After Apple launched iOS 10: The SMS war has just begun !, Iossms

After Apple launched iOS 10: The SMS war has just begun !, Iossms

The opening speech of WWDC will be remembered as the day when the war on communication applications started.

Since Steve Jobs lifted the disruptive first-generation iPhone, the mobile field has entered the age of fierce competition. The first confrontation between mobile technology giants was the war on mobile devices. The second war is the battle for mobile platforms: iOS and Android.

The third mobile technology war will be around communication applications, and its battlefield will be everywhere.

Remarkable achievements have been made in China. Facebook Messenger and its "10000 chatbot developers" are also trying to do the same thing elsewhere. However, it was not until last month that we saw a response from Google, the world's largest mobile platform. Apple entered the new battlefield yesterday.

The Battle of mobile communication applications will be completely different from the previous two wars.

The first war in the mobile field is to determine who can sell the most equipment and earn the highest profit. Apple is the biggest winner in the war, and it accounts for 90% of the sales profits of all mobile devices. The second war is to compete for who can make the most perfect and powerful mobile platform. This platform needs to integrate devices, operating systems, and applications, and compatible with things that I call "smart items": interaction with TV, car, home, home appliances, tools, toys, and other things. Google, with 70% million mobile users, has achieved the biggest result of the war.

However, the third mobile war will start in different forms.

First of all, the most obvious thing is that this war has taken place on another abstraction layer: Not a device, not an operating system, or a mobile application, but a platform that integrates other applications, devices, and platforms. In addition, this war is not about to compete for device sales or application installation volumes-of course, these two points still have a very important strategic position, because the three mobile wars will be carried out at the same time-the battle of communication applications is a battle for time, attention, connection, and payment.

Time and attention are well understood: This is the focus of previous web pages and mobile apps. However, connection and payment are previously unavailable strategies.

The importance of connection for communication applications is obvious: after all, you are sending messages to your friends and family. However, from the perspective of Facebook, communication applications also target establishing connections with sellers, brands, and services.

In Facebook's eyes, connections between users and friends can bring about $100 a year-the average revenue per user in the United States calculated by Facebook in fiscal 2015, canadian users are valued at $50 per year. The connection between users and catering, clothing, play, medical care, travel, and home services may bring 10 times the value.

Mobile Commerce and mobile payment have become a mandatory place for communication applications. The payers can become North America and Europe.

Google certainly saw the stakes, and Allo was a secret of its recent communication application war.

However, Allo is a product that has been re-built. Google has not chosen to add features to existing products of a certain scale. Allo is Google's fourth communication application outside Duo, Hangouts, and Google Messenger. Considering the anti-monopoly problem in Europe, it may be difficult for Google to create Allo as the default communication application in the Android ecosystem.

Interestingly, Allo and FacebookMessenger are both native network applications. They all need network connections when used on mobile phones, apple's practice has always been to add data functions to the existing text message technology of mobile phones.

This is a surprisingly winning strategy. Although Apple does not have the number of global users of Google or Facebook's user social network, it can achieve extremely high popularity by integrating the underlying features of mobile phones.

On this basis, Apple can add enhancements to data, devices, and platforms, such as sharing songs and geographic locations, and provide ordering and taxi hailing services through the opening of API interfaces. Of course, this is just the beginning.

Now both Apple and Google have started to catch up quickly.

Facebook is undoubtedly the leader in user acquisition. It has multiple platforms of 1 billion million users, including Messenger and WhatsApp. However, Google and Apple both have their own unique advantages. Google's strengths include powerful machine learning, AI, and Personal Assistant Technologies. Apple's advantage is its device integration and design capabilities, and it also has funds beyond the reach of rivals, so it can continue to acquire other companies to fill its weaknesses.

Finally, the winners of this war will be able to use the integration and connection of AI, deep learning, robotics, third-party applications and platforms to provide users with a richer and better experience.

The trophy of this war will be a huge profit.