Three challenges from hard to soft, polar routing platform

The pole route tells a bigger story.

July 15, the extreme route released the smart router operating system Hiwifi OS, including Hicloud Cloud service platform, Himobile Mobile terminal, Histore plug-in store three core, want to surround Hiwifi OS aggregation users, developers and third-party vendors, Build an Android camp in the Router field.

Half a month ago, the extreme route announced a high-profile 10 million dollar round of financing, one of the investors is the Taiwanese chip maker MediaTek. At the time, Wang Zhuyun, the CEO of the Pole route, likened the pole route to the "Wintel" alliance with MediaTek.

It is not hard to find that the focus of the venture has shifted from the hardware to the smart router platform and the eco-building, which is one of the reasons why pole routing has delayed the introduction of newer versions of routers. But this shift should also be expected in the team, the pole-Route co-founder Ding once said, in fact, the polar route from the beginning to do the Hiwifi OS, and later because of the discovery of traditional routers too many constraints, it was forced to develop their own hardware. Not long ago, Wang Zhuyun announced that its routers shipped more than 1 million units, hardware to explore the mission has been completed, it is time from hard to soft, back to the starting point, to regain the Hiwifi OS vision of the beautiful.

But this story wants to fall to the ground, the pole route needs to face many problems.

1, router manufacturers will accompany you to play?

Android is not as experienced as iOS, but the open mind of Google, with the support of many smartphone makers, has gained a bigger market share than iOS. The most important question is whether a router vendor will embrace it.

In the July 15 of the polar route of the conference site, Shenzhen will be electronic (B-link) became the first to use Hiwifi OS router manufacturers. In my interview, will be electronic general manager JMJ said that the use of MediaTek's chips and Hiwifi OS router price is not determined, but will certainly be more expensive than the other router products, because "the cost of extreme routing is very high."

Talking about cooperation with the Hiwifi OS, JMJ said that the most important thing is the brand effect of the pole route. But as an operating system, Hiwifi OS wants to win more support from the router vendors, it must be in performance, experience, adaptability, cost-effective and so on all aspects of outstanding performance.

As a start-up company, the pole route is fast enough, but the appeal to the router manufacturer is far from reaching this point. Fortunately, the current high-profile extension of the Router OS players have not yet. Polar route If there is the courage to bleed, to the lowest price chip and Hiwifi OS bundled to the partners, the first unity of small micro-brand or cottage manufacturers, quickly formed a scale of the camp is not impossible.

2. Are users willing to interact and pay?

The router of the pole route has been losing money to sell, Wang Zhuyun once to oneself Frank, the pole route is very difficult to have the so-called break-even point, basically is to sell more thanks to more. But in order to occupy the market, the pole route and have to mass release goods. Reliance on hardware to make money is a distant prospect, which is one of the most unavoidable problems in routing from hard to soft.

The Histore, similar to Apple's App Store, carries the idea of app stores for polar routing. Previously, the pole route has been published with China Telecom plug-in cooperation, it is reported that many users are willing to pay to buy its launch of the network accelerator Plug-ins. Wang Zhuyun previously also introduced to me a number of other more practical plug-ins, such as filtering ads and bad information plug-ins, parents to control the children on the Internet plug-ins, remote download and play the Plug-ins and so on.

These rely on plug-in profit attempts, in the Hiwifi OS installed capacity reached a certain level, presumably can become a mature and stable income-generating model. This is also a bit faster than other router vendors.

One problem that cannot be overlooked, however, is that most users have not developed the habit of interacting directly with routers, yet another point on the Android phone is that Chinese mobile phone users are generally unwilling to pay for apps. Therefore, the pole route in the education market, training users and routers interactive habits, but also to try advertising and other charging mode.

3, how to attract developers to join?

Currently, the pole-routed plug-in store has 10 applications. According to the introduction, most of them are developed by the pole routing team.

Wang Zhuyun said that there were often ISVs (independent software developers) who volunteered to join the pole-routed platform. In order to attract more developers, the pole route does not participate in plug-in revenue sharing.

Although the "sincerity" of the pole route is very sufficient, but want to build a mature Hiwifi OS camp, the pole route also needs to take out the action, for the user strives for more service and content.

Wang Zhuyun feels like lei-"We're all startups, but everyone treats us like a bat." "For polar routing, the Hiwifi OS is drawing too big a pie." But considering the Chinese market more than 70 million of the total number of routers per year, the era of smart routers has just begun, if you can maintain good manufacturers, users, developers, to create a virtuous cycle of the ecology, the polar route of the spring may not be far away.

But in any case, from hard to soft, extreme route to burn, there is no way back to go.

Success or failure make-or.