Yingke has been removed from the shelves again. Will this be a sign that it is in trouble?

The rumors of "selling out" have just subsided, and the live streaming app " Inke " was removed from Apple's shelves again today. There are rumors that the reason for the removal is that Yingke continues to manipulate the charts , but Yingke officials have not responded to the whole matter.

Inke is currently no longer available in the App Store

In fact, this is not the first time that Yingke has been taken off the shelves. As early as the beginning of 2016, Yingke was removed from the Apple Store several times, and was even urgently launched online under the name "Yingke" to reduce the economic and traffic losses caused by the removal.

According to relevant research reports, Inke, whose latest valuation has reached RMB 7 billion, has become the number one in entertainment live streaming in terms of installed base, number of users and market share. But it is still a long way from being safe. In March, Yingke announced the opening of its application layer SDK to connect to some medium-sized live streaming platforms ; last month, it was reported that it was acquired by A-share listed company "XuanYa International". According to outside rumors, Yingke seems to have been seeking the intervention of new capital, and even directly looking for a "takeover hero". And all the rumors seem to point to the difficulties that Yingke is facing.

So, what difficulties is Yingke facing? There are two main points: traffic and funds.

Traffic drying up

For live streaming platforms, traffic is extremely important. Yingke once became the number one in the live streaming field with its astonishing development speed and strong financing capabilities. However, the traffic on live streaming platforms rises and falls at an equally fast rate, and the user retention rate is extremely low. Without the ability to continuously attract eyeballs, a rapid drop in traffic is almost inevitable.

Judging from the Baidu Index, Inke’s overall search index and mobile search index have been on a downward trend in the past 30 days.

Inke opened its SDK in March, with the core purpose of acquiring traffic at low cost. But this feature is likely to become a "useless" function .

Yingke's SDK is aimed at small and medium-sized live broadcast platforms, opening up the architecture and functions of its own platform to other platforms. In a few days at most, other platforms will be able to open the live broadcast function on Yingke. Yingke’s idea is: Yingke has complete technology and architecture, and once small and medium-sized platforms with users and traffic are connected, they can also bring traffic to themselves . For live streaming platforms that are not wealthy enough to invest millions of dollars in product research and development and architecture construction like Momo, Momo's opening of its SDK means a new monetization channel .

But the question is, how much significance do small and medium-sized platforms have for Yingke itself?

Today, when traffic is becoming scarce and expensive, any Internet company facing the C-end is thinking about how to protect its own traffic rather than dispersing it. Introducing some moderate live streaming traffic has no practical effect on Inke. Once the third-party platform has funds, it will choose to develop its own products and architecture. It is difficult to get traffic from others for a long time. The SDK is clearly just a stopgap measure.

Funding problems caused by high investment model

A month ago, there were rumors that Yingke was being sold, and there were different opinions on who the buyer was.

There are rumors that the "takeover party" is A-share listed company XuanYa International, and insiders also said that Yingke has been in contact with one of the BAT companies recently, seeking to be acquired. Of course, the rumors have not been confirmed, but they reflect that Yingke is facing financial problems.

First, there are high operation and maintenance costs .

Previously, Yingke CEO Feng Yousheng said in an interview with Caixin that Yingke’s monthly costs are around 100 million yuan. When it comes to advertising , Yingke never hesitates. Since June last year, Yingke has placed advertisements on CCTV channels, cinemas, and outdoor light boxes. Since the beginning of this year, Yingke’s market investment has been sharply reduced.

On the other hand, the next round of financing does not seem to have started. The last round of financing was in September 2016, when Kunlun Wanwei, the B-round investor , sold its 3% stake in Inke for RMB 210 million. In an industry that requires continuous investment to maintain traffic and scale, stagnation in financing is not good news .

What’s more important is that it seems difficult for Yingke to quickly find the next person to take over .

The valuation of 7 billion is itself a very high threshold. Secondly, Alibaba and Tencent have already laid out their plans in the live broadcast field through a combination of self-construction and investment . Alibaba's Taobao Live , Tmall Live and Youku's Laifeng Live are layouts in the two vertical fields of e-commerce and show venues. Tencent responded more quickly and already owns 9 live streaming platforms. Including Now, Penguin Live, QQ Space Live, Huayang Live, etc. After welcoming Lu Qi , Baidu focused on artificial intelligence and had no intention of plunging into the red ocean of live streaming .

How to survive in a suddenly cold environment may be the most important issue that Yingke needs to consider at this stage.

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