Last week, the cooperation between Baidu and Coolo opened its doors and caused intense concern in the industry. In 2018, traditional television brand manufacturers appear to have regained opportunities in Internet TV business. The Internet TV landscape is being restructured.
Baidu billion investment cool open
Recently, Skyworth Digital announced that Baidu has injected a capital injection of 1.01 billion yuan into Skyworth's subordinates. After the completion of the transaction, Skyworth's shareholding interest in Coocaa will drop from approximately 71.89% to 64.32%. Baidu is the second largest shareholder.
Of this 1.01 billion yuan, about 13.43 million yuan will be injected into CoolCap's registered capital, and the balance will be funded by Kukai's capital reserve.
In this transaction, Baidu purchased the existing equity interest in CoolCap held by Coolgold Shenzhen through its subsidiary company, Beijing Aiqiyi. The stake held by Coolgold Shenzhen in Coolco will be reduced from approximately 10.26% to (according to After accounting for the impact of the capital injection, the enlarged benchmark) is about 8.71%.
This is actually just one aspect of the strategic cooperation between Skyworth and Baidu last week. In terms of products, Skyworth TV will launch a joint development of both parties, carrying the CoocaaOS and DuerOS dual-engine super AI TVs Q5, Q6, Q7 series; in addition, both parties will also Collaborate to introduce smart home entry-level smart products; while technically, Baidu's interactive AI operating system, DuerOS, will fully interface with the CoolOpen system. Baidu's frontier technology capabilities such as face recognition and image recognition will be fully introduced into the CoolOpen system.
Pure Internet TV brand is difficult
Cool Sky is Skyworth's Internet TV operating platform. At present, the total number of active activations of Coolopen's operating terminals exceeds 28 million, and the number of daily active users exceeds 12 million.
In September 2016 and June 2017, Coocasure obtained Baidu’s iQIYI and Tencent strategic investments, respectively. This time, Baidu continued to open its code at the capital level. After the completion of the new round of strategic investment, Coocasure’s market valuations Nearly 10 billion yuan.
Comparing to Cool's 'Flourish' situation, the brand of pure Internet TV is experiencing hardships. There is no doubt that Le Vision, which has no distinction between two brands, was once the Internet TV brand's first brother. However, in 2017, LeTV was caught in the storm of public opinion. Looking at the results for the whole year, LeTV's operating income was 7.463 billion yuan, which was a decrease of 66.06% compared with the same period of last year, and a loss of 11.6 billion yuan. From a profit to a loss, the basic earnings per share was -2.9146 yuan. Recently, after 236 days of taking office, Sun Hongbin decided to resign. As chairman of LeTV, LeTV is once again in bankruptcy, delisting and many other conclusions.
Storm TV also experienced a 'frustrated' situation. At the strategic conference at the end of last year, Feng Xin, founder and CEO of Storm Group, frankly stated that “For the storm, 2017 is a year of internal and external troubles.” The storm actually experienced in the past year. Major turmoil in the capital market.
In fact, because of the OEM model, Internet TV manufacturers have very weak voice in the supply chain system. Since last year, panel prices have directly led to an increase in the losses of Internet TV makers that are not profitable by themselves. TV in the past two years The drastic fluctuations in the prices of machine components have caused the cost of Internet brand hardware to rise, which in turn has been transmitted to the price of the entire machine, which has inhibited the speed of sales growth. At the same time, hardware losses cannot be compensated through profitability in the short term. 'A person in the industry pointed out.
Traditional TV manufacturers are actively attacking
Two or three years ago, with the rapid expansion of LeTV, Xiaomi and other Internet TV brands, Internet TV brands and traditional TV brand manufacturers were once arrogant, and even the high-profile threatened to subvert the industry.
At that time, Internet TV brands often used low-price strategies to snatch up the market and enter consumers’ households through a large number of promotional measures. These practices are seen by traditional television companies as being out of compliance with rules. 'The market is chaotic, some The product simply can't do so at a low price. 'There are traditional television manufacturers practitioners telling reporters.
But now, everything has changed. The attitude of traditional TV manufacturers has changed, and the relationship between them has also undergone a fundamental change.
