You can get in just by paying! APP Promotion Offline Pre-installation Promotion Manual

1. What is App pre-installation promotion?

Pre-installation is an important way to promote App. Pre-installed means that the corresponding APP software has been installed for us when the mobile phone leaves the factory or when we just buy it and turn it on. These pre-installed APPs are mainly installed by APP promoters by having mobile phone software and hardware developers write into the hardware or implant the corresponding APPs into the mobile phone operating system. As long as the user turns on the phone, they will be easily activated, thereby quickly installing various APP software on the phone.

2. What is the background of the rise of App pre-installation promotion?

1. Online channels are becoming more and more concentrated, and the cost of advertising is getting higher and higher.
2. After such a long period of promotion and operation, the volume brought by online channels for some entry-level products has reached a bottleneck. The volume has been almost sold out and there are not enough new additions.
3. The offline pre-installation market is becoming more and more formalized, and the entry threshold is getting lower and lower. The external interfaces of mobile phone manufacturers and solution providers are becoming more and more transparent, and gradually becoming commercialized and market-oriented.
4. The pre-installation channel is exclusive, and products with severe homogeneity cannot appear on the same mobile phone. Online channels may list several identical service products in a row.

3. Advantages of App Pre-installation Promotion

The promotion of mobile phone APP pre-installation can automatically activate the pre-installed APP when the mobile phone user uses it for the first time. Once the pre-installed amount reaches a certain amount, the number of users who will be promoted to the APP will be countless. Especially for mobile phones like Xiaomi whose sales have increased dramatically in recent years, if the APP can be pre-installed in such mobile phones, it can be said that the maximum APP promotion can be achieved. The effect of this promotion will even be far greater than the promotion effect on websites, WeChat, app stores, etc.

1. Loyalty advantage: There has been a wave of phone replacement in recent years. Let's think about the target groups of these brands of mobile phones - most of them are young people who buy them as gifts for their parents, so this part of the channel reaches the older group. This group has a low acceptance of new things and rarely changes after passively accepting them.

2. Volume advantage: The pre-installed channel accounts for 20% of the total Android phone shipments, or 200,000 per day. A single flashing company brings more than 40,000 activations to a single app of Tencent every day, and a certain reading product's offline channels bring in nearly 200,000 new users every day. (If I could make glutinous rice balls with this much data, I would probably be able to ride my boss like a horse⊙﹏⊙b sweat)

3. Customizable: You can put shortcuts on the desktop to increase the activation rate.

4. The advantage of being non-uninstallable: The app stays on your phone forever, so even if you never use it, the long-term exposure of the icon will have considerable brand value.

4. Disadvantages of App Pre-installation Promotion

1. The start-up period is slightly slow: a batch of machines usually takes 3-5 months to ship out, and the effect is slow to show
2. It is difficult to control the cost of activating users: depending on the type of application, there will be many dormant users, so niche products require refined delivery
3. The threshold for cooperation is relatively high: full payment is required in advance, and the minimum installation quantity is 100,000, which means that the one-time investment is at least around 150,000 to 200,000, which is not a small amount of money for a start-up product.

5. Features of App Pre-installation Promotion

1. Pre-installed APP promotion software is more suitable for the promotion of tool software

E-commerce and industry-related software are not very suitable either. The reason is that tool-type software is more suitable for the general public, can be accepted by most users, and the probability of users uninstalling them is relatively low.

2. Pre-installed APP promotion can be pre-installed on hardware and software

Pre-installing APPs on hardware requires a certain cooperative relationship with the hardware developers and writing the corresponding installation program into the chip. The early Nojia pre-installed various browsers and other software is a typical example. This kind of hardware pre-installed APPs are often not able to be uninstalled because they have been written into the hardware level. This kind of pre-installation will bring certain unfriendliness to users, but it can also be done once and for all without worrying about users uninstalling. As for the pre-installed APP on software, from the current smartphones, it mainly involves installing the corresponding activation program in the mobile phone operating system. When the user turns on the phone and enters the mobile phone system, he can activate the pre-installed APP with one click by simply clicking on the picture on the desktop. The characteristic of this type of pre-installed software is that if the user dislikes it, there is a risk of it being uninstalled immediately.

