Jiomeets, low switching costs and the next billion anti-Chinese users


There’s a lot of talk about how JioMeets has blatantly copied Zoom’s UI. Well, imitation is the best form of flattery, isn’t it?

But I’m wagering that there’s a smarter move behind it. It’s called switching costs. I argue that Jio has not copied the UI, but the UX of zoom. Why? For the simple reason that it wants current zoom users to seamlessly be able to move to their platform. Earlier, Zoom had dropped the requirement of users being ‘signed in’ to zoom in order to join a meeting. What that meant was that zoom removed the network effects (possibly to reduce switching costs of MS Teams and Google Meets users). Well, Jio just one-upped them at their own game. 

Jio’s strength has been its distribution. When you combine the power of distribution with low switching costs for users, after raising 10 rounds of funds, with one sided support from the government, against a chinese company, in a country of the next billion users having a generally negative Chinese sentiment at peak, you’ve figured the bigger picture out.

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