Snap offers mini-apps made by third party developers for meditation, making flashcards, and polling friends. Earlier this year, Snap announced what it calls 'Minis,' which is the same concept, except inside Snapchat. The idea of mini-apps is beginning to catch on in the U.S. Other Chinese tech companies, including Alibaba and Baidu, have also added mini programs into their apps. They're accessible through links directly in the WeChat interface, or through QR codes that can be found in magazines, at restaurants and stores, on business cards, and so on.ģ00 million of WeChat's more than 1 billion users used mini apps daily in 2019, spending the equivalent of $115 billion, Tencent said earlier this year.

Third-party developers have built more than a million mini-apps for WeChat to do everything from ordering delivery food, shopping online, or playing a quick game. The king of mini-apps is WeChat, the massively popular Chinese-oriented messaging program made by Tencent.

That means they load much more quickly and don't require users to install anything - just like an interactive web site runs in a web browser - but also means they can't be as sophisticated as full apps or games. Mini apps are not full apps - they're written in HTML5, the same markup language used to create a website.

If Epic's lawsuit prevails, and Apple is forced to support alternative app stores on the iPhone, these existing methods could provide a preview of what the future marketplace for iPhone apps looks like. Airport is a proposed alternative app store that's seeking a wider audience for beta software, which needs a little more work before it's ready for everyone, although Apple may not approve it. Altstore, which came out in 2019, distributes apps that the App Store won't approve. Other alternatives operate in grey areas without Apple's blessing. Tencent, the Chinese technology giant, has created an empire of 'mini-apps' inside its WeChat app, which are acceptable under Apple's rules for its App Store. However, there are other ways to install software on an iPhone. Software makers who can't abide by its rules can build websites instead, Apple says. Apple says it restricts users to downloading apps from the App Store to preserve quality: Apple employees review every app to assure users that iPhone apps are free of malware, offensive content, and security holes.

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