Behold the Super-App

How many mobile apps do you have on your phone? I have 84. For me, they all fall into about six categories: Banking, Business Connectivity, Maps, Personal Communication, Internet Access and Technical Functions.

On my iPad, I have 96.

Each of these apps has overhead: Authentication, memory, app updates, etc. Each comes with risks and vulnerabilities.

A rising number of companies are creating entire business ecosystems out of a single mobile application. In theory, this is not a new concept. The Facebook mobile app is essentially a Super App, but if it is, Facebook doesn't realize what they have on their hands. Within the Facebook app, you can create logins that can then be shared with other applications so that the other applications don't need to own the risk of authentication on their devices. Within the Facebook mobile app, you can not only message people, you can buy and sell merchandise, configure and manage events, send and receive money, play video games, etc.

But, as I said, Facebook doesn't seem to know what it has on its hands. You can send and receive money, but you can't do Online Banking. You can create events, but (even though Facebook has access to the Facebook pages of pretty much all party caterers worldwide), you can't order a caterer for your Facebook party. You can tell people you're going to the airport, but Facebook (even though they know the airport and where you live), doesn't offer you a ride. You can send and receive messages, but you still need a separate messaging app for your corporate job.

First, though definitions are still emerging, a simple definition of a SuperApp is that it's an app that allows you to download, prioritize, enable, disable and configure different sub-apps that live within the same ecosystem. No doubt, that definition will sound simplistic and silly in a decade.

Let's think of what a SuperApp could do. Imagine a major internet player, or a collaboration between the largest internet players, offered a SuperApp? What could they do? Let's put Google under the microscope, just to pick one of many companies in a position to do this. What could Google do?

You book a flight. Google knows. So they offer you a ride to the airport. Elsewhere, Google knows someone in your area who is already going to the same airport a few minutes earlier and has used the Google SuperApp to sign up for driving gigs. You tell Google's super-app you would like to be fed on the way, and you like sushi. Google's super app orders your sushi, just as you would order it on Grubhub or Ubereats. But instead of the driver delivering it to your home address, you're already on the road with a paid driver, and he can either pick it up on the way, or stop by on the way to the airport and pick it up.

You book a massage through the Google SuperApp. The massage therapist now has to drive from his current location to your home. The SuperApp notices that your neighbor has ordered groceries from a store near you. It messages the Message Therapist to ask if he would be willing to take care of a delivery while driving. The Therapist, using the SuperApp, says "Yes". The SuperApp, noticing that you have a history of getting groceries from the same store that your neighbor ordered from, let's you know that the Therapist will be stopping at the store, and asks would you like to get some groceries while he's there? You create a grocery list, using the SuperApp. The Therapist has signed up for delivery, but not for shopping. The SuperApp doesn't panic. One of its users is already at the grocery store, and receives the message with two shopping lists, both to be taken to the parking lot to meet the Therapist, or to be dropped at the stores pickup window. Your therapist just stops by the store, picks up the two orders, delivers one to your neighbor, and then stops at your home for your massage, holding your groceries in his hands.

Let's take the concept a step further. Google is now moving serious money through their Super App. They might as well open a bank, to keep the money inside their ecosystem. So they buy a bank. Banking functions, including bill payment, P2P, Crypto transactions, Direct Deposit, etc., are all added to the SuperApp. The SuperApp ecosystem can go as far as it wants to go. Perhaps Google thinks there's value in training gig workers to do additional types of gigs. Tuition. Furniture assembly. Maid services. Painting. Child minding. For each type of service, a short training course, inside the SuperApp, is combined with customer ratings that improve the overall quality of service over time.

How far can this go? The only limits are those of the imagination.

For the creators of the killer SuperApp, this could be enormously disruptive, but most significantly, the disruption could be to multiple industries at once. Achieving economies of scale could create the next GrubHub, Instacart, Uber, TaskRabbit, NeoBank, Cryptocurrency, all at once. Which isn't good for GrubHub, Uber, TaskRabbit, NeoBanks and cryptocurrencies. Eventually, the rise of the robotic grocery store, pre-prepared dinners, and other economies of scale would all make the SuperApp a Super Eco-System. An Amazon.com filled with the Internet of Things, of people, of services, all one simple FaceID authentication away from you. Without 84 apps, with their passwords and PIN codes.

For me, it's worth downloading a few SuperApps just to get rid of some of my 84 apps. For a gig economy worker, the ability to spend more time working and less time waiting means more pay per hours worked. The average gig economy worker earns about half what the general workforce earns. This could change that. Workers take classes, earn skills, build real-life value and earn more.

The SuperApp is not an entirely new concept. AliPay has been around in China since 2004, and it became a SuperApp arguably by 2016. Omni launched in 2019 in Central America as a banking app that allows users to hail a taxi or a bikeshare, and even call a Doctor to their home. Grab is used by 700 million southeast Asians for banking, booking hotels, deliveries, video rental and more. Gojek (featured in the image above) offers banking, food delivery, ridesharing and more. But all of the above services are only scratching the surface of what SuperApp's can do.

For instance, It's only a matter of time before Governments figure out the value of a SuperApp to accomplish broader societal goals. Imagine, for a minute, the Physician who drives to work in his Tesla every day, and lets it sit there doing nothing for 10 hours, and then drives it home. Meanwhile, across the street from the hospital where he works, there is a gig economy worker who drives 200 miles per day in a 20 MPG gas powered vehicle. He would love to be able to do something good for the economy but he cannot afford to purchase an electric vehicle. He emits 160 Lbs of Co2 daily, and spends $35 on Gasoline. The Physicians idle Tesla, meanwhile, could do the same journey for (depending on electricity source) 0-5 Lbs of Co2 emissions, and $7 in electricity costs. The average Internal Combustion Engine vehicle has a shelf life of 150,000 miles, and the cost (including energy, maintenance, principal, interest, insurance, etc) comes to about $0.50 per mile. The average Tesla, on the other hand, has a lifetime of 350,000 to 500,000 miles (we don't really know yet since almost all Teslas are still on the road), and a cost per mile of only $0.25. The SuperApp splits the difference, paying the physician $0.125 per mile and adding $0.125 per mile to the gig economy workers paycheck. For the Tesla owner, that's an easy $500 per month. For the gig-economy worker, it's an easy $500 per month. No losers. Just winners. And the biggest winner is society. There are 1.5 million EV's on the road in the USA today, but there will be 25 million by 2030. If each was used 100 additional miles per day in cases where gasoline would otherwise be used, over 700 million fewer barrels of oil would be used annually in the USA alone, at a savings of $70 Billion annually. Governments will realize that this has a multifold value. First, they meet their climate objectives. Second, they get their working poor an extra few hundred dollars per month. Third, they use it to lower global oil prices. Win, win, win.

The SuperApp will be driven by AI, and it won't be long before the manufacturers of Cellphone ecosystems begin entering this lucrative marketplace. The biggest social media sites, the biggest search providers, they will all enter this market this decade. Yet, what we have seen to date is that the biggest SuperApps were built by new entrants. With the exception of AliPay, all the other SuperApps I mentioned earlier were not the logical next step of a major tech player, but of small disruptors. The SuperApp may well be the biggest disruptor of the 2020's, because it can disrupt everything at once. Banking, energy, gig economy, government, the hotel industry, travel, even medicine, can all be consumed within these SuperApp ecosystems. The only question is: Who are the big SuperApp ecosystem creators we will all use a decade from now. Who gets rich off this emerging idea? Will it be someone we already know? The evidence suggests it will not, in the same way that David has always Slayed Goliath in the Internet world, because Goliath can't turn as fast and isn't as hungry.