Desktop is the nearest mobile internet portal

Before I wrote an article said, in the mobile Internet, the United States to sit on the operating system of the country, the Korean people are in the hardware market, with the first phase of the overall situation, the next war will spread to the application and network areas. Sure enough, Facebook suddenly unveiled a new generation of Android apps, Facebook home. The legendary Facebook phone is not a mobile phone, but a "lock-screen + desktop" between the operating system and applications. Facebook is here, and it's the third-party desktop field that we go launcher has been fighting for for two years.

As early as in the distant internet era there is a word, access to the world. The entrance refers to the way in which users look for information and solve problems, which means they get a huge amount of users. Although the mastery of users is not directly equivalent to the business of cash, but if the loss of this position, but also lost the opportunity to become the industry giants. Internet pioneers who make browsers, do information portals, do search and socialize, hide behind the infighting over user access.

The same is true of mobile Internet. All ambitious companies, moving into the mobile Internet, are not running products with simple services, both hardware and software, as the "aspirant" tools to complete the mobile Internet layout. The fundamental goal is to aggregate users onto their platforms and gain a higher range of benefits through subsequent applications and traffic.

Mobile Internet today, has formed four main portals: Application market, browser, super app and mobile desktop.

The big picture has been decided by the App Store

In the early days of mobile internet, browsers became the user's behavioral habit of continuing the internet on the phone. As the iphone turned out, Apple redefined the underlying structure through the Ios+app store, and mobile users began learning to use local apps to connect to rich Web services. With the follow up of Android-google play, double-male simultaneously, together to establish the operating system to build a platform for the application of "I" to distribute the rules of the game. The App store becomes the first level of access to the mobile Internet for users.

The application store entrance has been decided because the App Store has a close connection with the operating system behind it. For the current global mobile internet market, the power of the operating system level has been basically established. Google's Android and Apple's iOS will dominate the underlying ecology of the mobile internet for a long time, with both sides becoming more secure and their ecosystems becoming more complete. In this dimension, the opportunity to bequeath to the sender cannot be said no, but has been negligible.

On top of that, App store and Google Play will also be on the same footing as the operating system.

In addition, Apple's consistent style, App store software consumption and itunes audio and video consumption are merging with each other; Google changed the android harsh to Google Play last March, in order to put the software market in the video and publishing market of Google Play, allowing users to complete more mobile internet consumption in one interface.

Of course, in a handful of countries, such as China, with policy and legal barriers, there is still a relatively independent market, and under the aegis of Android, it gives the third party Android app market an opportunity. Pianan a corner, can also occupy a lot of shares, but it is difficult to achieve greater victory.

The long journey of the browser

On the Internet, browsers have always been the most fiercely contested entry point, from Netscape to IE, Safari, Firefox and Chrome, all wanting to be king.

After apps are designed to be used by users in the mainstream of mobile internet services, new entrants certainly don't want to dominate the App store and Google Play. So the voice of the browser resurgence began to rise, its existence is based on the Internet users on the table to cultivate many years of browser access habits.

Especially with the rapid development of HTML5, many good experiences that can only be obtained in app can be implemented on the web side. Developers who are unwilling to be limited to app stores agree that browsers are the most capable portals to subvert the app model. Even Google and Apple, the mobile internet leaders, are neatly standing in the H5 camp and are more determined by developers ' expectations of browsers.

However, in fact, insiders know that reality is much paler than ideal. In H5 's game, almost all players have a mentality: both the hope that this efficient carrier can be standardized as soon as possible, but also to ensure that their vested interests can not because of the rapid spread of H5 by the vicious impact.

The official announcement of the HTML5 standardization was completed in 2014 years. But the symbolic significance of this official time is far greater than the practical meaning. In the foreseeable future, the game and checks and balances of HTML5 between large companies will directly affect the performance of browsers and Web applications on mobile devices, whether the richness of the function or the efficiency of the operation, there will be a significant gap with the local app. The user experience can also become worse.

The data also illustrate the problem, and once-bullish browsers and HTML5 have not defeated app as the primary mobile internet access, as expected. Flurryanalytics data shows that 80% of the time a smartphone and tablet user uses the device is on the application and only 20% for browsers. From the flow point of view, the browser generated traffic is also far below the total volume of the app, and the use of time and flow ratio are showing a downward trend.

In addition to the experience that the local app wants to go far, the deeper reason why browsers cannot move more territory in the war on Internet access is that the mobile Internet and the desktop Internet are fundamentally different in how information is organized. The internet has established its information organization way with the Web station as the core, the interaction between people and the site is the most frequent information flow on the table, so the browser becomes the main network entrance.

