“Wolf per capita” can be paused.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Brain polar body” (ID: unity007) , the author Tibetan fox, reproduced with permission.
While fighting for the epidemic, every move of the ICT giants has also affected the nerves of the industry.
No, the news about the Global Developer Services Alliance GDSA in the past two days has triggered a lot of drool wars.
First, Reuters revealed that China’s four major smartphone manufacturers Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo are working together to launch an ecological platform GDSA that benchmarks Google Play stores.
Several GDSA website prototype images exposed by foreign media SlashGear show that the platform will cover 9 regions including India, Indonesia and Russia, which is regarded as a huge crisis for Google.
But it quickly reversed again. Reuters news indicates that Huawei has not joined GDSA, and from the GDSA official website, it is true that only Xiaomi and OV are involved in the manufacturer’s news. If the heavyweight player of Huawei is absent, he wants to leverage the Google Play app store in the Android development ecosystem. The position in China is obviously a bit difficult.
Huawei, Xiaomi, OV, etc. have no comment on this news.
But from the perspective of development trends, it seems inevitable that Chinese manufacturers will move from hardware to software and services (not to mention that Apple has taken the lead in doing so). Coupled with the uncertainty of the Chinese and American technology industries, it is undoubtedly a good thing to strengthen the control of the mobile development ecosystem.
But to achieve this, I am afraid that with an unfulfilled alliance, it is not enough.
GDSA is established, but it is still far from the Chinese version of Google Play
The news of the establishment of GDSA has attracted the attention of many big Vs. In this era of “per capita war wolf”, especially in the sensitive science and technology field, this is seen as “anti-water” to the application ecosystem dominated by Silicon Valley .
Wait a minute (Erkan face.jpg)! Huami OV has issued three denials of denial: they are not clear, do not understand, and do not comment. The onlookers could retreat.
Why GDSA distance threatens Google Play still early?
First of all, even if Chinese manufacturers want to “revolt”, the time is still immature.
Incubating a vigorous development ecosystem requires high investment and incentives. For example, Huawei has invested more than $ 1 billion in HMS services. It also needs strong basic technical support. The Ark compiler is trying to replace the Google virtual machine. . In contrast, other mobile phone manufacturers’ support for developers is still in the distribution stage, and they rely heavily on Google’s GMS services. Teasing Google Play at this time, are you afraid that the other party will not notice that you are in a hurry to be “blocked”?
So even though the big Vs are very excited and screaming very high, but the domestic manufacturers either do not participate and do not express their opinions, or it means that GDSA is only to provide developers with a better APK uploading experience.
In addition, from a practical perspective, the core value of GDSA is service.
You know, GDSA was established as early as August 2019. The original intention was to make it easier for non-local software developers to upload applications, because GDSA can be distributed to Xiaomi, vivo and oppo at the same time. The application store of a large mobile phone manufacturer is just a convenient service to ensure upload consistency. Developers can choose to accept the advertising monetization SDK provided by the platform and get promotion. Also in the same period, another “mutual communication alliance” that facilitates the user experience between brands is also being launched.
In other words, these mobile phone brands have already cooperated in ecological construction.
More importantly, the areas currently planned to be covered by GDSA, such as India, Indonesia, Russia, Malaysia, etc., are “subcontinentes” with low smartphone penetration rates, low brand premiums, and low unit prices, rather than those in Europe and the United States. The core area of Google Play, relying on these to “revolt”, it is premature in terms of commercial value and market size.
In this case, why was the “Huawei” being presented by foreign media at this time, and even the “Huawei” that attracted attention in the report on the premise of no confirmation? To be careful, it may well be a manifestation of “emotion in terror”Now. Some of the big Vs in China have contributed to the flames, why not fear that the world will not be chaotic.
Where can the ecological potential of GDSA be manifested?
Of course, the reason why “GDSA threatens Google Play” is very marketable, it also shows that the public has a certain degree of recognition of the strength of Chinese mobile phone manufacturers, and is full of expectations for the formation of its own development ecosystem.
