Mobile phone manufacturers must not only seize the opportunity, but also avoid AIoT from becoming a pseudo demand.
Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat public account “Geek Park” (ID: geekpark), author Qian Akane.
The suspense left at the OPPO Developer Conference is finally revealed. On the evening of October 19, OPPO officially released the first smart TV OPPO S1. According to the information disclosed at the OPPO conference, OPPO S1 uses a 65-inch quantum dot QLED floating screen with a pop-up camera design. It is equipped with the MediaTek MT9950 chip and the ColorOS TV system, supports NFC one-touch flash projection, and can be linked with IoT devices.
Actually, in recent years, it is no longer a new thing for Internet manufacturers and mobile phone manufacturers to make TVs for the smart entertainment experience in the home scene. Mobile phone manufacturers including LeTV, Baofeng, Xiaomi, Huawei, and OnePlus have already entered the TV market and compete with traditional TV manufacturers such as Sony, Skyworth, Hisense, and Konka.
However, after the spoiling of the new forces and the tenacious resistance of the old forces, there are very few winners in the TV market. After the survival of the fittest, only a few mobile phone manufacturers and traditional TV manufacturers remain. However, OPPO’s entry into the TV track after Xiaomi and Huawei will inevitably draw a clear line from the “martyrs” and differ in concept and action.
OPPO Wisdom Life conference product display｜OPPO
The TV industry enters the 2.0 stage
The TV industry is aThere is also an “old” and dull market, which was born for nearly a hundred years and is firmly controlled by Chinese, Japanese and Korean manufacturers. It was not until the emergence of Internet vendors represented by Lexus during the mobile Internet era that the pattern and competitive situation became loose.
At that time, LeTV, under the concept of “new business model” and “ecological anti”, entered the TV market in a high-profile manner as a changer and disruptor, bringing a lot of “earthquake” to the traditional TV industry and becoming Pioneer of Smart TV 1.0 stage.
In May 2013, LeTV released two TV products Letv X60 and LetvS40 for the first time. Among them, Letv X60 is a flagship product manufactured by Foxconn, equipped with Qualcomm processor, Google Android 4.0 system, 60 inches in size, and the price is only 6999 yuan. Called by Jia Yueting as “the most powerful hardware monster”, it won a good start. After the official launch in July, it was published in LeTV Mall was sold out and became the domestic monthly sales champion that year.
In 2014, LeTV launched the 70-inch Max70 while the iron was hot, and cut the price of the previous generation Letv X60 by 2,000 yuan. With the same screen size, under the hardware configuration, the price is only half or even one third of the competition. LeEco succeeded in becoming a spoiler in the TV industry, so that the limelight overshadowed the mobile phone manufacturer Xiaomi, which launched Internet TV products at almost the same time.
But three years later, LeTV’s “Living Room War” was temporarily brought to an end due to the break of LeTV’s mobile phone business funding chain and other business lines. This year, with the delisting of LeTV, the LeTV model that once made a sensation in the market was put on a terminator.
Reviewing LeTV’s Internet TV business model “platform + content + terminal + application”, it is nothing more than a hardware + software integration model. In terms of hardware, processors and screens are benchmarked against traditional manufacturers. In terms of software, it includes TV system support for on-demand, live broadcast, and carousel, as well as the integration of a large number of content copyrights such as film and television dramas. Its profit mainly comes from hardware gross profit and income from content, advertising, and app store splits.
The success of LeTV TV is that it has promoted the traditional TV factoryCompanies have transformed and launched Internet TV sub-brands, such as Skyworth’s Coocaa and TCL’s Thunderbird. The failure lies in the violation of some basic laws of business, especially the late strategy deviation, from the integration of software and hardware, to the service, content payment, and hardware free model, becoming the last to overwhelm the camelA straw.
In general, the smart TV 1.0 stage represented by LeTV is not smart enough and the concept is not clear. It is the first generation product under the comprehensive influence of the development of the mobile Internet, the upgrade of panel technology and the domestic Internet TV license.
Just after LeTV TV entered the “silent period”, the domestic TV industry passively ushered in the node of the second round of changes, the Internet of Everything brought about by 5G, and the third wave of artificial intelligence.
Xiaomi 8th Anniversary New Product Launch Conference｜Xiaomi
In the AI+IoT era, smart TVs have entered the 2.0 stage, and Xiaomi has also taken advantage of the trend to become a representative of the 2.0 stage. Compared with LeTV’s aggressive route, Xiaomi is more stable. Since 2013, Xiaomi has deployed IoT devices through investment and incubation. This year, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun’s letter to all staff once again established the mobile phone as the core and the strategy of AIoT ecological layout, and the smart life built with AIoT penetrated more scenarios.
The biggest difference between the smart TV 2.0 stage represented by Xiaomi and the 1.0 stage is the intelligent interaction between smart home AIoT and AI.
“Smart hardware manufacturers have begun to get involved in TVs, mainly focusing on the large-screen ecology in the home scene and the multi-scenario multi-screen ecology combined with mobile phones. This attempt not only considers hardware profits, but also focuses on the home IoT industry.Empowerment. “IDC analyst Pan Xuefei told Geek Park, “Compared with traditional TV manufacturers, the advantages of mobile phone manufacturers are cross-screen collaboration and intelligent interaction.”
