function and can do nothing else (Google pdf viewer on android)
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An interesting point to be made is how practical is an all in one solution. Take iTunes for example, this software had so many features packed into it, Music, podcasts, movies a social space, and it never took off. With apples latest OS release they have separated each component into its own app! Just food for thought.
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Does it make it makes more sense for app developers to make multiple apps to create multiple streams of revenue than one all in one app? Especially considering we live in a capitalist economic environment, compared to chinas communistic economic environment
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That’s a very interesting connection you made. It’s funny how the way a government is run can heavily influence consumers.
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Multiple apps with different prices could make a scary barrier of entry when considering changing services. A good example is how apple uses make considerable investments into an eco system of smart watches, speakers, apps store games, tv, etc. If we consider changing between android or iPhone we have to consider what we could lose and what we might have to pay for all over again. It becomes scary to invest in an application ecosystem if the developer is constantly releasing cash grabs. It takes away from the value of using the service.
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