How Wechat use the 7 sources of innovation opportunity

WeChat, the most popular Chinese IM tool, just had its 100 million users in March 2012. It gained 50 million users within first lunch year without any ads. Why it could be such successful in China?

Wechat is an IM tool that users can use it to send voice, images, and texts, video, and everything we want to share in Digital Age. If we looked at 7 sources of Innovation, which are the unexpected, incongruities, process needs, industry and market structure, demographics, changes in perception, and new knowledge, we can see that Wechat caught some of these opportunities, and make these opportunities into real.

Before Wechat, QQ dominated Chinese IM market. It owned 600 million users based on the growing of past 10 years. However, with the growing pace of people’s steps, and the eager of sharing whenever and wherever, QQ, which is a pure typing IM cannot feed the need of convenience from customers. (Process needs) At the same time, 3G and smart phone entered people’s lives. (New knowledge) People didn’t need to sit in front of computer and chat with others anymore. (Industry and market structure) Customers need a product that allows them to chat while walking, eating, and driving, etc. Then Tencent Co. jumped out and said: I had a new product which could satisfy all your needs and you can chat by just pressing one button, then you could talk in time whoever, whenever, and wherever. At the beginning, people still concerned about whether it’s cost much data when sending voice. But soon they found that Wechat can even save data compare to QQ since it costs only 2.4k/hr to run in the background. (Incongruities) Wechat never stop innovation after success. Face to the youth who want to make friends on IM, (Demographics) Wechat created a function that people can shake their phones and then find the other people who are shaking phones at the same time. As we know, communication need is always the main need for human, and in modern society, people have less chance to go out and social, then they have to communicate and make friends online. That’s why the social media is so popular nowadays. Based on this fact, Wechat includes a mini social media in it and people can share personal information and interesting things through Wechat. This function attracts more people to make friends on Wechat by shaking phones and search information.

Wechat recently cooperate with some Weibo (Chinese Twitter) famous accounts, such as Collection of jokes. People can add these accounts to friends list and they can receive push information from them. (e.l. they can receive three joke messages each day through Wechat if they add Collection of jokes as friend) This function gives Wechat more chances to earn income.

Although Wechat is successful in China, compare to QQ, it still has less market share. And some people said they already tired of Wechat since it couldn’t give us more creative functions. So innovation is still a big challenge in front of Wechat.

Google SWOT

Strength:

Google’s simple page makes it easier for customers to find search bar easily, which they actually want to find at Google. If we see Yahoo’s search page, we can see too many things appeared on one page. That would defocus customers’ concentration, and as a result, make customers feel annoyed. Compare to other search engine, we cannot find ads pictures on Google result pages also. Simple is what Google stand for for customers. Also, I like changed styles of Google logo soooo much! It's more like a art design and always give me surprise.

High tech is also a strength since every result searched by Google is pure automatically and would be ranked by clicks. This would make the search more accurate and fed what customers exactly needs.

Google also have high income, which can give them more power to run company well and invest new technologies, and good image, which can bring Google plenty of talents.  The good enterprise culture and comfortable work environment are also attractive. I heard about that “Googlers” can swims and work out in their office and have cookies for free every day! And nobody would push them to work. They can wear whatever they like, do whatever they want in their office! Wow!

Weakness:

Since Google has simple page, they cannot add too many features on home page, which means, people can hardly reach their new product although Google try very hard to create more Google products. However, Google cannot add these products on home page easily since people already get used to its simple images. Google will lose costomers by careless changes.

What's more, fewer ads will lead to fewer revenue.

Opportunities:

Recently Google bought MOTO, that make Google more competitive. Google can develop its acquisition strategy and be stronger.   

Google developed and released Android System really successfully. It became the most popular mobile system now. If Google make some more development on Android and cooperate with mobile companies appropriate, it will generate more market share.  

Treads:

There are so many search engine appeared recent year, and how to keep strength is critical for Google. Bing- which is owned by Microsoft could bring higher quality of pictures and product search. Baidu- which is Chinese Google, benefit by government support and own market share overwhelming. How to compete with those different kinds of search companies is quite important to Google.

Also, almost 90% of Google’s revenue came from searching, but the growth of market is slowing down. Google need to think about another good method to feed itself as soon as possible.

Welcome to Nan Bai's blog

I'm Nan, a second year marketing master student. Hope we could have a good semester and cooperation.