I think what you said have merits, which I'm in no position of judging, but a couple facts are incorrect: - there are multiple play store equivalent, i.e. Mi S

I think what you said have merits, which I'm in no position of judging, but a couple facts are incorrect: - there are multiple play store equivalent, i.e. Mi Store, Baidu store, and several others. There is actually more competition at app store level in China, as opposed to Google's monopoly on that front, which might be the reason why user behaviors are different. - not sure how you define OS-like abstraction layer, but Chrome is also basically a super app. In fact, developing for Wechat is more similar to developing website than native app.