UC excellent as chairman and CEO Yu

In the 16-storey office of the Suzhou Street, the Yu, the chairman and CEO of UC, has once again stated: "My attitude has been very clear for a year, and UC is not for sale." "This is the Beijing office of UC with more than 100 employees." UC 1500 employees, mostly in Guangzhou away from Beijing.

Interview that day is catching up with "38" Women's days, UC from outside to find a photographer, to the female staff to shoot artsy.

Baidu's takeover of UC has been rumored for a long time. The widely circulated version of the media is that Baidu reached a holding agreement with UC before the Spring festival, valued at about 1.2 billion dollars, but only hearsay. The attitude of the parties as always, the acquisition of Baidu tight-lipped, the acquisition of UC is insisted that no such thing.

Analysts believe that the Baidu acquisition of UC is to seize the import status of mobile Internet, to make up for the previous mobile Internet area of the lack of layout. And UC as one of the earliest mobile internet companies, once had a glorious past, in Saipan era is almost mobile phone users the only choice to surf the internet. But in the new generation of intelligent terminal era, facing the strong impact of local apps and other mobile browsers on the fierce competition for market share, its development prospects are not clear, but also want to "find a big tree good shade."

The 1976-born Yu looks older than the actual age, round-faced, slightly fatter. He was dropped to UC by Lenovo in the end of 2006, when He Xiaopeng and Liang led the UC team only 33 people, funding is extremely tight, financing plan by almost all the top VC said "No".

Yu and lei a good relationship, Lei once said, Yongfu do what he supports. This UC got the first angel investment, Lei 2 million yuan.

According to Yu's summary, "not for sale" means, first, UC entrepreneurs are the company's major shareholders, this matter is not shaken. Yu said he was very clear that a start-up enterprise to develop, must have a soul, that is, must be clear to the owner; many big companies like Nokia quickly collapse because they have no owners. So for UC team, to realize the dream of UC, to ensure the independence of UC is very important.

Second, enterprises in the process of growth, should absorb the entire industry valuable resources, so that enterprises improve product technology, which is also steadfast. He said that there are multiple levels of cooperation, which can be equity investment or product and business strategic cooperation. The key is to identify the UC team's independence and dream, willing to contribute to the building blocks.

In addition to the angel investment of Lei at the end of 2006, UC received a 10 million dollar investment in Morningside Investment and joint venture in August 2007, followed by a strategic investment by Alibaba Group and Nokia. To calculate, VC also arrived at the time of exit.

"We do not have the pressure to withdraw capital from investors. "Yu said," 2007 after the financing of 10 million U.S. dollars, UC became the financing of Party A. Early investors want to quit, at any time, because there is always a person to take a stand. UC is not short of money. "We could be one of the richest internet companies in a unlisted company," he said. ”

Although Yu has repeatedly claimed that UC is "not for sale", but "entrepreneurial state" from a reluctant to give the name of the investors from the news is that Baidu and UC transactions are in full swing, and not only the Baidu family in snapping up UC.

"The deal is finally done, it must be above 1 billion dollars, and it should be between 12 and 1.5 billion," he said. "The investor said. In fact, Tencent had been in contact with UC a few years ago, the price also talked about almost, but a condition of Yu completely blocked the possibility of cooperation: Tencent can invest, but they can not do mobile phone browser. "This is obviously not acceptable to penguins. "An investor who declined to be named told the state of entrepreneurship.

He is very optimistic about UC's entrepreneurial team: "Everyone is very strong." "This team includes four people, He Xiaopeng tube products, Liang technology, Yu is responsible for strategy, and later joined the Zhushunti-he is very strong in marketing." "Their transition from the Symbian era to the Android era is very rapid, the product is coming up, and the channel has played its original advantage." Although certainly not as strong as the Nokia era, but always up to say good performance. "The investor said.

Therefore, according to the investor's analysis, the deal is a suitable business for Baidu. If UC continues to grow, it is a very successful acquisition for Baidu. If UC does not grow, is also a defensive type of acquisition, UC did not fall into the hands of competitors. And UC is home to make money company, light game one months can have 40 million or 50 million of the income (before), "Baidu acquisition of money is able to earn back." ”

If the UC value so much money, but also willing to sell, for Baidu, this is a valuable opportunity to cherish it?

The number of mobile internet users will be over the internet for the first time in 2013, according to the Chingko Research Center. Predictably, mobile internet users will increase dramatically over the next few years. Although the absolute use of PC Internet will not be reduced, but compared with the mobile Internet, in many areas, PC fixed Internet traffic percentage will become relatively small.

This means that a company that now has tens of billions of U.S. dollars in market value, whether it is Ali Department, Baidu department or Tencent department, four or five years later, if the mobile internet did not get the status, or did not acquire the same status as the PC Internet, then the company will really "out".

