Ishin: Seize the opportunity of free call

November 5, the official release of the letter 3.0 because of the Apple App Store audit issue postponed release. The second day of the Double 11, the micro-letter phone book was born, although the micro-letter in the letter of the CEO Hu Chen is expected, but did not expect to come out so fast. In his view, this is a godsend, is the best marketing window, decisively decided to wait for the iOS version of the audit, a week after the conference. One months later, the latest version of the letter finally landed in the app Store. Among them, the free call process will not generate network traffic, just dial one installation can be used, you can call any mobile phone or landline, call coverage of domestic calls and international roaming.

The 3.0 promo was turned off in the final broadcast before the launch, with the theme song "Mountains" in the Star Trek movie. The music was deliberately selected by Hu Chen a week ago. Not just to give the press a few more than 10 pieces of publicity to create some freshness, more importantly, in his view, the 3.0 version is hyper-dimensional, no longer to debate whether it is an acquaintance or a stranger social networking, but choose to social and communication in the two-dimensional world to build a new letter.

In fact, the introduction of communication in social products in this dimension has a precedent, before mobile phone QQ, the old version of the letter has this function, but really set off the waves is a double 11 after the quietly online micro-mail phone. Although it is not too late for everyone to get involved in communications, it is undeniable that the experience of communication is far from flawless. With free calls as a breakthrough, the letter will have the opportunity to reconstruct their business model.

The voice business is dwindling.

People on the island have no shoes, is it good or bad for the shoe salesman? Ishin is facing such a paradox. A recent report by Juniper Research, a market researcher, said that 2014, when OTT service providers (such as WhatsApp, Facebook and Skype) grabbed market influence, the network operators around the world were earning less than 14 billion dollars in voice and SMS traffic, 2013 year-on-year decline of 26%. According to the "Report on the use of Chinese teenagers", the letter from the company shows that parents, classmates/friends, lovers/wives are the main targets of the young people, and that the call to the family accounts for 55% of the total length of the youth's call. In other words, often the object of the call is a fixed number of people, the operator launched the "family number" package has been able to well meet this demand.

When users are making fewer calls, is it good or bad for Ishin, the main free call feature?

From a pessimistic point of view, people do not make a phone call in the future, the space in the field of communication is getting smaller. If you look at a different point of view, a lot of users are facing a dilemma of choice, in the operator set the package, or the call time more traffic less, or traffic more than the length of the call. And now, the user can go to the rest assured to purchase full flow package, the part of the call to the letter to the users of the monthly free 100-minute domestic calls, 60-minute international roaming, 100-minute calls.

Especially in the two or three-tier city, many users buy lower-priced packages, voice parts are usually billed according to operator standards, the group for easy to accept a higher degree of trust. Hu Chen told business value, "in the three or four-line city, those who don't know much about micro-letters, they don't think you're a micro-credit substitute, it's good enough to make a phone call." "It can be said that the free call is a quick opening of the three or four-line city, it accurately captures the group of users to make more calls, the amount of limited money pain points."

In the micro-credit one or two-line city is very different, users will think that all their friends, working relationship in the micro-letter, why to migrate to the letter above? and 100 minutes of free domestic calls are not attractive to them, so Hu Chen the idea of launching 100-minute calls and 60-minute international roaming for high-end business people.

Unlike the micro-letter phone, easy to use the technology is the free call is already a perfect callback technology, and ordinary calls, call transfer through the operator voice channel is also completed. A to B dial, in fact, first hit the c,a through the data call let C give himself a call, and then C gave B a call, so that A and B can call. The early telephone is this principle, has the specialized operator to connect the telephone, afterwards only then slowly realizes automatically to connect.

Previous callback techniques often show a strange number, and users are often afraid to answer. At the site of the 3.0 press conference, when a journalist uses this feature to make a phone call, he first receives a phone call of his own telephone number, and after waiting a few seconds, it will connect to the other end of the phone, while on the other side the phone is still showing the phone from the reporter. Press conference in the past one months, when the reporter again use the function found that the number of callback to reporters is no longer my mobile phone number, but a strange number. Easy letter Response said, is currently active with Unicom, mobile two major operators to communicate, the telecommunications user callback phone will still show my number.

In the operator's view, the call is called, we call operators responsible for collecting money, HD, ease of use, privacy are not involved. But in the eyes of Hu Chen, there is still a lot of demand in the phone that hasn't been met. Call from the user, to the other side to pick up, and then hang up the phone. There's still a lot of work to do, for example, hang up the phone users do not know how many minutes remaining this month, need to go to the handheld business or send text message inquiries; When the user received strange numbers to send the message difficult to distinguish between true and false, operators can be large data in the background to screen harassment calls, and blocked these numbers.

