Mobile browser's future user value determines vitality

Mobile browser only through cooperation to circle their own territory in order to be saturated in the future market and start fighting the day, for their own vitality.

Recently, the mobile phone browser seems to have become a very hot topic.

March 30, the core business for the mobile phone browser superior technology (UC) access to Nokia Growth Partner Fund (NGP) investment. Although the authorities did not give specific investment, given that it was the last round of financing for a company valued at 1 billion yuan before the IPO, the amount would be huge.

Half a month later, mobile internet company 3G Portal released the second generation of mobile browser go 1.5, Youku, potatoes, renren and other companies at the top of the scene. It can be seen that many browser-based cooperation has been launched, and the lineup is strong.

Whether it's a UC browser or a 3G go, the growth is really amazing. The former currently has more than 100 million users, compared with 39 million in July 2008, which has reached 15 million users in the short 300 days of release 1.0. In fact, including VC and operators, content providers, mobile phone hardware manufacturers, such as mobile Internet power, the value of mobile browsers also gave full recognition.

But behind the scenes, the industry has never stopped questioning the future commercial value of mobile browsers. The question comes from two: first, from the development of the PC Internet, there are few successful companies and even Netscape's first-ever to launch a PC-browser business-it doesn't even have the slightest resistance after Microsoft has bundled a free user's Internet Explorer on its operating system.

More importantly, mobile operators such as Apple, Nokia, Samsung and other terminal manufacturers, and then to Google, Microsoft and other behind-the-scenes hands, the handset industry chain of all ports are beginning to pay more and more attention to mobile phone platform strategy, these powerful forces will naturally not ignore mobile internet users of the most recent browser interface.

When all the "big alligator" are beginning to covet this market, the foreground of mobile browser, really still so optimistic?

Seat belts with longitudinal Lian Heng

Whether it is UC CEO Yu, or 3G Portal CEO Zhang, both the mobile browser and the computer browser are two different things.

That is true. First of all, the computer from the processor, operating system, to the hardware keyboard, display size, and then to the Internet, the usual programming language, almost all have a relatively uniform standard, which led to a common browser can cover most of the world's users. But mobile phones have a wide range of diversity, and today, from hardware to software, browsers need specific optimizations based on different phone models.

This is even more so in China, a multi-party market. From the cottage to domestic manufacturers and then to foreign mobile phone companies, all kinds of strange mobile phones are common. This makes the mobile phone browser localization, the widespread need from one kind of individuation accumulates. When the rise of 3G led to the increase of the Internet, this phenomenon is becoming more and more obvious.

As a result, mobile browsers are tied more tightly to jagged mobile terminals than computer browsers, and a general-purpose mobile browser launched by any company is unlikely to cut too many users overnight.

Perhaps aware of this, Apple's App store has passed UCWeb's entry application, and handset makers such as Samsung and Nokia, which have launched a platform strategy, will also be pre-installed with Chinese mobile browsers on a variety of handsets-though their systems also have default browsers.

The bigger chance of survival for mobile browsers comes from the big gaps in the whole market.

Anderson, author of Wired magazine, long Tail theory and free economics, argues that there is an important indicator of the market development of technology, that is, the critical price of a product. When a product's price drops to a certain degree, its market will produce a leap-forward development, there will be a lot of opportunities. In DVD technology, for example, when DVD prices dropped below $400 trillion, their sales exploded, leading to the spread of technology and the rapid rise of their content--dvd discs-related businesses.

"We think the critical price for smartphones is 2000 yuan. "Yu said.

It is clear that a variety of smartphones are approaching the price. What about the market? 2009, smartphone sales reached 180 million, more than the sales of notebook computers. According to Deloitte's telecoms industry forecasts released earlier this year, smartphone sales are expected to exceed the total number of PCs (laptops and desktops) by the end of 2011 and deliver up to 400 million units. The boom in hardware has facilitated the boom in software and mobile Internet applications; In addition to voice and information, browsing and search has become a sudden growth point.

On the other hand, China's major operators began to exert their force on 3G from 2008, and by 2010 they were able to see quite obvious effects. According to March 2010 data, 3G users are ushering in a burst of growth, China Unicom and China Mobile 3G users rose by 60% and 80% respectively.

"We made a forecast early last year that China Mobile internet users will grow by 100 million." The forecast is now proving quite accurate, at 112 million in 2008 and 233 million in 2009. "This year we are predicting that the number of users will reach 330 million-350 million and next year is around 450 million," Yu said. ”

Mobile Internet "Cake" is rapidly becoming larger, in such an environment, all parties will undoubtedly focus on the new cake on the competition. Unite all the strength that can unite, perfect chain, optimize product, occupy market share, become the keynote of these years. This gives a great opportunity for mobile browsers, which are much weaker than operators, hardware vendors and internet companies.

