Segment the mobile market

REPORTER/shengwei

After Apple's appstore, a mobile internet terminal software store, has made a huge profit, Google, Microsoft, Nokia, and Samsung are all following their operating models. China Mobile is about to launch a mobile-market. So what is the impact of this emerging mobile application sales model on the entire mobile ecosystem? What opportunities will it bring to entrepreneurs? Our reporter recently interviewed Meng Chuang, general manager of Beijing kongyu digital Union Information Technology Co., Ltd., an entrepreneur in this field.

Mengchuang's startup project, skygame game store, is a game platform based on mid/netbook. Users can use it to manage games on mid/netbook, including installation, upgrade, and download. It is also a game publishing platform. Software developers or individual developers can submit game resources for free through the management platform. Users can download the game by searching and browsing. The Games submitted by the skygame game store are strictly tested and processed with multiple encryption methods, ensuring their practicability and security. At the same time, they intelligently match the super mobile computer model used by users, only show available games for users, avoiding the complicated process of searching for matching games with their own machines.

 

Software store, service store

Meng Chuang believes that the software store is a general concept, which is more suitable for service stores or resource stores because it not only provides various application software, but also provides some special services, such as daily forecast, exchange rate calculation, and travel guide. Although the operation model of appstore has received much attention, how to coordinate, test, operate, manage, and present so many resources is caused by tens of thousands of software, services, and resources, it is not only a problem of Technical Development of a transaction platform, but also a service provision. Therefore, there are very few operators that are truly qualified and capable to operate software stores.

As the appstore model is gradually increasing, Nokia announced the official launch of the App Store OVI at the 2009 World Mobile Communication Conference, almost at the same time, microsoft also claims that its launch of Windows marketplace for mobile will become "a market integrating search, browsing, and purchasing mobile apps ", it also indicates that the program developer will be able to "provide the application without restrictions ".

In January 29, 2009, the trial version of Samsung app-store started in the UK and plans to launch a global version in the second half of this year. The release and promotion of applications through the Samsung appstore website are free of any initial charges. The sharing model of paid applications currently uses R/S (revenue share) is the Basic partition mode.

China Mobile's software store model should be similar to appstore, and all operations are based on its own resources, including customized mobile phones and netbooks. With these resources, you can control the customer stream through control channels. After a period of operation in the software store, they will find that those software users are more interested, and will integrate the software on mainstream custom mobile phones, in turn to promote the sales of these own resources.

 

Market Segments

Meng Chuang had the idea of creating such a software store long ago. Even when Apple launched its appstore, it had already made a similar prototype. However, at that time, he did not publish it on a large scale. There are three reasons: first, since it is called a software store, there should be a lot of application products, but at that time, the products he developed did not have many available software and services for users, there are only a dozen applications on mid or netbook, so it makes no sense to push the store. Second, operating this is not what a startup company can do, he needs a lot of resources controlled by the operator or integrated resources, such as a sufficient number of customers. For companies like Apple, they have their own devices and operating systems, therefore, bundling a large number of customer resources will form a virtuous circle. Third, in terms of operation, if a small company only publishes a self-developed agreement, few developers are willing to follow an unknown protocol standard. In addition, it is unrealistic for anyone to develop this product and sell it online. Various reviews, various process controls, and corresponding functional verification and testing are required, it is even necessary to determine whether the content violates national policies, which cannot be done by small startups.

Therefore, after thinking, Meng Chuang decided to segment the market. He believes that small third-party companies should start from some subdivision points rather than creating a "Super walcode Supermarket" from the very beginning, which is difficult to operate, the construction of specialized and subdivided small supermarkets can achieve a greater degree. Although a wide array of contents cannot be done, a smaller market area, such as moblin, can be a good start point to create a mid casual game store. The reason why we chose moblin is that the concept of MID was initially proposed by Intel, and Intel's moblin is completely designed to support the MID market. It is an open-source and multi-party participant, operating systems that run on the Mid device. In addition, the entire moblin system is a basis for running software on the mid, which is very important for our development.

Meng Chuang's plan is to start from the casual game store in the first step; Step 2 to the online game store; Step 3 to develop paid games, through a gradual evolution process, he gradually became bigger and stronger, and finally realized his dream of software store.

 

Opportunities for Market Segmentation

What opportunities will market segments bring to small startups?

Although China Mobile has not yet made any substantive actions, let's assume that it has launched and operated its own software store, to some extent, his operation method is different from the appstore mode. Tens of thousands of iPhone-based applications are currently running. But if China Mobile wants to integrate tens of thousands of services, there will be a lot of work to do, and will China Mobile do such jobs as testing and content review for each software? Meng Chuang believes that China Mobile is likely to adopt a cooperation model similar to the previous 2G mobile era, that is, the proprietary software store Sp (Service Provider) will appear. For example, an SP only provides game software services, the other SP only provides weather forecasts, and office software. This is equivalent to sharing part of the workload of China Mobile, therefore, there are opportunities brought about by subdivision. Because SP provides integration, testing, operation, and maintenance, it will naturally share the benefits. According to the above analysis, SP should first train internal skills and integrate and develop corresponding subdivided service items to pave the way for real cooperative operation and create specialized market opportunities.

 

Software store threshold

If you want to make the software store better, there are still many "Thresholds" and "Operation ideas" in it. Meng Chuang believes that at least the following characteristics can be truly called an ideal software store:

First, it should be the quickest and smartest way for end users to obtain mobile Internet resources. You can easily install, delete, and update the software by using the resources, including software and games, on the software store of the corresponding device, without worrying about the software compatibility and dependency, the software store automatically analyzes its operating system and hardware specifications, displays the list of available resources based on the operating system and hardware specifications, and analyzes the dependencies of software packages. For missing software packages, it will be automatically downloaded from the server and installed.

At the same time, make sure that you find the desired applications in thousands of applications. This involves personalized notifications and services for each user. For example, when a user uses a software store, he or she may only view news or stock quotations. each user has different requirements. As a software store operator, the "threshold" is a matching technique that automatically analyzes and records data over a period of time, summarize a user's unique habits and preferences, and present the desired information and applications to him as soon as possible to facilitate his or her access.

Secondly, software and resource providers should be a platform for analyzing user behavior. The services provided by software and resource providers will appear in the resource list of the corresponding software store. The system automatically records users' interests, the frequency of using software, and other related data during the user's use process, and submits the data to the data analysis platform, for software and resource providers to analyze and provide users with better products. In this way, the sales of software products are greatly improved.

In addition, for hardware equipment providers, the software store will also serve as a platform for collecting user experience and product bugs. When a user uses a device, it records the user's operation behaviors, including crashes, error messages, and unexpected shutdown. When the network is connected, the data is transmitted to the server for analysis by the vendor. To instruct them to develop better products.

Finally, for mobile operators, the software store is a big data center. The platform can provide operators with all relevant data analysis, including user operation behaviors, user usage time, usage frequency, frequently used software and functions, and develop business development strategies based on these data, launch targeted marketing services.