• Super app was supposedly designed by Microsoft to increase advertising.
• Whether Microsoft will introduce a super app is not yet known.
• WeChat has been tested in China as a means of electronic identification.

According to persons familiar with the situation, Microsoft recently contemplated creating a 'super app' that might combine services for shopping, texting, news, and web search, among others, according to a report in The Information on Tuesday. 

According to the report, Microsoft considered developing the app to weaken Apple's and Alphabet's Google's dominance of the mobile search market. Microsoft executives also wanted the app to increase user engagement with Teams messaging and other mobile services, as well as the company's multimillion dollar advertising division and Bing search.

 According to the story, the business hasn't said if it will release such an app, but CEO Satya Nadella has pushed for the Bing search service to work better with Teams and Outlook. Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and the owner of Twitter, has expressed interest in creating a super app called 'X' that would bring together a variety of services. 

A super app, dubbed the Swiss army knife of mobile apps, has gained popularity in Asia thanks to South East Asia's Grab Holdings and Tencent Holdings' WeChat. It provides users with a variety of services including messaging, social networking, peer-to-peer payments, and online shopping. 

According to Scott Galloway, a professor of marketing at New York University and co-host of the technology podcast 'Pivot,' these mega apps are commonly utilised in Asia because mobile is the primary method of access to the internet for many individuals in the region.

According to one estimate, the Chinese super app WeChat has more than 1 billion monthly users and permeates every aspect of daily life in China. Users can pay for goods from merchants, send money to friends and family, or hail a car or cab. According to the South China Morning Post, WeChat was being tested in various Chinese cities in 2018 as a mechanism for electronic identity that would be linked to users' accounts.