Therefore, mobile phone manufacturers new to the TV market, such as OPPO, are also targeting the AIoT ecosystem. But compared with Xiaomi’s earlier entry and Huawei’s brand and technical advantages, what opportunities do OPPOs have?
It is not easy for mobile phone manufacturers to cross-border
OPPOs have to make TVs.
On the one hand, in the increasingly saturated smartphone market, the replacement rate of the smartphone market has declined. In the post-Moore’s Law era, mobile phone technology iterations and updates have slowed down. The smartphone industry is facing a ceiling in both sales and innovation dimensions. Data from IDC shows that the global smartphone market will continue to shrink by about 2.3% in 2020.
On the other hand, in the 5G era, mobile phone manufacturers have entered the field of AIoT smart homes, and their diversified layout will inevitably not be able to bypass the TV sector.
Liang Zhenpeng, an insider in the home appliance industry, told Geek Park, “An offline store only sells mobile phones. Compared with selling multiple products, the ping effect (the turnover per ping area) and the total turnover are different. Similarly, the biggest advantage of OPPO and other mobile phone manufacturers in making TVs is that they can improve the efficiency of the floor. OPPO values offline physical stores, and it is reasonable to follow up with Huawei and Xiaomi to launch TVs.”
For example, after the sound volume of LeTV TV declined, Xiaomi TV quickly filled the gap in the Internet smart TV market. After several years of development, it became the leading TV manufacturer for domestic mobile phone manufacturers. From Aowei Cloud Data in the first half of 2020 show that Xiaomi’s TV shipments rank first in China. Ranked first for six consecutive quarters. According to the 2020 Q2 financial report disclosed by Xiaomi, Xiaomi’s smart devices under the AIoT strategy have increased by 38.3% year-on-year. In addition, in terms of floor efficiency, due to the wide variety of products, the floor efficiency of Xiaomi offline retail stores reached about 270,000 per year, second only to Apple.
But “food is tasteless, but it is a pity to discard it.” Not entering the TV industry is contrary to the general trend of AIoT, and entering the situation that the TV industry may faceThe situation is even more embarrassing.
Since the rise of PCs, tablets, and smart phones, the TV market demand has shrunk, growth has slowed, and dividends have faded. Since 2014, my country’s TV market has initially shown negative growth. After Q4 of 2018, the domestic TV industry has experienced multiple consecutive quarters of decline and downturn. Especially affected by the epidemic this year, data from market research agency Omdia showed that global TV shipments fell by more than 16% year-on-year.
OPPO Smart TV S1 product map｜OPPO
In addition, the main cost of the TV industry lies in LCD panels. Today, as the price war is getting worse, some industry insiders have joked that TV manufacturers mainly work for panel manufacturers. According to data from Guotai Junan, the panel, as the core component of the TV, occupies about 50 to 60% of the cost of the TV.
Therefore, the TV industry is more difficult and dangerous than the mobile phone industry. If mobile phone manufacturers want to break through traditional TV manufacturers in the TV market, they need more obvious advantages, but what about the actual situation?
“TVs can generate high gross profit in the manufacturing and processing links, and have their own value in the industry chain. Generally, mobile phone manufacturers do not have their own factories to manufacture TVs, but produce them through third-party OEMs. The production supply chain is likely to emerge Problem.” Liang Zhenpeng said.
In other words, although the current gross profit margin of the TV industry is not high, mobile phone manufacturers will incur costs such as coordination and profit distribution when entrusting third-party OEM assembly plants to produce TVs, which is slightly larger than that of TV manufacturers with fixed production lines. .
In terms of content operation, TV manufacturers must cooperate with Internet TV integrated broadcast control platform operators. It is difficult for mobile phone manufacturers to distance themselves from traditional TV manufacturers in terms of TV content.
Even in terms of content resource linkage and integration, traditional TV manufacturers have more advantages. Traditional domestic TV manufacturers have been “baptized” by the Internet thinking of Internet TV manufacturers such as LeTV, Baofeng, etc., by imitating and learning to launch Internet sub-brands, and deeply infiltrating and binding Internet companies such as BAT in content and capital.
For example, Tencent, iqiyi invested in Skyworth’s Coocaa, Alibaba became a shareholder of Konkaeasy Square; Skyworth Coocaa and TCL Thunderbird’s content turnover has shown a 50% increase in recent years, doubling. Today, the boundaries between traditional TV manufacturers and Internet TV manufacturers are becoming increasingly blurred.
Of course, this does not mean that OPPO mobile phone manufacturers who have entered the market late have no chance at all. Mobile phone manufacturers may need to find another way, such as linkage between mobile phones and TVs, large-screen entertainment games, and AI intelligent interaction.
For OPPOs, when the pie in the original market is gone, the first-mover advantage of entering a new market no longer exists, and fear of frustration will restrict development. Faced with the AIoT market, mobile phone manufacturers must not only seize the opportunity to touch the market, but also avoid AI intelligent interaction and large-screen entertainment from becoming pseudo-needs and gimmicks.