Wi-Fi entrance similar to the enclosure of the battle is inevitable

IT Times reporter Zhang Wei

In mid-May, Alipay Wallet Director and head of wireless Wi-Fi project Hong Lei announced that the Alipay Wi-Fi Phase 1 project will be officially launched in June and will recruit the first batch of merchants nationwide. Almost at the same time, Tencent (110.5, 1.20, 1.10%, Real Time Quotes) also announced the launch of the well-planned YeahWi-Fi project. A Wi-Fi entrance battle is imminent.

Wi-Fi entrance similar to the enclosure of the battle is inevitable

Earlier, "IT Times" reporter interviewed a hardware manufacturer learned that Tencent has purchased a number of routers, and ready to lay Wi-Fi hot spots online. Tencent revealed the information revealed that the current Wi-Fi project has quietly started, and officially named YeahWi-Fi. According to the idea of ​​Tencent, adopt the mode of "Wechat + Wi-Fi" to develop offline store resources for WeChat.

At present, a public account named "YeahWi-Fi" has been launched. It is expected that this will be the unified platform for Wexin's offline shops. Users enter the cooperative shop, you can connect to this public account free Wi-Fi provided by shops, without entering an account and password. Store can be collected through the background into the store user information, members at any time to send promotional information. Tencent plans to build 60,000 stores in the first-tier cities in the north and the Guangzhou-Shenzhen by the end of 2014 and disseminate applications and games through online and offline information promotion.

Alipay wallet and Tencent practice is very similar, the two service functions provided by the difference is not large. Alipay Wi-Fi, which is coming online in June, is expected to set up an entrance in Alipay's wallet mobile phone client, enabling users to complete Wi-Fi access through the Alipay wallet when they are in a cooperative business. Ali's goal is to seize resources to build offline ecosystem services.

Baidu (167.25, 1.44, 0.87%), which has yet to announce its Wi-Fi access plan, started approaching operators as early as a few months ago in the hope of completing the promotion of its Wi-Fi portal through operators. An insider said one operator, Baidu hopes through the operator's channel, providing free routing products to businesses and in the store layout Wi-Fi. Although not so high-profile launch like Ali and Tencent, but Baidu's strength should not be underestimated.

With the launch of several major projects, a ground-breaking underground battle has started. Alipay, Tencent have quietly started the investment project in the near future, focusing on the development of restaurants, bars, shopping malls, chain hotels and tourist attractions and other service industries. A large number of large traffic, gathered a large chain of popularity is bound to become the giants are contested.

Businesses wait and see

This battle of Wi-Fi entrance, in fact, is still somewhat different from the previous battle - online giants jumped to the line, and threatened to drain through the Wi-Fi for offline shops, different thinking context, there How many businesses will pay?

Many businesses are worried that "the so-called drainage is nothing more than a gimmick," and the owner of a restaurant company once said that regardless of how the Internet giants shout, they eventually value the real increase in traffic. He believes that commercial Wi-Fi Service is mainly to the shop user, belong to the stock service, but how to drive incremental? "It may have something to do with the search, e-commerce and social networking that some big giants did, but it has little to do with the Wi-Fi portal."

Therefore, if the three giants can provide offline access is only Wi-Fi, I am afraid the expected "bustling" is difficult to appear. In fact, the Wi-Fi access service is not a new project. As early as a few years ago, a number of third-party service organizations started to deploy offline. Many have matured and have the ability to integrate commercial Wi-Fi and enterprise CRM systems , Cashier system all get through. And once the merchants want to turn into WeChat or Alipay, not only means to replace service providers, it is necessary to replace a full set of dedicated routers. In the context of the three giants have no further in-depth cooperation, the enthusiasm of businesses is generally not high. Such as South Beauty Marketing Department once said that the giants Wi-Fi functionality is not necessarily more, just to link WeChat and Alipay and reload commercial Wi-Fi in his view, "uneconomical." At the same time, a group of businesses that have "no such relationship to the Internet" are worried that they will become "victims" of online giants' battles because of their presence.