Mobile Internet investment Hot Multiple risk highlights

Newspaper reporter Zhong Zhimin

In the global economic downturn, the mobile internet market is the best scenery. Reporters from the Qing Branch group held the "Second Mobile Internet Investment Summit Forum" that the first half of 2012, China Mobile Internet investments continued last year's investment fever, disclosure of investment events up to 30, including the disclosure of investment amount of investment cases of 17, The total amount of investment disclosed is about USD 378 million, and the average investment amount is about $22.25 million.

However, the risk is highlighted behind the hot. Gavin, founder and chairman of the Qing Ke group, said that overall, China Mobile Internet industry is still a small amount of investment volume, which is mainly due to the majority of mobile internet companies in the start-up period, business model in the exploratory phase, investment risk is high. "Now the mobile internet is a flowering, not fruitful, now or planting period, not yet to harvest." ”

A number of industry insiders said that the traditional internet it giants with technology, scale advantage quickly erode mobile internet, all kinds of investment into mobile internet trend cautious.

Great potential, but it's still not harvest time.

The large-scale and industrialized development of China Mobile Internet makes investors smell the huge opportunity of industry development.

Gavin said that with the cost of user participation reduced, the cost of enterprise participation, the opening of the application portal, the opening of the operating system, the entire mobile internet has entered a high-speed development period, investment is also a record high, "in this year's China, the investment sector is not a decline in the number of estimates is the mobile Internet and health care, In addition, energy conservation and environmental protection may be increasing. ”

According to Chingko Research Center statistics, 2011 China Mobile Internet industry has disclosed the number of investment cases are 78, including the disclosure of investment in the number of investment cases of 59, the total amount of disclosure of investment of 665 million yuan, the average single investment amount of 11.27 million U.S. dollars, far more than the same level over the years. The Heat continued until the first half of 2012.

Mobile internet users have grown rapidly compared with the slow growth of internet users. Data from the research center of Qing Ke 2011 China Mobile Internet users of 429 million people, is expected to be more than 520 million at the end of 2012, is expected to be around 2013, China Mobile internet users will first exceed the number of Internet users; in 2011, China Mobile internet revenue of 101.735 billion yuan, compared with 2010 74.289 billion yuan, the increase of up to 36 .94%. By the end of this year, Gavin points out, the entire mobile Internet user will be able to bring in more than more than 130 billion of output revenue.

Gavin that the rapid growth of China Mobile's internet revenues has benefited from the increasing development and investment of China telecom operators in mobile value-added services. In addition, the active participation of third party mobile Internet enterprises, the deep expansion of entertainment application and the continuous exploration of business application, enhance the user's willingness to pay.

It is noteworthy that despite the first half of 2012, China Mobile internet industry average single investment is much higher than the 2011 average, but mainly by the deep Investment network letter linkage, Guangdong Cultural industry Investment Management company Investment Flash purchase of these two high investment amount of impact. Overall, China Mobile Internet Industry single investment volume is still small, mainly because most mobile internet companies in the start-up period, business model is in the exploratory stage, investment risk is high.

Gavin also said that from 2005 to 2012 investment in mobile Internet, A, b round more, C, D-round relatively few. Now the mobile internet is a blossoming, not fruitful, now or planting period, has not yet to harvest. If one day mobile internet investment in the C and D round increase, indicating that the industry has been more mature.

Small and medium-sized companies to survive

Investment still in the blue sea

Mobile Internet as a sunrise industry, attracted a large number of industrial participants to join, including Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba and other funds, technical strength of the internet and IT industry giants. Many people in the industry pointed out that in the large-scale Internet enterprises "cloud-tube-end" layout has been accelerating today, innovative mobile Internet enterprises in the face of fierce market competition is prone to premature death, VC/PE investment tends to cautious.

First of all, most of the domestic mobile client products business model is not clear, the profit prospects are unknown, coupled with serious product homogeneity and user stickiness is not high, investment returns are not optimistic. "The easiest time to make money has passed, and now it's up to the volume and scale." Ning, founder partner of Le Bo Capital, said that in such a market environment, mobile internet companies can not easily be sought after, large scale, in small profits and even loss of the enterprise to survive.

As of the end of November 2011, there were about 1 million mobile app developers in China, according to a statistic. Of the 1 million of mobile app developers, the profit is only 13.7%, the losses accounted for 64.5%, the flat 21.8%.

