Insider information reveals that tech giant Microsoft wants to compete with Google and Apple in the mobile search domain. It was, in fact, looking to do so with an all-in-one super app that would combine its services spanning across search, news, messaging, shopping, and more.
According to The Information, Microsoft bigwigs pondered building a “super app” to aggregate a variety of their consumer offerings. It reportedly emerged out of a desire to grab a portion of the mobile search market.
The Windows firm sought to use the super app to elevate its ad business as well. Moreover, the app would have also brought more attention to other Microsoft products, such as Bing and Teams.
Interestingly, Microsoft isn’t the first big organization looking to create an all-in-one destination for users. Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk has time and again expressed his desire to build an everything app called “X.”
However, this isn’t anything new in the industry since Chinese firm Tencent has previously used this formula and found success. Its super app, WeChat, is a renowned platform that combines messaging, e-commerce, social media, and even payments.
While Microsoft may or may not move forward with its super app, the move seems reasonable for its services, such as Microsoft Bing, that are playing second-fiddle to segment leaders. Besides that, such an app would also give an additional boost to Microsoft Teams, which is getting increasingly popular among office professionals.
In any case, we are likely to see more multi-domain companies take a shot at the WeChat formula. Whether or not the consumers will accept more firms following the “one-stop shop” strategy is anyone’s guess at this point.
