The demise of mobile Internet and its causes: the revelation of survivors

What are their failure features that were early in "move"? What are the implications for survivors?

Author Tiger sniff

The extinction of mobile interconnection and its causes

What was the most impressive mobile application of 2012?

Micro-letter, Mo mo, sing it ... Investor entrepreneurs ' answers are highly convergent.

What about the failures that impressed you?

...... (Can't remember, don't want to say)

Happy families are similar to memories, and unhappy families are different. In business, the most unfortunate is the demise and failure that no one remembers.

Starting in 2009, after two years of 2010 and 2011, the "Age of Innocence" of mobile internet start-ups tends to end in 2012, or it will enter a new stage. The new stage is characterized by: 1, China's smartphone users into 300 million orders of magnitude, which means not only the volume of growth, the user structure is also changing. 2, pure tool-type application of the attraction will not be too big, for new tools, all kinds of tools of the "pit" is accounted for almost, limited opportunities; for the old tools, the application is faced with the needs of community, cloud transformation. 3, the Giants will exert great pressure on innovative start-up companies, as Cai said on Weibo: "The popularity and use of micro-letters is high, so that more than 50% of apps now become worthless, the entire mobile Internet application into the re-layout phase." ”

Which applications die before the new phase arrives? What are the first-stage features of their failure? What are the implications for survivors? The top net every year will release a Chinese handset software TOP50 strong, we from 2010 This list, singled out several representative, has fallen contestant, slightly does the retrospective and the analysis. What needs to be explained here is that "death" or "extinction" is not necessarily specific to the liquidation of the company, the product has ceased to be updated, but also the product and mode has gone into a dead end.

Mobile phone Big Head

Dead: A strong WAP stamp, an epitaph for the application of integration classes

Mobile phone big Head, can be regarded as one of the earliest mobile phone applications, in the era of Symbian has accumulated tens of millions of users, the parent company's Big Head Wireless is a finalist "Red herring" 2008 Asian Hundred Enterprises Candidate list. In the era of the use of the Symbian, the mobile phone has integrated news, video, music, reading and other types of applications, can be said to be full of mobile entertainment, but because the host content too much, the user experience has declined, the UI has been stuck in the level of WAP level.

Mobile phone in 2011 when Android, iOS Tide came, but also made some changes to themselves, but the 3G era brings not only the update of the system, but also the changes in user needs. With the gradual vertical and refinement of the app function, the traditional multifunctional integrated app is not only lack of experience, but also can not provide more professional and abundant reserves in the content, which is the disappearance of software.

In early 2011, after the award, mobile phone Big head Last updated on the July 22, 2011 V8.1.0 version, in the download message version can also see such as "The big head can reproduce the big head of the Symbian era" words.

Mobile Letter

Death: Closure and operator thinking

Perhaps it is not justified to have a software that still has about 90 million active users in the demise list. But a software, need not only is the fullness of reality, more need is the future of sufficient imagination space, otherwise will only end up a class Netscape's fate.

Today, this has been flying research and development 5 years and burned 3 billion silver instant messaging software, compared with the first Tencent QQ, covering users less than the latter one-fifth, the average monthly use time is less than one-forty fifth of the latter.

The reason, the mobile closed temperament and operator thinking, make fly-flying missed the opportunity to become another QQ or micro-letter. Its product and function of the starting point of thinking, basically is how to "Boss" to attract, activate more users, rather than create a cross-platform platform, can attract a large number of mobile internet users. With the advent of the mobile internet era, and the opening of the 3G system, the flying letter was eliminated inevitably not to mention the low efficiency of the central enterprises.

In fact, when the market has not abandoned the letter, it has been tongshicaoge. China Mobile on September 28, 2011 released the new product "Fly Chat", which is a function directly above the "flying" on the basis of the product is only on the basis of a letter, increased the platform can be free to send SMS.