What value does this have?
First of all, we know that GMS service is one of the important revenue components of mobile systems. Both Google Play and the App Store charge developers about 30% of “commissions”. In 2019, Google’s revenue in this market will reach $ 8.8 billion. In contrast to domestic development platforms, due to well-known reasons, they can use their own application market in the Mainland, and the overseas version must be pre-installed with “Play for Marriage” for Google Play. GDSA helps overseas developers increase their income while depositing huge developers on their own development platforms.
In addition, we know that the global mobile phone market is facing sluggish growth. Due to the economic and epidemic conditions, the 5G replacement wave may come later than expected. Under the situation where the hardware peaked, It is also an inevitable choice to open up a new profit model. By expanding the share of software and services, Apple Zhuyu is ahead, and manufacturers have aligned to optimize services to boost other revenues such as advertising, games, pre-installed applications, etc.
More importantly, the application market represents a more sticky user base. Let’s see how many people don’t want to switch to Android because they can’t give up the large size (such as me) that Apple Game Center has accumulated so hard. Not only the developers, but also the user loyalty and content that accompanied the app store The value of services is increasing every day. Only by planting a seed now can it be harvested.
Of course, it’s not easy to make this money.
How to cut the cake in the application market?
Everyone knows that the vast developer ecosystem is a big cake, but for so many years, it is still difficult for mobile phone manufacturers other than Apple and Google to completely open this treasure house.
The reason is that the giant’s first-mover advantage need not be mentioned, and the number of users is also a cliché. What the application ecology can do is the key. Then three important factors must be considered:
1. Interests.
At present, the development and word-of-mouth of the mutual transmission alliance are relatively good, a major reason is that mobile phone manufacturers can benefit from this and bring value to their users. The GDSA alliance involves a multi-platform distribution of a unified account, which means that the cross-brand and cross-ecological revenue distribution mechanism is more complicated. Once it enters the substantive stage, can the alliance manufacturers still cooperate closely and efficiently and how to divide the share ratio In the current zero-sum competition market, I am afraid we need to ask a question mark?
2. Developer services.
The premise of establishing an alliance is to serve and attract more developers, and to compete with Google Play, on the one hand, it needs to do more marketing education, which also challenges the marketing cooperation of alliance manufacturers. After successfully attracting developers, how to motivate them to innovate products on the new platform requires not only the support of monetary policy, but also the provision of a unified account system, a convenient development environment, and optimization from the cloud to the end. support.
Take the most powerful game categories, at present, each company in the alliance is fighting each other. For example, vivo overseas stores have established game account and payment systems, supporting CPA, CPS, intermodal transportation, game advertising, etc. Various cooperation; on the other side, Xiaomi also launched a game distribution platform for the App Store and Google Play, which means that even if the access actions are unified, developers still face a fragmented and decentralized ecosystem.
3.5G growth.
As we all know, the 5G mobile phone replacement wave is likely to be paused due to the “Gray Swan” new crown epidemic. A recent study published by Strategy Analytics, entitled “How does a new coronavirus affect the global and Chinese smartphone markets?” In the survey report, it is believed that global smartphone shipments will be 2% lower than expected this year, and China ’s smartphone shipments will be 5% lower than expected. Among them, there will be more than 30% decline in the first quarter. Expansion will also be affected by capacity and travel bans.
This means that the first priority of domestic mobile phone manufacturers in 2020 is to keep the hardware growth from falling.Slip and deliver more competitive products. Because if 5G users fail to meet expectations, overseas developers will not make money, and the so-called ecology is like a joke.
So here is still fighting, and at the same time, we have to take the effort to jointly operate an uncertain GDSA and sub-market, and share each other’s resources, I am afraid it is a bit tough.
There is nothing wrong with going from hard to soft, but behind each eagle soaring, there is a long dormancy. We look forward to seeing in March the marvelous moment, whether GDSA can make the first loud cry.
