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by Barrin92 2203 days ago
This does indeed happen and the biggest example is probably China. Wechat with its super-app concept has done something that didn't really have a Western analog. Didi replaced Uber in China, Alipay and TikTok and a lot of other apps constitute an entirely different, domestic ecosystem.

It's also starting to happen with banking / finance apps. Nubank is growing very fast in Latin America, Africa is starting to have a domestic ecommerce sector, and so on. The internet is new and many countries, particular developing ones that have a sufficiently distinct culture to not just adopt Anglophone products are only now starting to have the talent and infrastructure in place.

It's also happening in messaging. Telegram is overwhelmingly more popular in Europe/Russia than it is in the US. LINE is the most popular app in Japan and Thailand, Facebook Messenger and SMS still dominate in the US.

1 comments

China is not a free market, but your other examples are mostly on point. Except that Telegram (and Viber) are really popular only in a few countries. Most of Europe (and the world) uses WhatsApp.