3. Pre-installed apps on mobile phones have more prominent disadvantages for young users

With the popularity of smart phones in recent years, some young people born in the 1980s and 1990s even change their phones several times a year. As a result, pre-installed apps may not necessarily win high user loyalty. However, for older users, this group of users has a lower acceptance of new things and will not change their phones intentionally or frequently. The promotion of pre-installed apps on mobile phones can well cultivate the loyalty of this type of users.

4. The cost of promoting pre-installed APP on mobile phones is high and has a certain time limit.

The promotion costs for pre-installed mobile phone APPs are often quite high, and you often have to pay the full amount at one time because there is a minimum installed base, such as 100,000 units. Otherwise, if there are only a few hundred units installed and users are lost during the process, there will basically be no promotion effect. At the same time, after the mobile phone APP is pre-installed successfully, there is still a certain time delay when the mobile phone goes to the market, and the effect cannot be reflected immediately, because the sales of mobile phones still require a certain period of time, and it is impossible for the mobile phone to be sold to users immediately after pre-installation.

Pre-installation is a good means of promotion, but it is more suitable for tool applications for the general public, such as entry-type products such as browsers and security assistants, which have a high activation rate. E-commerce, niche, and automotive categories may not be suitable, but you can also try to do it by model, such as only making high-end models or designated models, etc., depending on the operator's understanding of his own products.

6. Types of App Pre-installation Promotion

Mobile phone production components and pre-installed space——

1. Chip manufacturers: Spreadtrum, MTK, Qualcomm, etc. Current situation: China Cool Alliance has withdrawn the pre-installation rights, and other weaker brands of mobile phones may still have a chance to enter the market. BUT: If you can deal with chip manufacturers, then there will be hundreds of millions of users pouring in. It seems that Maxthon has dealt with MTK, and has directly pre-installed Maxthon Cloud Browser on more than 100 million mobile phones shipped to the world. The APP pre-installed in the chip cannot be uninstalled.

2. Solution provider: Design the mobile phone prototype and provide the prototype chip to the manufacturer. Or the manufacturer puts forward the requirements and the solution provider designs it. Several major domestic solution providers: Longqi, Huaqin, Haocheng, Tianyida, and Yousi. Among them, Haocheng and Tianyida both have third-party volumes and can be pre-installed on small-brand mobile phones. For a while, part of the 4G volume was basically Qualcomm chips + Unisys solutions, which was also considerable.

As manufacturers' operations become more and more standardized, solution providers no longer have pre-installation permissions, but they retain the permission to send PUSHs.

3. Manufacturers: China Cool Alliance, OV Xiaomei (oppo, vivo, Xiaomi, Meizu), etc. Currently, China Cool Alliance is already very strong, and the withdrawal of pre-installed permissions has been market-oriented to form a standardized cooperation model. It is said that in the past, if business people found the right PR person and had a few drinks, they could just wave their hands and start over. But now, it's just like that.

OV Xiaomei is relatively clean because it sells through its own channels, and entering the market from the manufacturer level is not something that can be achieved just by having money. For example, it seems that only products from Lei Jun's group are likely to be pre-installed on Xiaomi. It seems that it is different now.

Let me tell you a joke. Last time my COS friend's assistant went to meet Ali, he gave me some advice on the way there: I'll leave first after I finish talking to Ali about business, and you stay there and kneel down in front of Ali, begging Xiaomi to pre-install your Tangyuan creations, otherwise it won't work. Once you have accomplished this, you can write an article titled "How I got Xiaomi to pre-install the product". The next day you will see the entire Qinghe area crowded with business people flying in from all over the country. If you take a good position, you can make a lot of money by selling the ranking of the people kneeling there.