Of course, the reason why “GDSA threatens Google Play” is very marketable, it also shows that the public has a certain degree of recognition of the strength of Chinese mobile phone manufacturers, and is full of expectations for the formation of its own development ecosystem.
What value does this have?
First of all, we know that GMS service is one of the important revenue components of mobile systems. Both Google Play and the App Store charge developers about 30% of “commissions”. In 2019, Google’s revenue in this market will reach $ 8.8 billion. In contrast to domestic development platforms, due to well-known reasons, they can use their own application market in the Mainland, and the overseas version must be pre-installed with “Play for Marriage” for Google Play. GDSA helps overseas developers increase their income while depositing huge developers on their own development platforms.
In addition, we know that the global mobile phone market is facing sluggish growth. Due to the economic and epidemic conditions, the 5G replacement wave may come later than expected. Under the situation where the hardware peaked, It is also an inevitable choice to open up a new profit model. By expanding the share of software and services, Apple Zhuyu is ahead, and manufacturers have aligned to optimize services to boost other revenues such as advertising, games, pre-installed applications, etc.
More importantly, the application market represents a more sticky user base. Let’s see how many people don’t want to switch to Android because they can’t give up the large size (such as me) that Apple Game Center has accumulated so hard. Not only the developers, but also the user loyalty and content that accompanied the app store The value of services is increasing every day. Only by planting a seed now can it be harvested.
Of course, it’s not easy to make this money.
How to cut the cake in the application market?
Everyone knows that the vast developer ecosystem is a big cake, but for so many years, it is still difficult for mobile phone manufacturers other than Apple and Google to completely open this treasure house.
The reason is that the giant’s first-mover advantage need not be mentioned, and the number of users is also a cliché. What the application ecology can do is the key. Then three important factors must be considered:
1. Interests.
At present, the development and word-of-mouth of the mutual transmission alliance are relatively good, a major reason is that mobile phone manufacturers can benefit from this and bring value to their users. The GDSA alliance involves a multi-platform distribution of a unified account, which means that the cross-brand and cross-ecological revenue distribution mechanism is more complicated. Once it enters the substantive stage, can the alliance manufacturers still cooperate closely and efficiently and how to divide the share ratio In the current zero-sum competition market, I am afraid we need to ask a question mark?
2. Developer services.
The premise of establishing an alliance is to serve and attract more developers, and to compete with Google Play, on the one hand, it needs to do more marketing education, which also challenges the marketing cooperation of alliance manufacturers. After successfully attracting developers, how to motivate them to innovate products on the new platform requires not only the support of monetary policy, but also the provision of a unified account system, a convenient development environment, and optimization from the cloud to the end. support.
Take the most powerful game categories, at present, each company in the alliance is fighting each other. For example, vivo overseas stores have established game account and payment systems, supporting CPA, CPS, intermodal transportation, game advertising, etc. Various cooperation; on the other side, Xiaomi also launched a game distribution platform for the App Store and Google Play, which means that even if the access actions are unified, developers still face a fragmented and decentralized ecosystem.
3.5G growth.
As we all know, the 5G mobile phone replacement wave is likely to be paused due to the “Gray Swan” new crown epidemic. A recent study published by Strategy Analytics, entitled “How does a new coronavirus affect the global and Chinese smartphone markets?” In the survey report, it is believed that global smartphone shipments will be 2% lower than expected this year, and China ’s smartphone shipments will be 5% lower than expected. Among them, there will be more than 30% decline in the first quarter. Expansion will also be affected by capacity and travel bans.
This means that the first priority of domestic mobile phone manufacturers in 2020 is to keep the hardware growth from falling.Slip and deliver more competitive products. Because if 5G users fail to meet expectations, overseas developers will not make money, and the so-called ecology is like a joke.
So here is still fighting, and at the same time, we have to take the effort to jointly operate an uncertain GDSA and sub-market, and share each other’s resources, I am afraid it is a bit tough.
There is nothing wrong with going from hard to soft, but behind each eagle soaring, there is a long dormancy. We look forward to seeing in March the marvelous moment, whether GDSA can make the first loud cry.