The Everything App Is Coming
“Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app”, said Elon Musk.
This seems to be the case. X is integrated with Grok which is currently capturing some small percentage of the AI market while remaining more or less stable (it’s still getting almost 4 billion monthly visits of web traffic). That’s great for Elon, but it’s not quite worth getting excited about. More interestingly, Elon is offering a 6% annual percentage yield card/account next month that are insured up to $250k. What’s that called? X Money.
But, there is a catch…
Where X is still selling the vision, Anthropic is delivering on Elon’s promises through Claude Cowork. Slide decks can be created, documents can be organized, and personal agents are more empowered than before. It’s quite a bit of steak and quite a bit of sizzle. Adding to this are the recent roll outs of the dispatch feature (which let’s your phone remote with the more advanced AI on your computer), app capabilities, and an increased memory. Your user experience has been revamped, skills integrated, and projects more systematized.
That’s quite a mouthful. All that to say - you might actually be able to do the things you want (unless you are using Co-pilot).
Seemingly in response to this recent surge of momentum, OpenAI has announced that they are killing their partnership with Disney in order to focus on creating an integrated platform experience, AKA SUPERAPP.
What I am getting at here is distribution is going to be everything and your conduit for getting work done is going to hold a lot of value and thus seek to find advantage where possible.
------ Here is my reasoning, skip if you wish----
Now, is that really the case?
In my opinion to answer this question we should look at perhaps the best case of a monopoly through distribution- the app store.
Apple charges a 30% commission of all sales through the app store which is famously what Epic games, the makers of Fortnite, attempted to dodge through a direct payment avenue.
AND
Just this month Apple was under pressure from Chinese regulators to lower that 30% commission to 25%.
Interestingly, around the same time period, Apple reached a deal with the makers of WeChat to collect a 15% commission on IOS virtual purchases through WeChat mini-apps, which also set out to circumvent the app store.
We could also get into the 3% or so fees that credit card companies like Visa and Mastercard charge on every transaction.
· I don’t want to elaborate too much at present, but I think Apple is getting squeezed by China in general
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The more control one has over the platform, the more fees they will be able to impose and extract.
So, what does the one SUPERAPP that does exist do?
Tencent pulled in RMB 660 billion (~$92B) in 2024 across three buckets: gaming and subscriptions at 48%, FinTech and business services (including WeChat Pay) at 32%, and advertising at 18%.
WeChat charges merchants .6% per transaction and also focuses on driving revenue through their captured audience (read as advertisements).
WeChat proved you don't need a 30% toll. You just need everyone to show up. The race isn't for the best model or the best payment app. It's for the platform where the work gets done.
