This is praising WeChat for having a built-in web browser that supports single sign-on and credit card autofill.
The real takeaway is "That's a long-term threat to iOS and Android, as well as any company that makes phones to run them"
"As it becomes more powerful and self-contained, Chinese phone consumers will stop asking what phone and operating system they should buy, and start contemplating what phone best runs WeChat."
For a user, easy to use is how many barriers s/he has to deal with. Many of the barriers are not only reduced by better technologies and products.
Don't get me wrong. I personally expect better-tech-leads-the-way.
tl;dw
The revolution alludes to the fact that one app is taking over everything from social networking, mobile payments, food, ticket sales, ride-hailing, financial products, bill payments, and much more.
Already the smartphone platform I use can do all of social networking, mobile payments, food, ticket sales, ride-hailing, bill payments, etc on ONE device. I just don't see what there is to be gained by pulling all this down into one app? Switching between apps via APIs is already automatic and rather fast, and will only get better over time. The NYT video makes a lot of mention of "you haven't left the app". Why do I care? As long as I haven't left my phone why do I care what app I'm in?
Having APIs for apps on a device to talk to each other allows for competition and variety - won't it obviously win out?
This isn't about whether you, one person, wants this. It's about the nearly a billion people that already live in it. Good for you that you prefer an open app ecosystem, I'm sure there are other people that feel the same way. But in China that approach has pretty much already lost.
Because one entity can control they way it's all integrated, they can bring UI consistency and convenience by enforcing some degree of feature de-duplication. E.g. Single sign-on, and a shared e-wallet.
>Having APIs for apps on a device to talk to each other allows for competition and variety - won't it obviously win out?
Nope, there's no guarantee. There are benefits to both approaches. Different people have different priorities, normies don't care this much about freedom.
If this is the future you want, you need to fight for it.
On the other hand, if WeChat eventually opens up its "app" to other developers and companies, then it will effectively become the operating system and platform. At which point (1) this is "isomorphic" our current system and offers exactly zero advantages (we are just changing where we place the label "operating system") (2) it will be competing with iOS and Android, not with other apps (3) they will have to release a phone that runs the WeChat OS