Mobile learning tens of millions of VC speculation

Absrtact: Recently, the domestic mobile online learning class mobile software Super timetable announced the acquisition of tens of millions of venture capital, the mobile Internet education industry to refresh the single highest investment record. As a subdivision of the online education field, the mobile internet is endowed with huge hair

Recently, the domestic mobile online learning class mobile software "Super timetable" announced the acquisition of tens of millions of dollars in venture capital, the mobile Internet education industry to refresh the highest single record of investment. As a subdivision of the online education field, the mobile Internet is endowed with great opportunities for development and is considered as a major trend of future learning. However, because the scale effect, the brand influence and so on have not formed, its business model becomes the biggest problem which puzzles the entrepreneur and the investor.

Mobile learning tens of millions of VC speculation

Two years ago, Yu Jiawen, a sophomore at Guangzhou University's China Soft Software Institute, began inventing a mobile-learning software called "Super timetable" because he was annoyed by the often forgotten lessons and where he had classes. Although the software is relatively simple, only courses, places, teachers and other information, but still won the school thousands of students in pursuit. Later, the software through continuous improvement, upgrade, the integration of the domestic 1400 colleges and universities curriculum information, the students called "Friends rub class artifact."

Is such a simple look of the mobile phone software, but caused many investors sought after. After the first two rounds of angel investment, the recent "super timetable" announced that the top domestic venture investment institutions tens of millions of dollars, refreshing the mobile Internet education in the field of single highest investment record. "We are a very wonderful company, simply want to do a ' timetable ', the first to do fine, then to consider expanding the product line." This is not possible for competitors, and other products can only support 200 popular colleges and universities. "Yu Jiawen said.

The "Super Timetable", which received huge sums of money, sparked a lot of speculation as well. In the opinion of Xu, vice president of the network, compared with other educational mobile phone software that has not yet received high investment, the "super timetable" does not show a clear profit model, but investors may be more interested in its more than 2 million registered users, "with the user base, only to talk about the premise of profitability."

"Mobile internet education can be divided into platform and tool types, in the long run, platform type is the future, ' super timetable ' is a typical tool class, can do small and beautiful, self-sufficient is not easy." "The founder of Li Haoyu, education analyst, said.

All kinds of organizations to market ahead of schedule

Compared with the more than 10-year history of online education, mobile Internet education is a relatively unfamiliar concept, in the eyes of many investors and entrepreneurs, it contains huge prospects and opportunities. "In recent years, the development of mobile learning rapid, this mainly has two reasons: on the one hand is the wireless area network, WiFi, 3G, 4G and so on the rapid development of the communication technology, its service price also changes greatly; On the other hand, using mobile devices such as mobile phones and tablet computers, with the cooperation of page originality and mobile technology, Mobile learning is becoming more and more popular. Guoqing, professor of computer science and engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said.

According to a recent study by PwC, the mobile internet market is expected to reach $259 billion trillion in 2014 and break 385 billion in 2017. Subdivided into education, the potential is enormous, with total revenue expected to reach $9.1 billion trillion by five years.

For the development of mobile Internet education, Xu use "explosive" to describe. "In the case of the net, the number of registered members from 0 to 10 million in the 10-year period, and the number of users of the mobile Internet applications from 0 to the breakthrough 10 million is only a year." It can be said that the fragmented mobile learning is a major trend in the future, the company has promoted it to strategic position, mobile team research and development investment in the forefront of the entire company. "Xu said.

Beijing business Newspaper reporter Statistics found that the current mobile internet education mobile phone software is the formation of English-oriented, vocational education, universities, primary and secondary schools and other areas of the current development. Even early education--this seems to have little to do with the mobile Internet area, there are no lack of pioneers, according to the earliest development of early-stage mobile phone software, the founder of the early morning Wang Xiaofung, the launch of the "one Yuan a day" 0-3-Year-old mobile products, the current membership has exceeded 30,000.

Business model still in the exploratory stage

"In the entire mobile internet education industry, although many enterprises have been involved, but have not found a suitable business model, it is difficult to form a scale." This is mainly subject to user groups and hardware two major aspects, traffic has become a bottleneck in the development of the industry, high investment, low return or even 0 return to let the Entrepreneur ' die ' a batch after another. "Talking about mobile internet education, Wang Xiaofung admits that although the prospect looks attractive, but still nowhere scale, representative of the leading enterprise," In addition, domestic users do not form a mature download payment habits, in the App Store to do education content development is actually not money.

In an interview with a beijing-based newspaper reporter, many large educational institutions are developing mobile terminals, but more as an extension of offline or online products, while some entrepreneurs focused on mobile internet education are not having a good time. As an example of a small, famous extension of foreign language learning, according to the founder and CEO Shirtan introduced, the current extension word has nearly 3 million registered users, daily user volume of nearly 100,000, and in the app Store to get the rankings, "but our products are paid to download, but also can not profit and loss balance, mainly rely on angel investment to run."

Xu that, since it is mobile products, but also have to face the update speed, the elimination rate of high embarrassment. "In business models, as user demand tends to be fragmented, rapid, resulting in the application of the development will also be more inclined to fine, so mobile internet education can try Wolf Group effect, that is, one or a few flagship products, driven a series of strategic layout products, and then form the scale effect, covering more comprehensive user needs, Like Tencent, relying on the QQ platform, thus penetrating into various fields. "Xu said.