Open, on the side of the street

Dead: Not following the vicissitudes of "mobile" early behavior, and the collapse of Silicon Valley sync assistants

Foursquare's "Sync Assistant" in 2012 encountered a collective landslide, the grand cut customers have already transformed the coupon and obscurity, muttered simply to do a Pinterest model of the picture sharing, even if it is in China check in the authority-level application street, also gave up the idea of pure lbs check-in , but through data mining, the food recommended work.

It may be from the simplest point of view: User behavior and motivation to reflect the decline of "check-in". "Mobile" just rise, check-in or a quite "tide" behavior, but then with the "mobile" popularity, the behavior has been "chicken", and the corresponding "check-in" app did not follow the evolution of the time. Street side NET CEO Liu Davei has thought: "Now lbs geographical service has become the basic function of mobile Internet, many apps have their own functions such as check-in, in the current phase of the check-in may have been unable to meet the needs of users." ”

The rise and fall of attendance, but also developers, VC blindly follow and copy the Silicon Valley model results. As the next wave of mobile apps is more deeply involved in local life and services, simply synchronizing the Silicon Valley model, regardless of the real needs of local users, will be less useful.

For check-in, in fact, there are some lucky places, after all, lbs check-in in its scenery, the accumulation of a part of the ability to consume the petty bourgeoisie users, and its every sign in, the truth of the comments and persuasive are higher than online on the comments station, Because of the value of its data accumulation can be turned into his use this is a simple lbs check-in application in the transformation process the only life-saving straw.

Thousands of feet download, machine market

Die of: Product homogeneity, cannot resist the big attack

While the App Store is a far cry from the development path of Android, the common reality is that it is squeezed by large stores and parallel imports from operators and large internet makers. In the background of the giant attack, the middle layer of many features and positioning is not thin, homogeneous application stores, the lack of independent survival and growth of competitiveness.

super-talented App Store, "mobile" development to this stage, but also to the Internet giants in the field of the time, now whether it is Baidu's intervention in the navigation, sogou into the voice, NetEase killed reading, or even Tencent's research and development of the Address Book, make their own areas of small and medium mobile application developers struggling.

Is it that the mobile start-up company has no room to live at all? Not really. From the current list of applications can still see, in each subdivision area, ranked the forefront of the specialized companies in their respective fields rather than traditional giants, such as the free list of iOS maps, Baidu Map ranked only fourth, the top three still have a High German map and navigation dog two professional navigation providers The Android application market is still recognized as the 91 Android Market and 91 assistants ...

To be exact, no features and core product capabilities are more frightening than the admission of giants.

Quick, two-dimensional code.

Die of: A crisis of instrumental products?

In fact, the quick-shot two-dimensional into the demise of the list, in the present is definitely a less appropriate choice. As of the end of September 2012, the fast-beat two-dimensional code of the user scale has exceeded 32 million, bar code library over 8 million unique SKU. But under the gorgeous exterior, have to say, two-dimensional code already hidden murderous.

Look forward, MA in the Internet Conference on "Two-dimensional code is the O2O entrance" of the discussion, has already let the mobile Internet community wake up. Recently, users can find that two-dimensional code has gradually become a big company mobile applications standard. This is undoubtedly the result of independent two-dimensional code scanning, such as the decline of lbs check-in.

In the moment, the fast-beat two-dimensional code still has the advantage of accumulation, has embarked on the commercialization of the Force, in the near future also released a "fast film mobile business platform" and NFC coupon client Passbox, but you can see that the face of Baidu, Tencent and even the public comment on the eyeing, leaving them time is not much.

In addition to two-dimensional code, in fact, more tools such as image processing, voice and even business card scanning, will become a large mobile internet application standard, although the technology and data accumulation to a certain extent is the moat of vertical products, but the internet giant by virtue of early accumulation, has long been the best talent in the bag, for them, when "Micro-innovation" has become a matter of time.

Check-in has been a vehicle, the tool needs to find a turn.