But at the moving end, app becomes the most important information organization way of mobile Internet, the interaction between user and application provider is done through individual application, and the mobile browser's behavior also comes from the user's inheritance to the Internet access, but the main information flow is no longer spread around the Web site. Browser marginalization is also inevitable.

The burgeoning Super app

Why can app stores and browsers become mobile Internet portals? Because they can both attract both ends of the portal, one end is the service and application provided by the developer, one end is the user--the huge share of the operating system brings the user, the distribution channel and the payment partition of the store attracts the developer; HTML5 's powerful features and good vision have attracted developers.

Is app really a mobile Internet portal? This is a very odd question. Like on the table on the Internet ask: The website is not an Internet portal. Navigation sites, portals, search engines, social networks are all portals of the internet, but my personal blog is obviously not.

It's easy to be an app, but it doesn't guarantee that your app will have millions of stable users. The report shows that no more than 15 apps are used by users on their handsets. Only a few of these apps, on the basis of the millions of stable users, with a strong capital and resource advantages, the platform to become a super app. For example, instant messaging and social access to the micro-letter may be in the mobile internet to rebuild QQ on the PC side of the brilliant, as a super app identity as a portal.

What the micro-credit public platform is doing is like what Facebook did on the Internet on the table. Facebook, which has 132 million active users in 2007, has announced that Facebook's social user relationship data and user profiles are open to third-party developers through a KPI interface. On an open framework, third party developers can develop applications that integrate with the core features of Facebook. The platform not only quickly made Facebook a complete ecosystem, it even made Zynga, a social gaming company rooted in a web platform. Its success has also attracted the domestic social network operators to emulate.

But the sheer amount of money, resources and market share needed by the Super app is a decision that no one else wants to do other than the original desktop, where the Internet has a huge resource advantage (in China, Tencent-Weibo and Sina-Weibo).

The most recent so the most potential mobile desktop

When Facebook home was released, the media uproar that Facebook wanted to make a mobile phone made it a custom "lock screen + desktop". But for me, Facebook's home release is a sign of confirmation. We have developed go launcher painstaking has been two years, more micro-letter, UC earlier with a large number of international users, Facebook home to show that we are optimistic about the third party desktop in the market, there is another giant Facebook.

It is clear from the Facebook home feature that it is a mobile desktop tailored for Facebook's heavily customizable users, by controlling the user's lock screen and first screen, and making Facebook and social networking The center of the user's mobile phone, all around the user's social network, Other behaviors are socially dependent.

App Store, browser, super app and mobile desktop The four portals of the mobile internet are exclusive. For most users, the type of service required is limited, tools, video, gaming, socializing, shopping ... Each portal attempts to provide users with a one-stop mobile internet service that does not pass through other portals when the user connects to the network through one of the portals.

For users, the expectation is a more "shallow" entrance. In the PC network, the search engine can become the main Internet access, because it is the fastest way for users to reach their destinations. The reason why the navigation station can be set up is precisely that it provides the most "shallow" entrance for Internet novice users.

Mobile Internet is the same, the battle of the entrance, the depth of the fight. Who is closest to the user, who is most hopeful. In the four major entrances, the Super app is the deepest and the path to the service is the most complex. Application market second, but its main function is to distribute app. Browsers are similar to apps, or just a special app.

Using the wonderful metaphor of Asymco founder Horace Dediu: Android is a big river, Google is figuring out how to fish, and Facebook home is taking a step up the line.

Mobile Desktop in the "Application market, browser, super app and desktop" this mobile internet four major portals is the most shallow, but also the development potential and the largest market prospects. There are many things you can do when the desktop is wrapped around the Android native system at the bottom with a good user experience and custom service. So there are a lot of third-party desktop births, such as the vertical type of the Kindle Fire. The Facebook home has gone further, but is essentially a vertical desktop that highlights specific features (social or electrical) that weaken other applications to subordinate positions.

History is also really interesting. Google in the desktop internet age does not have an operating system, but its search engine is the Internet's first portal, but also through the powerful cloud services, the Microsoft Press behind the scenes. Mobile internet age, Google became the operating system builders, go launcher and Facebook Home these mobile desktop have borrowed it.

It made me a little excited and a little nervous. It's exciting to be able to fight alongside the world's Giants in this field, to grab a wider range of mobile desktop in the four major mobile internet portals, and the tension is that our opponents are being killed from different corners, and the challenge is much greater.

But the internet is such an industry, constantly leather their own lives, can stand firm, otherwise, waiting for others to leather our lives.