7. Mobile phone distribution stage and pre-installed space

1. National agents: Tianyin (mainly low-end and mid-range mobile phones from Samsung, Huawei and Lenovo), Aishide (high-end mobile phones from Samsung), Putian Taili, Zhongyou Putai (cannot be flashed), and Kuren.
2. Provincial representatives: This level includes Dingkai and Coolle. This is where domestic flashers like Fanyue begin to intervene
3. Sales outlets: Suning, Gome and other companies also have people interested in integrating the resources of this type of channels. The above three sales stages are the main battlefields for mobile phone pre-installation, with one layer after another being flashed. Some flash ROM, some flash root, some can be made impossible to uninstall once flashed, and some just pretend to install something. The water is actually quite deep.

8. Pre-installation through operator channels

The operator channel is also an offline market that cannot be underestimated. A large number of mobile phones are distributed from business halls, and the network tentacles penetrate into every corner of the country, including third-, fourth- and fifth-tier cities, counties, and villages... Living in first- and second-tier cities, we have long been accustomed to the Internet lifestyle. I used to wonder who would go to a business hall to buy a mobile phone. Facts have proved that I am too young and too naive. So how can we get pre-installation at the operator level? Following their strong KPI-oriented work model, the "free traffic" apps or special areas that we can see now came into being.

I don't know the specific method very well, so I won't talk about it. My guess is: buying your traffic to help you reach your KPI and replacing pre-installed resources. The cost of purchasing traffic through online distribution channels is generally shared by CPs. For example, an application market launches a free-traffic download zone. This zone is naturally more attractive to users, and the area in the zone is split out to sell advertising space to make up for the cost of purchasing traffic. No money was spent, the installed capacity was increased, and business relationships were deepened.

9. How Flashing Dealers Operate

Only large companies like ZTE, Huawei, Baidu and Tencent can afford a team dedicated to pre-installation and operator operations. However, the mobile Internet has developed rapidly in recent years, and many entrepreneurial teams have grown rapidly. They have raised a lot of money and are eager to spend it to seize market share. It is not easy to poach people, and they do not have time to train them themselves. Therefore, flashing companies like Dingkai and Datang have grown rapidly in just one or two years.

It looks very bright on the outside, but the actual situation is that the competition is very fierce. Flashing dealers flash each other's machines, or partners have upstream and downstream relationships, and repeated flashing occurs. Many of them are losing money in building channels, and the cost has been rising again and again. This is the reason why the unit price of the pre-installed channel has increased from 0.6 yuan at the beginning to 1.5-2 yuan now. The entry points of flashing dealers are generally provincial, municipal and city contractors; the free market (such as parallel imports or machines flowing out of operator channels); speculators (similar to mobile phone futures, making money by taking advantage of market price differences) and municipal and city operators. They use a charter model for wholesale, generally starting at 8-10 yuan per phone.

It connects with APP upstream and takes care of terminals downstream, and is engaged in the intermediary business. Their tentacles are also very wide. In the past few years, it was said that the contact scenes for smuggled parallel goods were no different from the drug deal scenes in movies. Brands like Meizu and Xiaomi that control their own channels will also find loopholes in the free circulation market. Currently, there are five major flashing companies in China: Dingkai, Coolle, Fanyue, Shenlong, and Zhangxingliyi.

10. Cost and Effect

● The average daily shipment of Android phones is 1 million, and the flashing market can account for 20% of the market share, which is 200,000 units;
● The activation rate of tool applications is relatively high, with 100% for security applications. As long as there is a function of automatic startup, the activation conversion rate can be over 80%;
● Installation fee: 0.4-0.8 yuan/piece: payment is counted once installed, excluding arrival; arrival fee: 1-2 yuan/piece: payment is counted once installed and opened.

(Popular science: The reason why we use the arrival mode is that the CP doesn’t like the installation mode, and the channel doesn’t like the activation mode. Everyone is happy with the arrival mode. Isn’t it fun to play word games like this?)

11. Promotion Suggestions

As an APP promoter, what you need to do is to determine whether your product is suitable for entering the APP pre-installation market, decide whether to do pre-installation promotion, how much money to spend, and how to make the most appropriate APP pre-installation. In addition, you also need to analyze and evaluate the promotion effect in time during the APP pre-installation promotion process in order to further adjust the promotion strategy.