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A few years ago, Flipkart was the leading e-commerce portal in India, and Amazon was a poor third, behind Snapdeal[1]. At some point in March 2015, Flipkart (and their fashion portal, Myntra) decided to go "app-only" on mobile[2], i.e., if you went to their website using a mobile browser, you would get shown a large interstitial to install their app, and nothing else. There was no option to proceed with their mobile website. Flipkart also gave away exclusive discounts for people downloading their app. People rebelled. A lot of people rebelled. No one wanted to install their app to comparison shop. People just went to the Amazon site and bought whatever they wanted, knowing that at most, there would be a minor difference in price. Shopping on Amazon's site using a mobile browser was a breeze compared to Flipkart. The whole app-only strategy was a disaster.[3] Flipkart admitted their mistake[4], and decided to re-instate their mobile website in November the same year. But the damage had been done. By August 2016, Flipkart had lost its leading place in the Indian e-commerce space to Amazon[5]. They never recovered, and to this day, they're still playing catch-up. Not everything in the entire debacle can be attributed to Flipkart's app-only strategy. Undoubtedly, there are others aspects - like Amazon's prime being better than Flipkart's version, etc. But the app-only strategy definitely contributed significantly to Flipkart's uncrowning, and provided Amazon the much-needed entry point to becoming the market leader. 1. https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/flipkart... 2. https://www.livemint.com/Industry/J9VeQxowSOlHU8ZMUParUL/Fli... 3. https://www.techinasia.com/flipkart-myntra-app-only-disaster 4. https://trak.in/tags/business/2015/11/10/flipkart-u-turn-mob... 5. https://www.livemint.com/Companies/c6vY9ta120G7cwewrCg6bI/Ha... |