Second, the big Internet enterprises win "take all", small and medium-sized enterprises have limited living space. Chen, Chairman and CEO of Renren, said, "The mobile Internet is a game for it giants, and there are few opportunities for small and medium-sized startups." ”

Xusheng, director general of Intel Investment China, said the advantage of mobile Internet is that users are more personalized, everyone becomes a very vertical market, it is difficult to scale. "So investors are looking at platform-class companies, but Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent have begun to occupy the market, whether there is a new company to enter the entire platform of the market is also a problem." ”

In addition, in the world economic situation is not optimistic, the capital market is depressed, the pace of Chinese companies to market slowdown, the average issue of the overall decline in price/earnings ratio of VC/PE earnings face test.

Gavin said that many factors have seriously affected investor confidence, making the LP (limited partner) investment prudent and leading to a conservative investment in VC/PE funds.

Some investors expect that in 2-3 years, China Mobile Internet will enter a new round of self recuperation period, in the rapid development of the squeeze out of excess foam, to form a benign development of the industrial environment. In this process, there are still areas of blue sea.

IDG Capital partner Zhang said that the creation of a new company platform is more difficult, and large companies more suitable for platform, small companies should focus on the application, or around large data for technical breakthroughs, only more targeted.

At present, many companies too much emphasis on scale, but not focus on the quality of growth process, that is, the scale of growth is not sustainable, is the company's "mishap." Zhang pointed out that "the capital market after the bubble period, will gradually return to the fundamentals, emphasizing the healthy growth of enterprises and profitability, such companies have the opportunity to grow." ”

Xusheng said that the mobile Internet vertical market more opportunities, the key is that the market needs big enough.

The United States Qualcomm James is optimistic about the hardware and community, the Internet companies so much attention to mobile phones, in fact, it is to attach importance to vertical integration, pay attention to the full user experience and Yonghe stickiness. The handset is a hardware, inside the competition is most brutal, the technical content is highest. In addition, he also believes that mobile cloud technology will have an opportunity. "Movement reflects the value of the cloud, and the movement produces a lot of good data, and the analysis of the data can produce some added value." ”

The number of users over billion of the universal application has not been finalized, platform-type investment companies should focus attention. "There are no more than five applications that people use on their phones, and there are already microblogs, micro-letters and mailboxes." "The big application market still has opportunities," said Ning, the founding partner of Le Bo Capital.

In addition, the majority of the low-end mobile internet users market is still to be tapped. Guo, senior partner of Yintai Capital, pointed out that the 345-line city is still the blue Sea of mobile internet investment, it is best to search the results of the first three in the Mobile phone search field.

There are still multiple risks in investment hot

According to the statistics of the Qing Ke Research Center, 2011, from the disclosure of investment events, unlimited value-added services, mobile applications development related, mobile gaming and other fields of investment events more; From the disclosure of total investment events, mobile gaming, platform operators and related, mobile application development related to the total amount of disclosure, In particular, the mobile gaming sector, the average single investment amount of 16.34 million U.S. dollars.

According to the latest data in the first half of 2012, in addition to mobile games and wireless value-added services, mobile E-commerce-related industries are gradually being sought after by capital. It is expected that mobile E-commerce will become one of the mainstream segments of mobile internet investment in the coming years.

While mobile gaming and mobile E-commerce are sought after, investment risks remain.

Gavin said that China's current mobile phone game market is more fragmented, some companies with a game may achieve rapid growth, but the follow-up products may be due to design, entrepreneurship and other reasons, it is difficult to show the quality of the game, this uncertainty is large, and even a speculative opportunistic risk. Combined with the short life cycle of a single cell phone game, this situation has led VC/PE to pay more attention to the mobile gaming companies that already have successful work, and to be cautious about start-up mobile gaming companies.

In the field of mobile e-commerce, Gavin that the physical type of mobile E-commerce enterprises need strong offline accumulation and flow scale expansion capacity, and these core resources have been mastered in the hands of large-scale internet e-commerce enterprises, at present, the physical category of mobile E-commerce market opportunities are limited. He suggested that VC/PE would steer clear of the physical E-commerce market and focus on certain segments of the business that have a distinct profit model.

In addition, other risks are reflected in: the development of China Mobile Internet market, to a certain extent, telecom operators further "channel", and in the voice business revenue contribution decline, China telecom operators will also use their own channels, payments, users and other advantages, step into the mobile Internet field, This adds to the competitive pressure of relatively immature third party mobile internet makers. Second, from the mobile Internet segmentation applications, most of China's mobile Internet applications have not yet formed a mature business model, for the capital market is not likely to obtain a return on investment in the short term. Third, the overall view, China Mobile Internet application has not formed a real meaning of innovation, imitation traces are more serious. Finally, the payment channel is single and imperfect.