In 2015, Li Ruigang, who stepped down from the office of SMG president, started his own venture with a chief investment officer of the Chinese Cultural Industry Fund, while the first stop took a fancy to the booming Internet TV industry.
Micro-whales technology from the Chinese Cultural Industry Fund invested 2 billion yuan, founding sponsor also includes Ali, Tencent, the Central.
However, 2015 is also a lively year for the color TV industry. LeTV Super TV and Xiaomi TV continue to expand rapidly, and a large number of enterprises such as stormy weather and popularity have also made inroads.
In the ensuing year, micro-whales became more and more popular. In addition to ensuring a press conference every two months, they announced the sponsorship of "China Good Sound," inviting Li Jian and Chen Wai-ting to speak at CES, the world's largest electronic consumer show. Show muscle
Good prospects are not long, with the upstream panel prices soaring, micro-whales have also been involved in the color TV industry's landslide.New products less and less, conference venue area is getting smaller and smaller, micro-whales even heard the news of shareholders divestment.
While accepting a Sina technology interview, micro-whale CEO Lihuai Yu denied the divestment rumors, but also reflected on the bubble economy of the previous two years.
Micro Whale CEO Li Huaiyu
Internet TV bubble burst
The past 2017, due to the panel prices are high, the overall slump in demand and other factors, the TV market downturn.Avvia cloud display, the TV market in 2017 the size of 47.524 million units sold, down 6.6% .Yi Kang data Shows that in 2017, the retail volume of color TV market was 47.81 million units, down 8.1% from the same period of last year. The color TV market was the hardest time in nearly five years.
In the third quarter of 2015, the top five black-power companies reported declining profits, while profits from Hisense and Changhong decreased by 47.39% and 67.97% respectively over the same period of previous year while Skyworth even plunged 85.90%. Konka realized substantial profit growth mainly due to large Pen asset sales. The only normal profit growth TCL, but also mainly from its semiconductor display panel Huaxing photoelectric.
The internet brand experienced a severe test in 2017 with market share down 6 ppt YoY to 13% under the dual pressures of cost and capital. In addition, from the number of new listings of Internet brands, it dropped 11 ppt YoY To 161.
With the collapse of the entire music system as the music has long since fallen altars, sales fell from 6 million in 2016 dropped to 1.4 million in 2017. Loss has become the norm Storm TV also suffered a layoff storm.Mix relying on price increases and 4A of the 1080P panel got a tough growth.
The reason for the overall decline in the color TV industry in 2017 was firstly that the prices of television panels continued to rise, and the panel prices started to pick up from April 2016 and peaked in the first half of 2017. This round of price increases took 14 months in total Historically the longest period of the panel price increases.
In the meantime, alternatives such as smart micro-investment rise.
In 2017, domestic sales of smart micro-projection reached 1.29 million units, an increase of 69% over the same period in 2007. Smart Microjection has become the new choice for many young people due to its ease of use and portability, to a certain extent, replacing the flat-panel TV in the living room .
Finally, the most severe real estate industry in 2017 regulation, but also to a certain extent, limit the development of color TV industry.According to Alvi data show that the number of real estate transactions in key cities in the country, the first and second tier cities have a very significant decline in turnover Down 37% and 15% respectively from the same period of previous year; third-tier cities only barely maintained a growth of only 0.3%. In addition to color TV sets, refrigerators and water heaters all showed negative growth.
Internet TV dumb fire But television Internet is inevitable
'I think the entire industry is now shattered from a bubble and entered into a re-establishment of a virtuous industrial structure.' Li Huaiyu believes that the burn-down mode has ended and the hardware needs to be profitable.
However, Lihuai Yu also admitted that the volume of sales was affected by the adjustment of the marketing mode in 2017. He said that after the 11th of October 2016, the Company adjusted its strategy and replaced the price war with rational pricing. After one year of hard work, it should have seen so far Income, gross profit in all aspects of a very healthy curve.
Not long ago announced the storm financing plan, still biased toward the mode of hardware subsidies.Huaiyu Yu disagree with this.His bluntly, some Internet TV brands have retreated, low end, take the amount certainly can not continue, Internet TV to adhere to the quality.
Although the Internet TV dumb fire, but Li Huaiyu believes that the commercial value of large-screen entertainment is undeniable, the development of television Internet is correct.
'Supply chains and channels are the shortcomings of the Internet brand, but unlike Internet TV, which used to be comparable to traditional TVs, there is one very big pain point for today's users to experience.'
In fact, the traditional manufacturers have begun to attach importance to the content and ecological construction.In this case, Li Huaiyu that the advantages of Internet companies lies in the user experience.
'In the department store industry for example, the Internet swept under the traditional department store brands are undergoing major restructuring, many veteran supermarkets also opened a lot of online mall.Although it seems almost the same form, the traditional brand also smashed a lot of money, made a lot of efforts , But in the end, there is still a gap between traditional retail and the internet in the continuing escalation of user service and experience. '
As for the experience of the advantages of micro whales mainly from artificial intelligence technology to start.
According to Li Huaiyu, micro whales have been doing natural semantic understanding (nlp) development since their first TV release in 2015. In addition, a great deal of intelligent recommendation algorithms have been applied by the micro whales at the application level, and machine learning methods To collect user data, personalized recommendations, so that products can do thousands of people.
From 2017 to the present, channel construction is also the focus of work for micro whales. At present, the online and offline channels are divided into four levels.
Tier one and tier-one and tier-two cities such as JD.com and Tmall. The second tier is the new retail strategy currently available on the channel, such as Jingdong Monopoly, which is intended to give users an intuitive experience to boost online sales growth ; The third floor, a number of small whales in the first and second tier cities settled in a lot of tide shops, mainly to absorb high-end, young, consumer groups; the fourth floor that is below the third-tier cities experience shop. Lihuai Yu revealed that the goal is By the end of 2019 in the country to complete about 10,000 sales outlets.
For 2018 TV market, Lihuai Yu predicts that in the case of warmer economic recovery, this year may be the first to suppress Houyang as 2016. With the upstream panel prices down, millet, Sharp has acted, the price war may be Comeback this year, but for micro-whales, hoping to upgrade the hardware, software, supply chain, channel transformation and high-end positioning.