In 2012, LeTV entered the traditional household appliance industry with the role of 'subversive'. Afterwards, Internet companies such as Xiaomi and Storm have rushed to the spot, and a large number of Internet TV brands began to expand rapidly. Between 2013 and 2015, almost all traditional TV manufacturers were Once in the financial report, Internet companies that have been straddling the border have caused great damage, which has added to the price war in the color TV industry.
Nowadays, with the emergence of music trouble, the Internet TV industry has also ushered in a big reshuffle.
Winter under the Internet brand
In 2017, due to factors such as high panel prices and overall sluggish demand, the color TV market was plunged into winter. According to data from Aowei Cloud Network, the retail sales volume of the color TV market in 2017 was 47.524 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 6.6%.
Due to the adoption of the OEM model, Internet TV manufacturers have very weak voice in the supply chain system. It is understood that the TV panel occupies 60%~70% of the total cost of the TV set. The price increase of the panel directly leads to no hardware. Loss of profitable internet TV makers increased.
Qu Zhihui, a senior analyst at Quzhi Consulting, told reporters that 'the price of TV parts has fluctuated drastically in the past two years, causing the cost of Internet brand hardware to soar, which in turn is transmitted to the price of the entire machine, which has inhibited the speed of sales growth, plus the short-term hardware loss. It can't be compensated by the profitability of the content. On the whole, neither profitability nor sales can meet expectations, further causing subsequent financing difficulties.
According to Yang Qingxiang, associate researcher at Jibang Consulting Photovoltaic Industry Research Center, “Although LeTV promotes television sales by means of software subsidizing hardware, it has also been imitated by other practitioners, but it also means that the threshold for entry into this business model is not high. When LeTron took a financial problem, the funds quickly evacuated from other Internet brands that followed the same model, rapidly deteriorating the overall financial status of the Internet TV market.
Even the stormy TV with a large body size is equally difficult. 'For storms, 2017 is a year of internal and external troubles.' On December 7, 2017, at its strategy conference, Stormwind Group was founded. People and CEO Feng Xin said that. On the same day, Stormwind Group announced that it had completed RMB 800 million in financing for Storm TV and that it had invested RMB 300 million to invest in the storm mirror.
In fact, in addition to pure internet TV brands, traditional TV manufacturers have also launched their own internet brands in the face of the challenge of “price butchers”, such as Haier’s mooka, Skyworth’s Coolo, TCL’s Thunderbird, and Konka’s KKTV. , Changhong's CHiQ, Hisense's VIDAA, etc.
However, an insider of a traditional color TV maker admits to reporters that 'On the thousand-dollar television level, its own brand sales are higher than its Internet brand sales.'
Yang Qingxiang analysis said, 'Internet TV is mainly based on online channels, if the demand for television channels in online channels will focus on the cost of millet as the first choice, pay attention to the brand will be based on Sharp, other brands is difficult to show advantages. In addition, last year's overall TV The cost of the panel is too high, which has led to the traditional black power brand has been self-serving, and also reduced the Internet brand resources investment and promotion.
Although the color TV industry is in winter, reporters learned that there are still Internet TV manufacturers to achieve growth in shipments, such as millet and storm. According to the 2017 performance report disclosed by Storm Group, 2017 Stormwind Group achieved operating income of 1.912 billion yuan. In the same period last year, the growth rate was 16.07%. During the reporting period, the operating revenue of the Storm TV business under the command of the storm increased by approximately 45% over the same period of last year.
Yang Qingxiang told reporters, 'Last year's Internet TV shipments accounted for the largest share of Xiaomi. Xiaomi’s TV shipments last year were close to 2 million units, which was higher than the original expected number of 1.5 million units. As for the share held by LeTV. Some of them were taken away by Xiaomi, and Sharp's cost-effective products also topped some of them.
Market gradually returns to rationality
In fact, some internet brands have switched their thinking. 'More and more people have found that they should use good products to dominate the market rather than hitting the market with low prices. This is the perceptual knowledge that Internet TV brands have achieved since 2017. . 'Yin Yu'an, vice president of PPTV's smart hardware company, said at a conference.
Li Huaiyu, CEO of Micro Whale Technology, also stated that the bubble of the Internet TV industry has burst into the stage of re-establishing a sound industrial structure. 'Internet TV has entered the second half and will eventually require hardware to be profitable. LeTV's hardware-subsidized money-burning model will not work. '
Kukai opens another way. Since 2017, Kukai has started the expansion terminal program, with the aim of allowing more TVs to be loaded with cool open terminals. By integrating the OTT business and improving the operating capabilities of its own platform, Cool Opened the company's transformation from hardware research and development to software services.
According to the characteristics of the Internet TV brand publicity, content, industry observer Liang Zhenpeng said, 'Internet brands can make their own features in the UI user interface, in addition to artificial intelligence can also make some breakthroughs. However, the content is now competing Very serious, BAT has occupied most of the Internet TV video, any Internet TV content, basically have to cooperate with the three giants.
Liang Zhenpeng told reporters, 'The Internet TV brand still has a chance to make a comeback. The first is to consider the transition to the mid-to-high end, not only to the low end, not only to the low price of the consumer image, which needs to improve product quality and technological innovation. Competence; Second, we must lay out offline sales outlets on the sales channels. We must not rely solely on e-commerce channels to allow more high-end consumers to have on-site experience.
In fact, large-scale, high-resolution color TV products have also been buoyed by the online market in the context of consumer upgrades.
According to the 2017 Home Grid Acquisition Analysis Report, the product structure of the home-grid-purchasing market was further shifted to high-end in 2017. In 2017, online retail sales of 55-inch to 60-inch color TV products accounted for the highest proportion of retail sales. , Oversized 65-inch and larger color TVs ranked first in both retail volume and retail sales growth. This reporter learned that traditional color TV brands Hisense, TCL, Skyworth, Changhong, and Konka all share large-size products with star products. Force high-end market and win the initiative.