Recently, TCL Group Co., Ltd. clearly stated on the investor interaction platform that the company and Xiaomi cooperated in TV manufacturing and mobile phone screens.
In this regard, TCL Group Chairman Li Dongsheng explained that TCL and Xiaomi are upstream and downstream cooperative partners in the display business.
In fact, many consumers are not aware of the millet TVs they use. Many of the hardware in the entire TV set are not manufactured by Xiaomi. Xiaomi has been seeking external cooperation in hardware production and manufacturing. On the other hand, TCL has cooperated with Xiaomi.
For example, on TV panels, TCL and Xiaomi have upstream and downstream cooperation. At present, TCL's China Star Optoelectronics is a leading company in the domestic panel display industry. Many of its customers have Xiaomi's presence. There is competition in millet. We are an upstream and downstream relationship in the display business. ' Li Dongsheng said.
Apart from having a cooperative relationship with Xiaomi in the industry chain, TCL also vigorously promoted the free-living brand Thunderbird, whose brand nature is similar to that of Skyworth's Cool Open. Currently, it includes Skyworth Coolo, TCL Thunderbird, and the Internet of KKTV traditional TV brand manufacturers in Konka. Sub-brands have become increasingly popular and have become a new growth point for some traditional brands. Traditional brand manufacturers take the initiative and the combination of online and offline is accelerating. This trend is similar to the trend of online and offline convergence in e-commerce. .
Cooperation between the two swords smart home
On the day of the strategic cooperation between Skyworth and Baidu, Huang Hongsheng, the founder of Skyworth Group, and Li Yanhong, the founder of Baidu, appeared at the same time as the two giants' hands-on platform.
Huang Hongsheng said that currently, one-third of Skyworth's high-end TVs have applied artificial intelligence. In cooperation with Baidu, Skyworth can sell more than 100 million home appliances each year with updated artificial intelligence technology.
Li Yanhong believes that the era of artificial intelligence has come. The era of artificial intelligence allows the system not only to interact but also to understand users. The TV screen has very large room for innovation in the future. This cooperation will promote the development of Baidu and Skyworth, and more importantly, It will promote the progress of China and even the world.
Currently, Tencent is a shareholder of Skyworth Coolo and TCL Thunderbird; Ali is a strategic investor of Haier TV and also has a systematic level of cooperation with Sharp Internet TV; at the same time, traditional TV brands are also developing their own artificial intelligence products, such as Skyworth AI chip, TCL artificial intelligence small T.
All indications indicate that traditional TV brand manufacturers have adjusted their strategies in Internet TV business. On the one hand, they actively promote their own sub-brands, and on the other hand, they continue to cooperate with Internet companies, such as Internet giants and Internet TV brands. Home development to seize the initiative's ambition.
At present, in the whole puzzle of smart home development, color TV can be said to be the core of the living room. Although, with the development of portable electronic devices, TVs are facing the dilemma of reduced operating rates, but in homes with smart home conditions, one High-quality color TV is still a must-have item, and it often requires intelligent properties such as connection and recognition.
According to Liu Buchen, an observer of household appliances, the cooperation between Baidu and Skyworth Appliances can be regarded as both the advancement of Baidu's AI strategy and the improvement of Skyworth's intelligentization. AI itself is a trend, and cooperation between Baidu and Skyworth can be viewed as a major trend. The next attempt. '
'Smart homes and artificial intelligence have become an outlet, and Internet companies have an urgent need for the online drop-off of related technologies. The introduction of more new technologies and operators by home appliance companies can enable them to achieve a deeper layout in smart homes and discuss with Internet companies. More business models. ' Home appliance industry marketing expert Hong Shibin said.
'The smart home complete solution can be divided into two phases: 'construction' and 'experience' in terms of process. In the 'experience' phase, 'ecology' will be extended; the appliance giant will pay more attention to 'construction'. There is still room for improvement in the 'experience' aspect, which also needs to work together with Internet companies represented by BAT to enhance the user experience. ' Independent analyst Liang Zhenpeng of the household appliances industry analyzed the report.