The top free app on Apple is called Temu, and it only launched in the U.S. last fall. But its sudden popularity is for good reason: Not only are the prices on the app ridiculously low, but there are also (some) products that you’ll actually want to buy.
Temu is the American subsidiary of Pinduoduo, a discount shopping portal in China that’s competing pretty well with Alibaba (basically, China’s answer to Amazon). Given our inflation fears and tightened budgets, it’s probably a good time in America to introduce a service that offers seemingly endless discounts, free shipping and a majority of items under $10.
A month after its September launch, Temu (pronounced tee-moo) had already become the number-one shopping app in America — and not necessarily by word of mouth. “I believe [its success is] driven almost exclusively by ads,” as Juozas Kaziukėnas, founder of Marketplace Pulse, told MIT Technology Review. “I’m seeing relatively no mentions of Temu on social media. That makes me believe that there’s very little organic recognition of the brand yet.”
Source: Insidehook