Ink weather There are 330 million users, and then where to go?

There is such a class of applications, access to users is easy, it is difficult to go down. Weather class applications are most typical.

May 2009 Ink Weather Saipan version online, 2010 launched the Android version, the 2011 iOS version online. Now the ink weather is sitting in the first place in China weather. In 2013, it entered the billion-user club with Weibo, micro-letters, Mito and gold maps, and now has 330 million users.

"The team has just added more than 30 people, and now there are more than 100 people." "Ink Weather VP Kangkuan" I said so, the late autumn sunshine through the windows behind, this is the new ink weather office, the old still in use, on this floor on the other side.

We need to see the weather, but what can we do with the weather? For me, it doesn't matter; for ink weather, it's a survival problem. The demographic dividend is already less plentiful, and according to the latest statistics, the number of smartphone users in China is likely to exceed 500 million in 2014. Don't forget, ink weather users have 330 million, and then where to go?

Internationalization？

If the domestic market user growth slowed down, difficult to break through, then go overseas! That's the easiest answer, as many Chinese companies think.

It was a good record. Two years ago, the go desktop began to test operations overseas, 2013 global users broke 200 million, UC browser to sea, in 10 countries accounted for more than 10% of the market share, 2014 quarter active users more than 500 million people, into overseas markets, only a year micro-letter overseas registered users over billion, In June this year, the number of micro-letter overseas users has exceeded 200 million.

But internationalization is expensive, and startups seem hard to bear. Large companies, often choose to cooperate with mobile advertising platform, and constantly optimize the portfolio, improve the operation effect. There are overseas promotion of children's shoes revealed that a three trillion size of the app, overseas market, a user to obtain the average minimum cost of 1-2 U.S. dollars, this is still ideally. In addition to the cost of promotion, ink weather has to withstand the internationalization of operations and human costs.

For example, the micro-letter is Tencent such a super company, internationalization is unavoidable stumbling, so please come to Goldman Sachs Internet chief analyst James Mitchell as chief strategist, to find international superstar Lionel Messi endorsement, and occasionally on the streets of Hong Kong to take Haagen-Dazs reward users download.

As a start-up company, how dare the ink weather say internationalization?

The "march" of ink weather is more of a coincidence trigger. July 2013, Ink announced to enter the global market. Ink Weather The IPhone owner is going to work with her husband in the United States, and by the way, "ink weather U.S. Office," which is a total of two people in charge of products and markets.

The foreigner thinks the app design of ink is very beautiful. There was a foreigner who contacted us and hoped to provide translation. Can replace a variety of skin, voice broadcast, support a large number of cities, clothing assistants, these are similar products with overseas differences. Ink has a differentiated value. --Ink Weather CEO Gold Plow

The reason is not convincing enough. The UI is beautiful, the skin chooses more, do these can kill other weather application?

These can at least help us occupy a certain market share, we plan the international version at least first 10 of the weather category, further to the top 5.
We will first of all fully support 400,000 overseas cities, to facilitate overseas or abroad of Chinese users, comprehensive coverage of Chinese users of the overseas weather query needs. Of course, we will also do localization, language translation and support is the most basic. Ink will mainly serve the Southeast Asian market, and further serve the European and American markets. --Gold Plow

Start from Southeast Asia, occupy Latin America, occupy Moscow, march into Europe and America.

Chinese Internet companies are moving overseas with surprisingly unified strategy. Now that ink accelerates internationalization, this time they spend 7-digit prices buying Moji.com's domain name from a Japanese company (their original domain name is mojichina.com).

The head of overseas business is ink Weather VP Kangkuan, previously in Haier for more than 10 years overseas market, is Haier Zhang translation, from Haier was the head of the Italian company.

Do the hardware?

Internet companies do hardware is also the trend of nearly two years, the United States Mito made mobile phones, 360 do child guards, Wi-Fi and so on, "Aunt?" combined with PICOOC push intelligent health body weight meter correlation, fun music launched a smart instrument. Ink is also relatively early to do a combination of soft and hard.

May 2014, ink weather in 798 Ullens Art Center released its air quality monitoring equipment "air fruit", has indoor and outdoor equipment, can monitor PM2.5, carbon dioxide concentration, temperature, humidity four kinds of values, through an LED screen display, users can view the indoor air through the app side of the situation , and share it with friends.

"Air fruit" the first day of the opening of an appointment, there are 150,000 people booking, only 7 days a number of millions of appointments. How many real buyers do you have? The ink provides data that up to now, more than 8000 air fruits have been connected to WiFi, while online is close to 500, and cloud data is increasing daily.

1 million to 8000, this gap is quite large?

