Giant's mobile interconnection game: Enclosure, platform, unknown

If you enter "QQ" in an Android App Store for search, you can find no less than 50 applications, from mobile QQ to QQ food, strange. If search Baidu, 360, also will have similar discovery, this is the PC Internet giant on the mobile internet common "record": They from tool software, browser, map has been to the mobile phone desktop, anything to try one.

But the situation changed in 2012, and the Giants began to focus consciously:

May 15, 2012, micro-letter formally to the third party to apply the Open API interface, the introduction of "sweeping a membership card" function, to try to a two-dimensional code for the entrance, the collection of traditional manufacturers to build O2O (online to Offine, internet offline business), micro-letter suddenly became Tencent Mobile Internet Business Center.

October 10, 2012, Baidu Map Division divided into lbs (that is, location-based Services) division, and Baidu Mobile cloud division together, become Baidu Mobile internet two major business department. This also marks Baidu will be the mobile phone map as a strategic level of products.

Qihoo 360 appears rather low-key. April 20, 2012, 360 mobile phone assistant through the PC version and mobile version, in the mobile version also added to the PC version of the application store function. Since then, Qihoo 360 put a lot of resources to push 360 mobile phone assistants.

By the end of last year, China Mobile internet situation has become more clear: The three giants from their own areas of expertise, to the commanding heights of mobile Internet. Tencent is still instant messaging, and Qihoo 360 is the most adept tool-type software, and Baidu has chosen the mobile map as a localized life search service.

The internet giants ' "Mobile castles" have been built. After the enclosure war, the Internet is a mix of products, channels and business models, and their decisions today will determine who wins in the next five years.

Enclosure

PC Internet giants have been aggressively targeting the mobile internet, and they aim first at the App Store and other channels. 2012, Baidu launched the mobile application of Baidu (As.baidu.com), mobile Developer products through the application, will appear in Baidu search in front of the location and can be directly downloaded. In addition, Baidu also launched its own application store "Baidu Application Center", directly with the Third-party application shop to rob business. Qihoo 360 Push the "360 mobile phone assistant" also become an application store. The two giants in the channel of the big move, suddenly swept away a lot of users.

In addition to the App Store, mobile browsers, brush-machine software, mobile phone pre-installed are able to direct access to mobile phone users, for their contention, the PC Internet giants are also spared no effort.

Today, with 400 million users of the UC browser is China Mobile Internet's largest third-party channel; however, the Yu of Technology chairman and CEO of the day is not easy. In the 2012, the technology was heavily attacked by the Giants. Tencent invested heavily in the promotion of mobile phone QQ browser, but also requires partners not pre-installed UC Browser. According to industry insiders, 2012 Baidu smashed about 100 million yuan to promote their own Baidu mobile browser. June 2012, the industry is also out of Baidu to buy excellent as technology "gossip".

A small "brush machine elf" software, unexpectedly attracted two internet big guy to go in person. At the end of 2011, Qihoo 360 at the cost of 18 million yuan to buy into the brush machine Elves, Qihoo 360 chairman Zhou was fulfilled. And by the year 2012, mutation. Mr. Ma, Chairman and CEO of Tencent's board of directors, personally invited the "Brush Machine elf" team to dinner and a high price, eventually "Brush Machine Wizard" successful and put into the embrace of Tencent. For Android phone users, the brush machine is a regular thing, and the brush machine software can recommend to mobile phone users to install the browser and the application store, is a more important channel.

It's also important to have the phone pre-installed. In 2012, Baidu and Qihoo 360 all opted for deep customization with handset makers. Qihoo 360 successively with 6 handset manufacturers jointly launched 6, 360 special machine, Baidu and Changhong and Lenovo launched two Baidu Cloud mobile phone. These 8 phones are built with two internet giants and many products and applications. Although Tencent did not do deep customization, but also invested heavily in mobile phone pre-installed.

The giants of deep pockets are also putting their mobile apps into the rankings of the major channels. In the recent Sohu mobile Internet annual Meeting, Sohu board Chairman and chief Executive Officer Charles Zhang announced: Sohu News client has been nearly 60 million installation activation, subscription platform on the online publication more than 130 copies, the total number of subscriptions exceeded 160 million, become the largest mobile media platform. In the previous, the news client is zaker, fresh fruit network, such as "pure" mobile Internet applications. It is understood that Sohu news client, and Sohu has spent a lot of strength in the mobile phone pre-installed and application shops and other channels have a great (blog, micro-bo) relationship. "We looked at each app store for news applications, and Sohu news clients always ranked first." "The operator of another news client said with emotion.