But, behind the odds, the real possibility of uprooting the crisis has never gone away.

In the smartphone-smart wave, the future of mobile phone operating system will inevitably be divided into three or four companies, and the mobile internet will increasingly be closer to the Internet standards-this will make the standardization of mobile phones will come sooner or later. At the same time, as the most important access to the Internet from mobile phones, mobile browser This cake will certainly have more heavyweight power to covet.

With the influence of the operating system or mobile phone access, a "super browser" for more users and a wider international market may emerge, perhaps safari or Chrome.

So before this crisis comes, when with the existing technology accumulation and user base, for mobile phone browser to usher in a lot of collaborators, it must also take the extension of the olive branch-a technology or product can be overturned, but a long-term cooperative value network, its "cost of subversion" will be much higher. With the mainstream applications and forces of cooperation, equity, is the mobile phone browser to ensure the survival of the "seat belt."

The seat belts are forming. And once a day the market reached saturation, the industrial chain upstream and downstream of the fierce competition, now mobile browser survival probability, will determine the width of the seat belt.

User value determines vitality

Cooperation is greater than anything, particularly evident in the 3G portal.

3G Portal has its own complete vertical chain layout, the content end is China's largest mobile phone portal site, mobile phone end has gglive, Ggbook and other mobile clients. However, its pattern is not simply to use the client to glue the user, and to attract traffic to its own website.

In fact, even if you have a mobile browser, but the content of 3G portal and UC Browser is still a long-term partner. On the client side, the 3G Portal cooperates with many sites. For example, go browser version 1.5, there is a direct access to a variety of Web site classification navigation, more have Renren, Youku and other from the SNS and video field collaborators.

3G Portal through cooperation, access to traffic and users, and through the proliferation of users and user viscosity of the strengthening, gradually formed their own competitiveness. Can say, its content end of the basic mode and Sina, Sohu and so on are the same.

The 3G portal, which attracts a host of content collaborators, tries to capture users with cooler UIs and more user-responsive features. In addition to the core technology of Flash video, which can be accessed directly from the Internet, go 1.5 has a seamless experience on touch-screen handsets, closer to the PC Internet browsing, direct viewing of local weather, and even the ability to play pre-installed games in a browser.

"Soon, we will open the API interface of the browser, so that developers based on go, for users to develop more applications." "Zhang said. This shows that go browser will inevitably have its own "app Store" to meet the increasing demand of users based on mobile internet and become a platform loaded on mobile OS. It may not be too much to say that it wants to be a more Internet-accessible operating system on the mobile OS.

And passion overflowing go compared to the current mobile browser share a single large UC browser is more calm. As early as the establishment of the beginning, UC set the "Do not do content, only to make access" strategic direction, and in the provision of "faster, more provincial, more stable" product, under the keynote, developed its unique core competitiveness.

UC Browser working principle, is in the server side will be massive Internet content, processing into its own format, suitable for mobile browsing content. When the user accesses the Internet with UC Browser, it actually accesses the content already processed on the UC server.

Sounds like a stupid idea. In March 2010 alone, page processing on UC servers exceeded 38 billion times, and the server and bandwidth requirements were staggering. This cost is not like the PC browser is directly to marry the site, but UC itself must bear.

But for users, the cost of their traffic is less, the page response is much faster. At first, the job was to give mobile internet users access to the content of their PC's Internet, which, in the 3G era, established the industry position of UC browsers. However, with the increase of users and processing pages, mobile Internet gradually formed a unique "UC mode." When the server will be a huge amount of content, including video content is continuously converted into UC standard content, UC can be said to become China Mobile internet "browsing standards" of the makers.

This becomes a competitive force that it can hardly be threatened. Although UC does not do its own content, but it virtually has a wide range of its own standards to make the content-it is directly related to the future of the browser research and development direction and interface presentation ...

Although it seems that the various mobile browsers are different in their evolution, in the final analysis, they all have the same starting point, which is "to meet user needs."

We know more about the needs of these users who use their mobile phones to surf the web, and are constantly accumulating and improving in their presentation and experience, so that they have a better experience. "Zhang said. Yu, who also said in an interview, "We are looking at the needs of Chinese local users and backstage work to provide a mobile phone access to the Internet, and far more than a browser so simple." ”

Roads。 In their repeated emphasis on the term "user needs", the word seems to have become a mantra that keeps them alive, and is the most crucial element in enabling them to survive. Why？

User needs are difficult to meet. The more you meet the needs of your users, the more you win. Win more users will be able to attract more collaborators, partners to join to better expand the user, with a continuous function to meet user needs to adhere to the user, the more viscous users will be able to control the more power of speech, and ultimately win the market. This is the survival logic of the mobile browser.

Source: http://hi.baidu.com/cacosen/blog/item/e3b4977644bd7417b051b993.html