Nowadays, people who are engaging in this digital world definitely understand the the importance of messaging apps. We have more and more choices, so each messaging app tries its best to make some new, innovative selling points. I want to focus on the three messaging apps which are popular in the east asian countries. Not only because they are the biggest ones right after Whatsapp, but also because WeChat (China), Line (Japan) and KakaoTalk (Korea) are having similar marketing strategies targeting their asian customers.
First of all, instead of being pure messaging apps, they all pay attention to the formation of friend zone and the use of additional tools. In other words, in order to be aware of your friend’s recent activities, you have to download the same app. On the other hand, interestingly, WeChat, Line and KakaoTalk all spend a lot of time and energy to promote one thing -- emoticon (stickers). Some of the emoticons are well-known cartoons or features of celebrities, and some of them are totally original. Normally, they are super cute and attractive so that customers (especially female users) are welling to pay for the new emoticons. Sometimes, since certain emoticon is very popular, people will keep using that messaging app so that they are able to get access to the emoticon.
Comparing with Line and KakaoTalk, WeChat have a more rapid growth these years because of the population of its home country. “Japan’s population is 128 million; South Korea has 50 million people. Combine those two numbers and multiply that by a factor of six, and China’s population would still be bigger than that number”. Therefore, when we look at this growing chat app competition, the size of the market is still one of the most significant components. Maybe for next step, they need to figure out how to explore more "international users" from their own point of views.
1 comment:
It is interesting how the messaging apps in Asian countries try to monetize through purchase of stickers/emojis. I think that is very creative and, in a way, finally coming to the US in the form of the popular texting keyboard "Bitmoji", which is sticker-based keyboard with the option to purchase additional stickers.
The main reason messaging apps aren't as popular in the US is because most people have unlimited text, therefore there is little incentive to install an app. Facebook is pushing hard with their messenger app, and recently purchased Whatsapp, but has been unable to gain much traction. Groupme is also a good example of a popular messaging app in the US, but really only has niche popularity for large groups. None of these US messaging apps have found a good way to monetize yet, and it is questionable if any will catch on in the near future.
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