Perhaps one day, when the user hung up the phone, will know their own call time, the flow of how much, if not too rich, will recommend users to use easy letter 100 minutes of free domestic calls. Also not fully satisfied with the social needs of people, micro-letter only to meet the user as a consumer identity requirements, micro-letter mixed with friends and work partners, many micro-trust for the discussion of the establishment of the work. However, the micro-group does not support the search function, the missing message can only browse through the query, in addition, once the mobile phone or reload the app after the chat record will disappear. Hu Chen also thinking can combine Youdao dictionary, Cloud notes for many years of accumulation, from the corporate office perspective, to meet the social needs of workplace users.

The ambition behind the "free Lunch"

Micro-letter Phone book launched, many media published the "Wolf really came" speech, there are some media that is just "operators in raising Fish", in theory, the more fish, data flow income more. When users use voice services to reduce the number of network calls through the data network, the operator's revenue structure has changed, but the revenue of data flow instead of voice revenue, will not really infringe the interests of operators.

Can not be overlooked is that the vast majority of users will choose to be in the WiFi environment for network calls, on the one hand to save data flow, on the other hand, because the speed is more assured that the quality of the call better. Unlike foreign countries, China's Broadband subscription service does not limit the flow, which will lead to the operator in the transformation of income structure, a sum of money from the operator's fingers between the slip away.

Ishin based on the carrier's basic network callback technology only consumes 1kb of traffic at the time of Dial-out, which looks like a "free lunch". Of course, the world does not have such a good thing, for the user free service is easy to buy. Each month, the letter will be based on the actual user consumption of the call time with China Telecom to do the settlement, in the settlement unit price will have a certain discount, about 80% of the standard tariff. In this way, the income of telecommunications does not have much impact, the difference is only the user pay or easy to unified settlement.

Ishin's approach is typical of the Internet's core logic-the fleece comes out of the dog, in other words, transfer payments. In China, Internet services are increasingly charging for universal consumers, most of which are back-charging and then value-shifted. The same is true for the free-flow area of the electronics store last year, not really free, but by the App store or the app vendor to the operator.

specifically to the letter, by subsidizing free calls, in exchange for user activity, Word-of-mouth transmission, if you can form an effective relationship chain, you can from other angles to make up the income back. Basic services free of charge in the value-added services is a common practice in the industry, QQ is free, but Red diamond, green drilling and so on to pay; micro-letter Chat expression is mostly free, but also has an average price of 6 yuan pay expression package. When consumers think that one-month gift of 100 minutes of domestic calls is not enough, you can buy incremental package.

This July, Hu Chen in his inaugural address in Hangzhou to share with his team why NetEase is making easy letters. "Ten years ago, we register new users when the mobile phone is filled, now everyone to the website is let you use mobile phone number registration, and NetEase is the strongest mailbox, we are the last century Tyrannosaurus rex." But what if everyone doesn't have to use a mailbox? is the passport of the mobile Internet a mailbox or a mobile phone number? ”

Can say, easy letter is to build NetEase moat, in fact, this and Ali do with the same reason, is a defensive play. Micro-letters have grasped the chain of human and human relationships, and more and more information is pouring in, which is more important than buying a chain of business deals, and having a mature social chain can almost produce everything. So a lot of domestic internet companies will exert social app, otherwise only passive parasitic Tencent, which is obviously they do not want to see.

NetEase in the third quarter of 2014 total revenue of 3.3259 billion yuan (about 541.9 million U.S. dollars), of which the net business revenue of 2.4596 billion yuan (about 400.7 million U.S. dollars), accounting for the total income of NetEase 74%, is undoubtedly NetEase's fist project.

And NetEase does not have its own hand to distribute channels, now to do a new application shop is obviously too late, improve user volume, user activity after the letter is more suitable to play this role, in the accumulation of a certain number of users, like micro-letter built-in game zone, for users to download. The free call function is only the means to achieve this goal. In Hu Chen's words, "supermarkets" in the mobile internet age are no longer browsers, but apps, and micro-letters are "supermarket". "NetEase's game put to micro-letter this Wal-Mart supermarket can not, so we can only do a supermarket called Costco." ”

If the hand-travel industry is the most lucrative mobile internet business, the hand-swim channel is the sale of the person in charge of active discourse. Tencent 2014Q3 earnings show that the QQ mobile phone version and micro-letter on the hand-travel distribution business has brought about 2.6 billion yuan. In addition to the rich income, micro-letter powerful distribution capacity for the development of Tencent's own research and agent game products icing on the cake.

Easy Letter not only carries the mission of carrying forward the advantages of the online games, but also shoulder the responsibility of expanding the territory of intelligent hardware which has never been involved in NetEase. In the intelligent hand ring, smart watches and other hardware products flying today, netease delayed admission. In the letter 3.0 version of the intention to build an integrated platform for intelligent hardware, has been supporting access to smart cameras and other hardware terminal products. Future users can access the smart hardware entrance to view the urban traffic conditions, scenic spots and other public camera resources, as well as the management of their own family and other different application scenarios.

It is said that Ding lei in the letter to the internal, "the next 3-5 years regardless of the price, regardless of investment must do a good job easy letter." So it seems, such a big money is not difficult to understand, if the gambling won the benefit is not only easy to believe, even NetEase can grab a mobile internet ticket.