Also added are buttons for the Keen fitness app and Himalaya, the country's popular music and podcast platform. There’s even a platform that lets you rent consumer electronics like VR glasses or printers.

Toutiao has effectively reinvented itself, transforming into an app that users never need to leave. It’s joining a slew of competing apps that have all taken the same approach.

The best known example of a super app is probably Tencent’s WeChat. While it was born as a mobile messaging app, it’s now one of China’s top two dominant mobile payment apps and has millions of mini programs that enable seemingly everything. Gaming, restaurant bookings, shopping and local government services like notarization can all be done from within WeChat.

“The main selling point of super apps to consumers is simplicity and convenience,” said Julber Osio, a senior specialist at S&P Global Market Intelligence.

But to create a super app, developers have to offer a wide range of services so users have no reason leave the app, he added.

The idea isn’t completely foreign in the West. Google launched Android Instant Apps in 2016, allowing people to preview an Android app from within Google’s search results. And Facebook launched instant games the same year. But these efforts didn’t become popular. The reasons for this include different antitrust regulations, privacy expectations and cultural differences, Osio said.

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In North America and Europe, antitrust policies would likely prevent large companies from swallowing smaller ones to expand their market dominance the way they did in China, according to Osio. Putting multiple services into one app also raises concerns about consumer privacy and handling of personal information – but these concerns may be less pronounced in China, he said.

China also seems to be more accustomed to getting things done on their phones. This is because many people in China – as in many other emerging markets in Asia – used the internet for the first time on a smartphone, Osio said. This is in contrast to more developed markets in the West, where the use of desktop computers remains much more common.

But when smartphones first took off in China, people weren’t getting the best phones money could buy with ample memory. So instead of cluttering them with different apps, developers created super apps that could do everything.

It’s not a bad deal for tech companies. Keeping users in one app for more activities means those people spend more time and money on one platform and its partnered services. This is why the number of super apps is rising while they continue to swallow up even more functions.

Alipay is another app that’s expanded far beyond its original function as a payment app to offer dozens of third-party services.

(Abacus is a unit of the South China Morning Post, which is owned by Alibaba, an affiliate of Alipay owner Ant Financial.)

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Toutiao is taking advantage of the new trends. It first rolled out video classes in February under a function called Study at Home. Then it added new features providing life services under the name Have Fun at Home.

“Super apps survived in China due to reasons specific to China,” Osio said. “Until conditions in other markets become somewhat similar to China's, super apps will have a hard time gaining significant traction.”