The gold mining era of mobile apps is over. Most people are used to using relatively mature applications, but they are rarely willing to try new ones.
Hulu and Flipboard are world-renowned applications, with billions of users. Eric Feng was the chief technology officer of Hulu and Flipboard and now works as a partner for investment company KPCB. He has made great achievements in the mobile Internet industry, and once again wrote an article reaffirming the above viewpoint.
Another fact that has made many developers feel a little frustrated is that the applications from several Internet giants in the head account for the vast majority of smartphone usage. In China, most people’s Internet life is to give time and money to Tencent, Ali, Baidu, Byte Beat and NetEase.
Summary is that users are prosperous, and developers are on the road.
While between smartphone users and developers, it’s the software store. It can be said that the most important role of major software stores is the channel, but in the era when people do not lack applications, too lazy to download applications, non-bigger developers have no resources to promote, they must make some new attempts.
The OPPO Software Store has recently been updated to version 7.2, and we can take a look at the current software store’s ties and tune from this larger version update.Festival function.
Application time revision: outside the algorithm, within the trend
The vast majority of software stores have such things as leaderboards. Some are ranked one-two-three or four-four based on downloads, and some are ranked according to social, video, music, etc., but basically Will rely on a certain algorithm to generate.
In principle, the higher the ranking, the more people download it, and the more popular it is. However, over time, the application ecology will show the strong and strong, the weaker the weaker Matthew effect, the application of distribution by pure rankings, for those small and beautiful applications, it is not fair.
Therefore, many prophetic software stores have added new modules to highlight manual operations, whether it is the Today section of the Apple App Store or the application time of the OPPO software store, which is outside the algorithm and from the perspective of people. Go to apps, games, and more.
Now, in the 7.2 version of the OPPO Software Store, this application has also been redesigned. Compared with the original application moment, the new application time is divided into four major columns, which will enrich and refine the original content: “APP Today”, “Super Baby”, “Game Time” and “School New” thing”.
Today’s APP
The “Today’s APP” model is simple and efficient. It is the app that the store’s professional editors choose to either be new or popular. In fact, it is to replace the user to find the latest and most popular app.
Game Time
“Game Time” is mainly a professional game evaluation content, including sound effectsVery subdivided dimensions such as sound quality, game planning, and background content. After all, just looking at an icon can’t know that the game is not fun. It takes a while to download one or two GB games. Professional game evaluation plus player comments is enough to give users a comprehensive understanding.
Learn something new
“Learn something new” can be seen as a knowledge community created by the OPPO software store about app and mobile phone usage skills. It is recommended in the form of question and answer. The main purpose is to help users work and learn, and then improve efficiency.
Super Baby
The audience of the last “Super Baby” is very clear. It is the parents of the baby. The application in this column is specially designed for children, helping children to gain knowledge and exercise their brainpower. The content is Sharing assessments from real parents.
Among the four columns, “Today’s APP” and “Game Time” are better understood. In fact, it is recommended to store apps and games to users in terms of store operations and editing. This is essentially different from the pure algorithm dimension. The algorithm can’t distinguish the design from the ugly, fun or not, but people can, when the user is tired of the resident application in the leaderboard, may wish to come here.
The other two columns may have to be explained with some thought.
The main audience of “Super Baby” is the young Bao Da Bao Ma, which is a group that cannot be underestimated and has great needs and potential.
The parent-child application has formed the status quo of “long use and more use”. It can be said that the module of “Super Baby” is the just-needed content service of the vertical treasure dad, and the audience can be predicted from the data status. It has a high viscosity and repeated opening rate for this function.
“Learning something new” is a bit like the application world. The OPPO software store has hundreds of millions of users based on OPPO mobile phones and ColorOS. This is naturally Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and many folks. Great god.
If the previous “APP Today” and “Game Time” are PGC, then “learn something new” is UGC.
Before the application was revised, the OPPO software store already had a “beauty award” in the discovery of small and beautiful. This “Most Award” is mainly about the use of apps and games with outstanding design, fun and unique gameplay. The application of this award is not too bad.
Water Drop Plan: Source Water, Converging into a River
The revision of the application time is outside the algorithm and within the trend, leading to traffic for a variety of high-quality and useful applications. This is a reasonable redistribution of traffic by the OPPO software store as a channel. So the purpose of the water drop plan is that the OPPO software store wants to make traffic at the source.
The water droplets here don’t want to wear stone, but want to gather into a river.
Before the water drop plan, you can exchange points for the check-in or download application in the OPPO software store. If you have more points, you can redeem the prize. The water droplets plan is a bit like the big promotion of the festival in the holiday season, the activity doubles and the welfare upgrades.
By collecting “water droplets”, the more you accumulate, the greater your chances of winning a grand prize. The types of prizes vary depending on the time.
For example, at the OPPO Festival, there are tickets for the festival. The prizes are OPPO’s mobile phones, accessories, and other home games. Switch users are considered to be OPPO. There are also a lot of prizes such as SK2 fairy water and YSL 12 lipstick.
There are currently six ways to get water droplets:
- OPPO Mall shopping check-in, etc.
- OPPO reading to buy books or read
- Participate in what you have to say, choose ideas on topics, and post insights
- Participate in the “Upstream” app game
- Water Drops Application Download
- Expand points to participate in the lucky nine-square draw, and download the app to earn points
It can be seen that the focus of this gameplay is to encourage users to download more applications, read more books, and try to apply this new application form.
In essence, the purpose of the water droplets program is to try new things when the overall user is not willing to try new applications through the stimulation of prizes.
Ecology has changed, software store has changed
The prosperity of the smartphone industry today is the result of the continuous upgrading of hardware devices and the complementary application of software applications. It can be said that the reason why the mobile Internet ecosystem can form the current scale is related to the roles of different roles, which naturally cannot be attributed to the software store. One location of the software store is to connect the developers on the B side and the users on the C side.
In this location, the software storeIt is not an easy task to take over the needs of both ends and serve the users at both ends, because the demands of both parties are not always consistent. Especially for users, many times, before new applications and new features appear, users don’t know what their needs are.
As mentioned earlier, the version update made by the OPPO software store can be seen as what the software store should do if it starts to think about the ecological environment has changed.
For users on the C side, not the number of applications is absolutely saturated, but the application is much more difficult to find new high-quality applications.
Data from Questmobile shows that although the growth rate is not so fast, the average daily usage of Chinese mobile Internet users is still growing, and the number of app types used is also growing.
Therefore, in the face of the demands generated by growth, it is necessary for software stores to allocate increasingly valuable growth potential to where they are needed.
What is the nature of the drop plan?
The change of application time mainly meets the needs of users, but now the competition of developers is really fierce. The number of applications in China for iOS and Android is 2 million, and the application of mobile phones for general users. There are dozens of quantities.
This means that it’s not just users.Must know which are good applications, developers are also a headache, where are the target users, and how many target users?
Therefore, as the growth engine becomes more and more weak, the software store also needs to work with developers to fuel the engine, which is the essence of the water drop plan.
In the case of small and big, the OPPO software store 7.2 version update is actually a symbol of the software store’s beginning to change: how to play its own ecological adjustment function in addition to application distribution. The function of the channel is to divert water, but the ultimate goal is to benefit the party.
But then, the complexity and limitations of the mobile Internet ecosystem can not be clarified by a software store revision. Application developers, smartphone vendors, system providers, etc. are all ecological members. The current ecology, of course, they also need to be responsible for the ecology.