For the Giants, to be king in the mobile internet age, occupy the channel is only the first step, they also need a platform-level products, a perfect business model, three indispensable.

On the PC Internet, the Giants ' approach is to maximize and monopolize a product and then expand it as a platform for the product. For example, Tencent is the QQ made the absolute eldest, and then expand to the game, portals, electricity and other fields.

In the arms race for new platform-level products, Tencent has once again been the first to step in. "If anyone in the Internet company gets the ticket, it's Tencent," he said. Sogou CEO Wang Xiaoquan said. This ticket is a micro-letter. Since the introduction of micro-letter Tencent in January 2011, this Instant Messaging tool gradually joined the voice intercom, one-on-one chat and group chat, "Shake" location services, "friend circle" picture sharing functions, quickly won the hearts of consumers. At the end of 2011, micro-Credit registered users to break 50 million, and then broke through the 100 million, 200 million mark, this January will break 300 million. Today, the micro-letter has defeated the rice chat, fly letters and their own mobile phone QQ, become almost all smartphone users on the home page application.

"It also shows that products are still the most important competitive element on the mobile internet." Hua, the co-founder and managing partner of innovation factory, said that if there was still a chance of success on the PC Internet with channel-driven products, there was not even a door on the mobile internet.

Qihoo 360 Chairman Zhou is also struggling to find his own "micro-letter." "Qihoo 360 mobile phone product users are also over 200 million, but the product is not as micro-letter" sexy ", with the user's interaction is not so strong. Our 50 products add up to a micro-letter. "On the mobile internet Qihoo has experimented with a number of products, from cell phone defender, mobile phone helper, mobile browser, mobile desktop, cell phone optimization master, 360 run the king, are around the base tool this fulcrum." However, 360 still lacks a platform-level product like the 360 browsers on the PC.

Another PC internet giant, Baidu, is taking mobile maps as its core product. 2012, Baidu set up an independent lbs (location-based Services) division. When September released the mobile phone Map 4.0 version, bringing together the "free voice navigation, indoor positioning, real-time bus, life search" four functions, began to build local life platform. "From the current point of view, Baidu can only hope that the mobile phone map can be done, and finally made platform." One senior Internet analyst said.

Sohu is going to build a new mobile news platform through news clients. This B2B2C open platform is set up by Sohu and provides the technology, user, data, flow and other resources support, attracts the high quality content and the media to be settled. The media can only produce high-quality content, no need to worry about the business model, Sohu will use open advertising, user subscription and other modes and media. At present, Sohu News client has attracted the CCTV financial channel, "People's Daily", "Reference News", "Southern Weekend", "Caijing" (blog, micro-BO) and other heavyweight media settled in.

The business model is also critical in the "Iron Triangle" of mobile internet. Like the PC Internet, the three most important business models for mobile internet are advertising, gaming and E-commerce.

From January 9 onwards, Baidu's more than 200 director-level executives concentrated together, spend 3 days to focus on Baidu's next development strategy, and one of the most important issue, is Baidu's mobile internet strategy.

June 2012, Baidu chairman and CEO Robin Li made clear that the mobile Internet is not optimistic, and compares it to drunk driving, "luxury car, beauty, rain, road slippery, speed to 180 miles, accidentally will be fatal, very exciting, but very dangerous." "And soon thereafter, Baidu's luxury sports car is really out of the question." Since September 2012, Baidu's share price has plunged, at most, fell 44%.

One of the reasons investors are suspicious of Baidu is that Baidu is still not finding a business model on the mobile internet. As Credit Suisse analyst Cheung points out: Although mobile search has exceeded Baidu's total search traffic of 30%, but the contribution to Baidu's total revenue is only 3% below. In other words, the same search traffic, the value of mobile internet to create less than one-tenth of the PC Internet.

"The faster the traditional internet giant shifts the internet, the faster its revenues fall." "Appropriate search CEO Wangxi think." Even if Baidu can develop good enough search products to cover a wide range of channels, it still cannot reconstruct the perfect business model on the PC Internet. On the PC Internet, Baidu can provide users with enough of the search home page, to provide customers with enough advertising bit, and these in a much smaller size of the mobile screen is not done. Also on PCs, users can quickly jump from one site to another via links, and Baidu is able to collect enough websites and advertising channels through the alliance, and the mobile phone runs a local app with a large number of proprietary protocols that can't be easily jumped. To this end, Baidu has to invest a lot of resources to help customers build mobile sites, on the other hand, also hope that HTML5 into the mainstream, browser-based Web applications can become mainstream.

