[izacus]

> - For America/Europe: WeChat would never happen, unless there was severe monopolisation that allowed a company to roll something like WeChat out successfully, or the federal government / national governments mandated it

Isn't Apple ecosystem basically US/European WeChat? It's not a single app, but they use tight integration and single device lock to create essentially a full copy of all WeChat services with iMessage, Apple Pay, Health, etc? Apple basically control communications, payments and health data of their users and works with other vendors to integrate them primarily as payment, content and preferred identification provider.

You get all of that nicely packaged into a single box. The only difference is that you can't use it on a cheap phone.

[sweezyjeezy]

If you go into a McDonald's in China there are self service touch screens. If you want to use these, the _only_ way to do it is with WeChat. You cannot use a credit card, if you don't have WeChat payments, you queue and pay in cash (this was my experience anyway). That's how ingrained WeChat is in Chinese society. You should think less about features and instead look at how it is actually used there.

[filoleg]

>Isn't Apple ecosystem basically US/European WeChat?

If you could only perform all your life necessities by using a single app from Apple, like taxis/medical records/paying for things/transit access/government stuff/etc., then sure. But for now, there isn't anything like this. In fact, it would not come to fruition at any point in this current timeline imo, given that for each one of those things, Apple has competitors who have offerings just as good or better for each of those categories.

Also, I heavily doubt that US would ever subject itself to every single aspect of people's lives having to go through a single private entity with no alternatives available.

I think another part of the reason it happened in China (aside from obvious ones that people already mentioned, like WeChat being de-facto pretty much an extension of CCP) is the fact that before WeChat there was nothing. So WeChat came to an empty field and filled all that vacuum. In 2020, there is no such vacuum in the US/Europe. For each of the tasks one would use their smartphone for, there are multiple competent competing entries.