superapp

Superapps are mobile applications that offer many unified services, from messaging to mobile payments and much more. In Asia, especially China, They are the default formula that has been successful for years with apps like WeChat, Meituan or AliPay. In the West we are more into specialized apps, but the market is beginning to show clear signs of approaching the Chinese model. The Uber case. Uber just announced the integration of hotel reservations in your app through its alliance with Expedia. In this way, in the same app we have car reservations, food delivery and hotel reservations, a solution that is quite similar to the model of a Chinese super app like WeChat, which integrates all types of services under one umbrella. Uber’s goal is that, by offering more services, the Uber One subscription will be more attractive to consumers and thus increase its income. An important detail: Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi was previously CEO of Expedia, so this alliance does not seem coincidental. TikTok Shop. Uber is not the only one that is following this strategy, there are other proposals that also point in the direction of consolidation. We have the clearest example with TikTok and the integration of the marketplace. ByteDance has managed to export a very Asian model: see a product in a video and buy it without leaving the app. TikTok Shop has been in Spain since the end of 2024 and, at the end of 2025, there is already a TikTok account more than 12,000 stores operating on its platform. The adoption data is positive, but the model is still very far from the penetration it has in China. There have been attempts. The creation of a super app that succeeds in the West was Elon Musk’s obsession when he bought Twitter. The bet did not work out and today X continues to be what Twitter was: a microblogging social network. PayPal also tried its superapp version integrating hotel reservations with little travel. Years ago there was talk that WhatsApp could be the WeChat of the West, but despite having been adding functions, it is still a messaging app. Looking to the future, we have the case of ChatGPT and its path to a super app that integrates the chatbot with the Atlas and Codex browser. Why in China yes and here no. It is not a question of simple preferences, but has a structural explanation: Internet penetration in China was much slower and, in some ways, skipped the era of the personal computer. While Western consumers came to the smartphone with already formed habits (a browser to search, an email program, an online store), the Chinese did so directly from the mobile phone. By not having already created habits, this made the creation of these “everything apps” much easier. Likewise, the penetration of credit and debit cards was also slow and many consumers switched from cash to mobile payments, hence apps like WeChat or AliPay have become the default standard for paying everywhere. Another factor that plays in favor of the adoption of these apps is that they had no competitors. With the entire Google and Facebook suite blocked by the Chinese government, these apps did not have to compete, but rather filled a void. And of course there is the regulatory issue and institutional support. in China you can pay taxes from WeChatapply for a business license or pay a traffic fine without leaving the app, because the Chinese government actively integrated its public services into these platforms. In the West, the merger between a private company and the State would generate immediate political and regulatory scrutiny. something is changing. On the one hand, the perception we have of China from the rest of the world has been changing in recent years. The success of TikTok, the Labubu, the popularity of electric cars… are symptoms that China has become a cultural reference and technological. This opens a new opportunity for success. On the other hand, there is a new variable: AI. The arrival of AI tools is already changing our information-seeking habits and has the potential to function as a layer on top of everything we already use, connecting services that previously lived separately. Image | IlgmyzinUnsplash In Xataka | The US has made an almost total commitment to enormous AI models. China is showing another way