Microsoft was reportedly building a new "Super App" according to a report by The Information. This Super App, as one would expect, was hoping to achieve big things. Well, how big exactly? The report seems to suggest that the Redmond giant was eyeing the fertile mobile landscape with a title "Microsoft Eyes ‘Super App’ to Break Apple and Google’s Hold on Mobile Search".
Apparently, Microsoft had momentous plans as it wanted to integrate the capabilities of Discord and TikTok to help bolster its own mobile efforts. Sadly, those attempts failed as both ByteDance and Discord rejected the advances. Microsoft was seemingly inspired by China's WeChat's success and wanted this "super app" to offer everything under one umbrella, which would have included entertainment, shopping, messaging, web search, news feeds, forums, and alike.
This may also explain in part why Microsoft has been so serious about its acquisition efforts of Activision-Blizzard. Perhaps gaming was the next big target where Microsoft wanted to double down on, as mobile gaming is a pretty large-sized pie. According to the latest reports, gaming on mobile is massive and is expected to exceed a valuation of nearly $215 billion by 2028.
While WindowsCentral speculated that the new "Super App" was perhaps the evolution of the already familiar Microsoft Start, The Information shot down such speculations confirming that it was going to be a new thing. The site writes:
The Information confirms that it had considered Microsoft Start as this app, but it is not the story's focus, and indeed, Microsoft's "super app" idea is reportedly something else.
Even though the report is in the past tense, as in subtly suggesting that Super App ambitions are now probably buried, it will be interesting to see how things pan out, and whether Microsoft's Super App does become a real thing perhaps sometime in the future.
Source: The Information (paywall) via WindowsCentral