Spending hundreds of millions of of dollars now is a lot more cost-effective than a horrors one day. "Of course, if Baidu spends money to invest or buy mobile internet companies, it is a smart move," said one investor who focused on the early mobile internet. This is an older generation of internet companies, not a nap, accidentally by a company that does not know where to take the place of the best way to replace it: kill the opponents in the bud. ”

No one can predict the future, and no one can rewrite history. "When Google 2 billion dollars to sell also sold, Tencent tens of millions of yuan to sell also sold." If they don't stick to the end, what will be the Internet world now? The investor lamented.

Is UC's future equal to the future of browsers?

Is UC worth 1.2 billion dollars?

The question of the value of UC is more of a debate about the position of mobile browsers on the future mobile internet. Is it an important entry point? will it become more and more deserted because of the scenery of the local app?

The famous internet critic Bo is a firm "inverted browser pie". He even thinks that the phone itself is an entrance; there is no other entrance on the phone. And as the mobile Internet matures, users of mobile browsers will be diverted by local apps, and browsers will be discarded by most users.

UC developed from the 2G era, at that time the CPU capacity of the mobile phone is very low, the internet speed is only a few KB, in order to solve the problem of slow speed, UC uses the server, the client mixed Computing Cloud architecture: first the user to access the Web page to catch their own server, so that the server compressed page, and then uploaded to Because Symbian's own browser does not give power, UC is almost the only choice for users at that time.

Nokia had no apps in that era, and users could only access the Internet through browsers. Today, users have a large number of apps to meet their different needs. Bo said: "UC browser has been important in the past, but today its importance has been replaced." ”

His conclusion is that the legendary Baidu acquisition of UC, the value of UC is not too high, but highly outrageous.

There are many people who hold the same view, which is also the place where UC is the most challenged: The competitive environment of UC browsers is not the same as the Symbian era. The impact of the local app, QQ browser, Baidu Browser, and so on, a few, big and small competitors have 10 or so, and Android, Apple and other native browsers do more and more good, but also reduce the number of people using Third-party browser opportunities.

However, when the market is very small, it is useless to be alone, when the market is very large, a few percentage points of the market share is very considerable. The total number of users in the mobile Internet is increasing and the whole market is getting bigger, which is good news for every mobile browser vendor. The UC figure is that the number of active subscribers to Android is now 100 million. This number is several times larger than that of the Symbian era.

UC product President He Xiaopeng said: "We grow faster than many peers, our user activity is still improving." And we now find that the larger the screen, the better the network, the more active we increase. ”

He Xiaopeng's reason is simple: "Hardware is enhanced, after June this year, basically the market out of mobile phones, the worst Shanzhai machines are dual-core, 500 trillion memory, and next year may be the worst four-core." The network is also getting faster, 3G to 4G, 4G to wifi such changes must be available. ”

In the PC era, this kind of thing happened. Before 2007, everyone would have to install a client to watch the video. Because the browser to look very slow card, the advantage of the client is that can be cached, the video is very fluent. But 2008 years later, as bandwidth transmission efficiency increases, watching video in the browser is not slow. Today most people watch videos using pages to see Youku and potatoes.

The user is not a technical expert, the user needs is not an app or a browser, but a simpler and faster service.

Wanpo Century Technology Co., Ltd. CEO Huang is a long-time observer of UC, and he lists browsers and app stores as two big parallel portals for mobile internet. He said that in the long run, it must be more time to use the browser. Because the application store is just a short stay on the top of the user, download the application is gone, the user stickiness is low. The browser's business model is wider than the App store, and it's easier to bundle some high-value, commercially strong services in the browser.

According to Huang's estimate, in 2012, the App Store's entry volume must have exceeded that of the browser, which is about 2:1, and the browser will be half the year;

Huang the players in China Mobile's internet industry chain into four echelon.

The first echelon now has three half companies, Baidu, Tencent, 360, and a half home is 91. The first echelon of the concept is that each company not only do their own business, but also try to dominate the entire industrial chain. These companies are very large in layout, all in the downstream. But big companies do not do a lot of real functional things because they grab the entrance.

The second echelon is Sina, Sohu, NetEase, Century home, the public comments, and so on, these companies try to have a big pattern in the vertical field to occupy a good position. The first echelon of those big guys do not thin or do not attend to the field, the second echelon of the people to do.

The third echelon is like the ink weather such company, in a very small area of work, business model is not very clear.

The fourth echelon is some small and medium developer.

UC is Huang as between the second echelon and the first echelon, although has not stood very stable, but in the browser this vertical area has occupied a good position. UC, although not the ability to dominate the industry chain, but already has the mobile Internet with Sina, Sohu, such as the strength of the competition. "he said.