Tencent, the company which owns WeChat, has been giving mini-programs, mobile applications that can load instantly on WeChat rather than being downloaded from app stores, a huge push since 2016 as it aims to make WeChat a complete ecosystem rather than a simple chat app.
There’s another interesting facet to WeChat’s march into the mini-program territory. Since Google Play is blocked in China, the app market for android users remains divided. Mini programs are in a position to give WeChat’s 980 million users a universal method to retrieve apps.