There is no doubt that the biggest weakness of "air fruit" is its price. Actually, we are not very expensive. Dylos, which uses the same principle to monitor air quality, will sell three thousand or four thousand in China. And the air does not say integrally molded aluminum metal casing, only monitoring sensors are more than dylos, especially expensive PM2.5 sensors and carbon dioxide sensors. By contrast, we are really not expensive. --Gold Plough, May 2014

In fact, we sell a product for at least 60 more dollars, so we are also in control of sales. Only in the official website Open Limited purchase. Our second-generation products have been done, may increase the function of formaldehyde, is with well-known manufacturers (temporarily inconvenient to disclose) cooperation, the price can be controlled in more than 700 yuan, next we will be open to purchase. --Kangkuan

I brushed the air in the application of the ink weather the user's monitoring data. The air quality of these data is quite good. It also explains how many people are puzzled, "is it crazy to spend so much money on a device that only sees how bad the air is?" Maybe it's not. The target crowd of air fruit is those who have stable work, generous income, very concerned about their living environment, home often has more than 8000 yuan of air purifier, and do not care to spend 1000 to buy a smart cute air monitor.

Will the ink extend to other hardware products?

Kangkuan said: "We do not rule out the possibility of making other products in the future." ”

Playing electric Dealer?

Internet users are king, some products do not worry about no money to earn. The early days of QQ, today's micro-letter and the Mo Mo all because of selling expression earned money. But the face business, at present, seems to have only social applications to play. Others have a large user's application, often to do the electrical business.

The completion of the C-round Mushroom Street transformation, from the "Shopping Guide" to the "vertical electric quotient" concept; October Litchi FM officially online community, from the radio from the media transformation of community-type electric dealers, not to mention the vertical field of the tool-type app.

Ink weather will also start to do the electricity business.

The air fruit is an important attempt at ink weather. When not to do air purifier, ink weather has been buried foreshadowing. Ink has 330 million users, even if the conversion rate of only one out of 10,000, coupled with the subsequent replacement of the filter cartridge services, it is estimated that there is a small amount of revenue.

Our users have _3.3_ billion, daily active users have 45 million, our own application within the promotion of a total of micro-blog to promote the whole station. --Tech (May 2014)

The reason why the ink is still want to use air to attract a group of partners, the other first hardware products, we also want to be more secure, we are also afraid to do air purifiers. --Kangkuan

The upcoming 5.0 version, has added the electrical quotient function, will sell the air and the health related product on-line, like air purifier, the mask and so on.

The future can also be the air with these products binding sales, users buy air purifiers, recommend to him the air fruit, used to detect the effect of air purification. Now the ink has also rented the warehouse, in the future if the conditions permit, will also build their own warehouses and logistics.

Electricity dealers may be a good choice. Now a lot of users have been accustomed to the ink weather dressing assistant's Meng sister and Meng man image, from this point to do the season clothing electric dealer, even according to the recent weather recommendations related products, it should also be a logical thing. After all, Coca-Cola and other drinks advertising and this is actually quite similar.

Big Data?

Why does the air fruit have to launch both indoor and outdoor editions?

The outdoor version of the ambition is to create a series of crowdsourcing air quality inspection stations, which are strategically similar to Pimi. When there is more air connection, the Internet can provide more air data. The space of imagination is much larger than the air fruit itself.

Under the line the competition of the merchant is more and more intense. A good air environment may be a bright spot. The data needed, if not the weather unit, then ink and air fruit is probably a good choice. In this way, the real estate business needs of air data should not be low. How to attract users to buy a house, ink weather data, may be useful for reference. These are based on the assumption that ink can have enough air data.

Of course, there is a natural flaw in such a strategy, that is, what is the reliability of the PM2.5 values that such devices detect? And the Meteorological department layout of the hundreds of thousands of of the oscillating balance method PM2.5 detector, "Air fruit" outdoor version of the accuracy of the advantages? That's why they don't casually make small products that can monitor air data, Kangkuan said. What they want to do from the beginning is a meter, not smart hardware.

The popularity of smartphones is the result of cheap and compact sensors. In the future, when air sensors can be made smaller, they are likely to be implanted directly into mobile devices. Air detection devices such as air fruit are likely to be just a transitional form. I think it's a new opportunity for ink.

The future world, must be a sensor-covered world, ubiquitous sensors will collect all kinds of data on earth, physical, chemical, biological, the world can be quantified everywhere, real-time can be perceived. Ubiquitous sensors are likely to bring the weather industry to a big shuffle. If the ink can grasp this opportunity, the early layout, open interface, accumulate enough data, the future may be able to do more.

A foreign air quality inspection application Breezometer, obtain the air quality situation, will produce the air quality map, gives the user the suggestion, but also provides the air quality data API to many companies, already is exploring a 2b2c road.

Except 2B,2G (government) may be another possibility. The meteorological Bureau spends a great deal of money each year buying monitoring equipment, and it also requires a lot of manpower statistics. These future are likely to be done in the form of crowdsourcing. In addition, many foreign developed countries have a sound carbon emissions trading regulations, companies can buy each other carbon emissions, and now developing countries are planning similar environmental projects. In the future, companies like ink have a chance to get a slice of the pie.

Having talked so much about the future of ink, what is the ink doing now?

We're making a new version now. 5.0 new version just online (Android/ios). We combed the weather software structure, according to the user's massive data, re-analysis of requirements, the structure of the current Ink 5.0 large version of the architecture, including the weather, air, community, electricity and other elements. You can see all that.

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