Apus Li: Why the sea will be the next wave of Chinese internet companies

From the layout of millet in India and Southeast Asia to Qihoo 360 's layout in emerging markets, from micro-letters in Southeast Asia and Latin America, please local star endorsement promotion to cheetah Mobile and go Launcher "localized" service in North America, the last 2-3 years, A growing number of top Internet companies in China are starting to look to overseas markets that have not previously been involved.

Recently, a Chinese mobile internet company, founded in Beijing and fully focused on overseas markets, was born, and its founder was Li, former vice president of Qihoo 360. Li is the "360 mobile phone defender" which covers hundreds of millions of users of the product and Qihoo 360 the entire wireless service pioneer. His new team, Apus Launcher, a lightweight mobile desktop based on the Android platform released July 2, has built up 30 million users in less than 3 months. These users come entirely from overseas markets outside of mainland China, especially in emerging countries and regional markets.

Why did you do that? A few days ago, Li and I chatted about the logic behind the "sea" of Chinese Internet companies:

The fourth wave: O2O and internationalization

Li that the Chinese internet market has experienced three stages of ups and downs, and now the "fourth wave" has begun. Specifically, the first wave is Sina, Sohu, NetEase's rise and tend to mediocrity; the second wave is the rise of companies such as Tencent, Baidu and Alibaba, and internet companies like 360 and cheetahs, which have a range of market capitalisation and valuations of tens of billions of dollars and billions of of dollars and more flexible businesses, can be seen as "the third Wave". The fourth wave of China's Internet, in the local market perspective is "to get through online and offline flow," The O2O, from a global perspective is the internationalization of China's Internet.

The fourth wave was the dividing line between the two trends of "connecting lines" or "going out", instead of focusing on the "Chinese local Internet service" level, the reason is: the domestic internet is already a piece of the Red Sea, hundreds of thousands of companies here for 800 million users, the industry has come to a very white-hot stage.

In fact, the two years of domestic internet companies in the application of distribution and O2O competition in the field can indeed prove to some extent Li judgment. Before, although like Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba, Qihoo 360 line of business sometimes there will be some conflict, but a few together into a certain area of the situation is relatively small. But since 2013, once the companies have seen the value of a hot spot, they will be able to get together to compete in the same field. Whether the previous application distribution, or now connect businesses and users of the "O2O service" is basically the situation.

In this case, "sea" is almost inevitable choice. In fact, not only Li and his apus, Fu and his cheetah movements are also considered.

Beyond China and the United States: Dozens of countries and regions that are not really serving gold and the market

In 2013, Li, a vice president of Qihoo 360, who was responsible for overseas market development, visited dozens of countries and saw a huge opportunity for the Internet, especially mobile internet, outside of China and the United States.

From the number of users, the "overseas market" has 2.5 billion users, most of them behind the Chinese market 2-5 years, but only to see the market capacity is 3 times times larger. As for the number of competitors, less than China is not 1 orders of magnitude, I am afraid it is 3-4 magnitude. In places like Brazil, India and Indonesia, where the top ten of local Internet services are all American companies, such a large market does not develop local applications and services for them – and the top Internet companies in the United States do not do enough for their countries and regions.

So how do China's internet companies "go out" to compete with America's top internet companies, such as Google, Facebook and Yahoo? In Li's view, America's strong culture is precisely the weakness of their internet companies in overseas markets. As long as Chinese companies are willing to localize their overseas products and compete for overseas users, American internet companies are less likely to win than China.

So there are many users in overseas market, less competition, local internet companies in various countries have not yet risen, the United States Internet companies are too strong, arrogant attitude of these "advantages", China's internet companies to go to sea, the first to take 35 cities, and then expand gradually, it seems to take for granted.

The global Internet pattern and the global economic pattern are consistent, China certainly has its global position

In Li's view, the pattern of the global Internet over the next 3-5 years will be basically similar to the current global economy. In the economic sector, the U.S. state-owned brands and ideas, China's deep processing of these things into the global market. In the Internet, the United States has ideas and technological innovations, and China's subsequent deep processing of these ideas and technologies-that is, micro-innovation and localization, and then services for users around the world-is essentially similar in logic. Based on this situation, Li that the global mobile Internet market only 3-the United States Internet, the Chinese Internet and "other countries and regions" of the Internet.

Of course, after reading Li on the development of domestic and foreign internet market, many readers may not be familiar with the Apus launcher product. In fact, Li's product methodology is also very interesting-this let him in Qihoo 360, spent 3 years to 360 Mobile Guardian from 0 to achieve 600 million users. So is APUS launcher a tool or a platform? Apus do the desktop or the entrance? Is Apus's profit model really the application distribution? We'll leave these questions until next time.

(Responsible editor: Mengyishan)