Analysis of the reasons for the possible failure of God horse search

Recently, on the 10 anniversary of UC, Alibaba and UC two jointly launched the God Horse Search, and sword directly to the top of Baidu. It is estimated that in Yu's view, the UC, which may have begun to accumulate strength as early as four years ago, is now occupied by climate, geography, and people. But Yu about why UC to do god horse three point reason, I do not agree. The reason is no, because it feels like a PR story, but maybe we can dig out the real reason from the Yu text.

First, the weakening of the brand

"In the 10 years, UC from the start-up of 6 people now expand to more than 2500 people," has long been the market can not be ignored a pole. UC's success is from the Symbian system began to spread, UC initially in the mobile browser market is the first opportunity, so that after the introduction of the Android and iOS system, the because of a lot of user habits and continue to use UC Browser. But. The era of Saipan is now far away from us, all UC once accumulated word-of-mouth may gradually fade with the fleeting time. Now after the 00, in fact, the UC brand awareness is very low, and users show a clear trend of the dating. For who is the mobile browser market share First this question I do not want to argue, but we can be clear that the UC browser market is gradually being QQ browser and mobile phone Baidu gradually eroded, market share is gradually declining.

Ii. the pain of traffic growth

"Our search business has been able to go out of UC browsers and open up its own traffic growth path." In fact, the deep meaning of this sentence is not UC has been out, but urgent need. Before the UC through the Web site navigation for small and medium-sized webmaster diversion, small and medium-sized webmaster again for the UC feed users, making UC browser users to do more and more, the flow of more and more. In fact, this is now a lot of open platforms are learning methods, for short. But the location of UC site navigation is extremely limited, and now has become a major source of UC browser revenue, which determines the location can only be left to big customers, and these big customers are unable to bring new users to UC browsers. Mobile browser Market competition is more and more fierce, want to rely on natural growth, UC is facing great pressure. So UC must be back to the small webmaster, and search engine powerful diversion effect has been in the PC side of Baidu confirmed.

Third, the revenue profit of the sleepy

UC overseas users are mainly India and other underdeveloped regions, the consumption capacity is very low. So even if the current UC's overseas users are close to 200 million, accounting for half the total number of users, the UC company's overall revenue contribution rate is still quite low. UC's game business nine tour can be regarded as the game field of vertical search, nine tour community under the strong support of UC to become a domestic game distribution channel top five, UC current income growth depends largely on the game business, so we see Yu article began to emphasize the importance of the game distribution to UC. But what we need to admit is that even if this part of the revenue is growing fast, UC's overall revenue growth is slowing, and the pressure is getting bigger. Otherwise, it will not last year to be Baidu acquisition rumors, finally reluctantly accept Alibaba's investment. This time God horse Search the main app, novel and shopping search, the three are very close to the money industry, so rather than UC in mobile search has been ambitious, rather than to open up new profit growth.

Originally UC is a more neutral enterprise, has been Baidu's search is divided into, now to cast Ali, according to the flow effect, short-term is lost watermelon pick sesame, long-term still depends on user behavior and habits, the user will buy in the future is difficult to assess.

God horse search for future market share of the ceiling

"More than 6 billion searches per month are generated on UC browsers," Yu's article wrote. "and Baidu earlier in March last year has announced its daily search volume has more than 5 billion times, conservatively estimated Baidu Day search volume should have been more than 6 billion times." In Baidu's recent Q1 earnings, Li has made it clear that mobile-end search traffic will soon exceed the PC side. If the search in accordance with Baidu Mobile Day 2 billion times, compared to Baidu now mobile search about 70% of the market share, the entire mobile search market search volume should be in 2.86 billion times. UC now 200 million times daily search volume, the market share is 7%, taking into account the God horse and Baidu search results there is a certain gap, there is reason to make a conclusion, 7% of the market share may be God horse search future can reach the limit.

UC in different public occasions declared, Baidu Mobile traffic over 10% are from the UC browser, but why in the search market is so large deviation? In fact, the truth is very simple, mobile search more and more vertical, any app can become a browser, can become a mobile search portal. Mobile search in the form of the same as the PC also exist, not only keyword search, but also voice search, image search, Melody Search, two-dimensional code search, peripheral search, etc., relying on the browser's web search simply to move a subset of the search.

Mobile-end traffic differentiation is also more serious than the PC-side, the mobile browser has been difficult to have the PC side of the dominant power. UC do search may occupy Baidu about part of the web search market share, but local life services, novel software application distribution, video, tourism and many other fields in the future may become a mobile search important battlefield, UC does not have this advantage. So we see the above strange phenomenon, UC mobile traffic share and search share there is a huge gap.

Defeating the search is not another search

The subversion of an industry is not to be subverted by an identical thing, and there is no subversion without differentiation. Sogou did such a long time of the second, Tencent has done so long Soso, Baidu has become a threat? 360 is a certain innovation in the search field, so the instant market share over the Sogou, now nearly 20% of the market share. But I'm sorry, this is actually the user is not active search traffic by 360 browser secretly converted to 20%, and 360 of its own product improvement does not have any relationship, so 360 search market share is getting closer to the ceiling.

360 or Google, are looking for ways to change the PC era occupy the browser portal to occupy the search portal, such as the introduction of CTRL CTRL search, security Desktop search and so on. Because they know clearly that browsers can't really subvert search engines. Of course these ideas are good, the so-called Bupobri, but have not had time to try, the mobile era is coming.

Now the user's search habit is to open the browser to play the search? Sorry, that is UC wishful thinking, go to the mobile era to learn 360 on the PC side of the game, it is difficult to succeed. Some people ask me what is the search habit of mobile age, is not app, this is nonsense, software side of course is app. But no matter which app, you have to solve the mobile end of the search problem is fundamental. If it is still a traditional web search, you are willing to use Baidu, or willing to use God horse? The idea of using the PC to do the search for a god horse app, want to beat Baidu? Thinking and direction have been wrong.

Now the user's search habits, half is search engine app Web search (72.1%-4%=68.1%), a half is a phone helper App Store content search. As each app Store starts to build vertical search content, no longer specializes in app search, the former is constantly transforming into the latter, only a small share of the browser search box search, God horse cut into this constantly weak market. God's horse has not succeeded, may have been on the road to failure.