Like the development trend of PC Internet, the most reliable and profitable business model on the mobile Internet is still a game. Today, Tencent, Baidu and Qihoo 360 are doing mobile gaming platform, Tencent has become the first big mobile phone game distribution platform, but also developed a lot of mobile games. Excellent depending on the technology through UC Browser recommended mobile gaming and participate in the implementation of the business of closed-loop.

The micro-letter, which has established itself on the mobile Internet, has started to implement a new business model through the micro-trust platform, which is O2O. Nowadays, people eat in many restaurants, only need to scan the two-dimensional code to become a member of the store, you can enjoy the discount treatment. July 2012, Tencent and Shenzhen shopping mall's representative coast city cooperation, built a micro-letter platform for it. Only 2 months into the operation, the coast city gained 60,000 new members. Up to now, the micro-trust platform has thousands of brands, covering more than 10,000 stores. Through the micro-letter platform, Tencent is expected to achieve in the mobile internet "two-dimensional code + account system + Location Service + payment + acquaintance chain" perfect closed loop.

Unknown

The collective force of the Giants in the mobile internet seems to mean that other companies have fewer opportunities. But true entrepreneurs remain upbeat. Hua believes that faster product spreads will allow mobile entrepreneurs to develop products that can grow faster, while PC Internet companies are often unable to innovate because of institutional limitations. He cited a Instagram example. The company, which focuses on photo-sharing, has only just started in October 2010, but has developed 30 million users in a few 18 months. Finally, Facebook, unable to beat it, buys only 13 employees at a price of 1 billion dollars.

In the high-speed development of the Internet industry, a few years on the dynastic succession, a little inattentive, the Giants will be overturned. As a result, the Giants are still awed by the mobile Internet, and in a market completely different from the PC Internet, no one knows which saplings will grow into towering trees, and past experience has made them wary of any fast-growing small company. Think about the 2004 years of PC Internet scenario: At that time, Sina and other three major portals are also at the zenith of the Sun, Tencent, Baidu is still insignificant, Taobao even just set up. But now?

"Like Sohu, an old internet company and brand, in front of mobile internet, we think the opportunity is huge, but more sense of crisis." Charles Zhang thought.

In the mobile Internet arena, startups and mobile internet giants are still in the same starting line. For example, mobile gaming is a brilliant product, most of them are not grand and perfect time and space, such as PC network game giants developed, although the micro-letter is so powerful, but did not kill out of the mobile internet in the Mo Mo; Baidu map is trying to catch up, but the market share and the gold map is still a difference in order of magnitude , although encountering Tencent and Baidu before and after the attack, UC browser still live very well ...

This also shows that some of the rules of PC Internet do not apply to mobile Internet. Last October, an app called "Pop", which landed at Apple's App Store, soon became a popular application for urban white-collar workers. Xu Chang, head of the "pop" development team, is a senior internet person who suddenly had an epiphany when he went swimming last May to do a good job of mobile internet products and forget about the PC Internet. "PC Internet is like a big clean braid, the sooner you cut it off the better." "In developing the snap, he asked team members to forget all of their PC apps, including their own dot com."

Even the great success of the micro-letter, in fact, Tencent is an accident. Micro-letter is Zhangxiaolong responsible for the Guangzhou Research and Development Department, the department was responsible for the main products are QQ mailbox. Tencent's "authentic" mobile product of the MIG (Mobile Internet Division) is responsible for Tencent's mobile phone QQ, mobile phone qzone, mobile Tencent Network, micro-BO mobile clients and many other mobile internet products, although also invested a lot of resources, but no one like the micro-letter so successful.

"PC Internet giants have a lot of resources, but they also have heavy baggage, which will make them falter," he said. "Lin Xinglu, a veteran practitioner who has been in the Internet industry for 15 years, says.

Due to the micro-letter "accidental" success, the lack of preparation of Tencent seems to be caught in the dilemma of both hands and hands. Tencent's many product line departments want to use micro-letter this ship sailing, and completely disregard the micro-letter can bear. It is said that because of this matter, Zhangxiaolong has had a fierce conflict with some product line leaders.

"The future of mobile internet giants should not be generated from the current giants. Lin Xinglu confidently predicted. It's just that we don't know where they are.