" Wandoujia has never defined itself as an app store," Wang Junyu said. "This was imposed on us by the outside world. We knew very early on that what we wanted to do was search." The first-mover advantage formed by reaction speed and execution ability has become an important means for Wandoujia to compete with large companies. "Every time Wandoujia launches a new function, it is ahead in time. There is a time window for leading. 360 follows up very quickly, basically within 3 to 6 months. It depends on whether we can make good use of the time window in the market to acquire new users. When it follows up, we will move on to the next new function." Wang Junyu said. Unlike the search engine market on the PC side, there is no giant like Baidu on the mobile side that occupies more than 70% of the market share. The industry has not even reached a consensus on what the form of mobile search is. Perhaps it is this relatively primitive and chaotic situation that has won a time window for small companies like Wandoujia. Currently, more than half of Wandoujia's technical teams are focused on in-app search. Internet giants are scrambling frantically for the "portal" to mobile Internet. It is not an easy path for Wandoujia to develop independently and expand the company. Wang Junyu, the founder of Wandoujia, has met with dozens of investors in the past year. After Baidu acquired 91 Wireless, one of Wandoujia's biggest competitors in the application distribution market, for US$1.95 billion, Wandoujia became one of the few remaining independent third-party application distribution platforms, and its valuation and acquisition rumors also rose along with the transaction. Despite this, Wang Junyu still insists that independent development is the best option for Wandoujia at present. Not only can it maintain rapid decision-making and response in days and weeks, but it can also collaborate more flexibly with companies including Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba. In order to increase its competitive advantage, Wandoujia completed a new round of investment of US$120 million in January this year. SoftBank Group led the investment, followed by Wandoujia’s previous investment institutions DCM and Sinovation Ventures Development Fund (IWDF). This round of financing did not fundamentally improve the competitive situation faced by Wandoujia, and its competitors seemed to be much stronger than it. Competition in the application distribution market began to heat up after the entry of two giants, Tencent and Qihoo 360, in 2011. 2012 became an important turning point in changing the market competition landscape. Independent distribution channels represented by Wandoujia and Anzhi Market experienced the "power" of large companies for the first time. In July 2012, 360 Mobile Assistant was released. From the user interface to the functions, it was not much different from other applications, but it "suddenly took 40 million downloads a day," said Cui Jin, co-founder of Wandoujia, to China Business Weekly. Relying on cost-effective promotion through multiple channels, by the end of 2012, 360 had become the absolute number one in this market in just half a year. A developer said that the activation volume brought by application markets such as Jifeng, Anzhi and Nduo has dropped to 20% to 50% of the original level. Two other developers said that now 30% to 40% of their app downloads come from 360 Mobile Assistant. After more than a year of "struggle", by the second half of 2013, when resources in all aspects were not advantageous, seeking acquisition became a more rational choice for independent distribution channels. Jifeng.com was sold to digital product sales channel operator Aishide, PP Assistant was acquired by UC, and Baidu also spent US$2 billion to acquire 91 Assistant and Android Market. Although the increase in industry concentration has made Wandoujia the third largest application distribution platform after Baidu and 360, its market share is only 12.4% according to the iResearch International's mobile application distribution volume report for the third quarter of 2013. "Wandoujia has never defined itself as an application store," said Wang Junyu. "This was imposed on us by the outside world. We knew very early on that what we wanted to do was search." In order to prove that this was not "an afterthought," Wang Junyu also took out the PPT written for Kai-Fu Lee in 2010 at the new version launch conference, hoping to help users "discover and consume content more conveniently." 2010, the year when Wandoujia was founded, was a year in which Android smartphone shipments and market share increased rapidly. According to a report by the US market research organization Canalys, Android phone shipments exceeded Symbian for the first time in the fourth quarter of that year, accounting for 23.9% of the annual smartphone shipments. By 2011, its market share had reached a staggering 48.8%. With the popularity of Android smartphones, a number of applications represented by 91 Assistant developed during this period. However, Wang Junyu did not position Wandoujia as an application store. Instead, he released a "Wandoujia Application Search" in April 2011, which aggregated the content of the application store to help users find all applications. "If we both run app stores, what 360 and I will compete on is who can install the app on the user's phone first. Others have little value to the user," said Wang Junyu. This differentiation strategy objectively enables Wandoujia to avoid premature competition with large companies. At the same time, as an "application search", it can also bring traffic to other channels. When Tencent and 360 (in cooperation with 91 Assistant) launched similar products in the second half of 2011, Wandoujia was relatively less affected by the channel impact than application stores such as 91 Assistant. At the same time, the entry of large companies into the channel objectively enriched the number of applications in Wandoujia's application search. "Wandoujia is a search company. It told other stores that we are not in direct competition and that we can still bring you traffic. Why don't we work together? Many app stores signed up at that time." Lin Xinhe, director partner of DCM, Wandoujia's Series A investor, told China Business Weekly. During this period, Wandoujia took on the role of directing traffic to app stores, whether it was 360, 91 Assistant, or Anzhi Market, which allowed it to benefit from the growth of these app markets. But in comparison, the 40 million application distributions directly brought about by the launch of 360 Mobile Assistant are obviously more "realistic". The entry of the giant has prompted Wandoujia to accelerate its development. The first-mover advantage formed by reaction speed and execution ability has become an important means for Wandoujia to compete with large companies. "Every time Wandoujia launches a new function, it is ahead in time. There is a time window for leading. 360 follows up very quickly, basically within 3 to 6 months. It depends on whether we can make good use of the time window in the market to acquire new users. When it follows up, we will move on to the next new function." Wang Junyu said in a previous interview with the media. Wandoujia was the first to transform to "mobile" in 2012. In April 2012, one year after the release of "App Search", when the daily distribution volume reached nearly 10 million, Wang Junyu decided to start all over again with the original App Search. This caused quite a bit of controversy within the company, because at that time the number of Wandoujia users had exceeded 35 million, and the application search business was also in a steady growth process. Many people did not understand why they had to "start over again" at this time, and some even applied to transfer out of the search business. Wang Junyu insisted that this kind of text-memorizing, web-based application search only achieves one-third of mobile search. Only by conducting more analysis and exploration of the "genes" of whether an application consumes data, whether it has advertisements, whether it is an official version, etc., can we establish a true mobile application search. "It's like an ordinary car. No matter how you modify it, you can never make it into a Porsche," said Wang Junyu. When resolving disputes like this one regarding products and the overall direction of the company, Wang Junyu, who usually loves to tell jokes and harass his colleagues with all kinds of stickers on Line, also shows his somewhat "dictatorial" side, but his way of persuasion may be more subtle - it could be dozens of pages of PPT, or it could be two short stories he drew himself. "I don't particularly want to make the final decision myself," Wang Junyu said. "Sometimes I say something like, if you have data and facts, I'll listen to you. If you don't, you have to listen to me." Finally, Wandoujia’s engineers completed the optimization of search technology in less than three months. When the final effect was achieved, the efficiency of search aggregation increased by 5 times, the coverage rate of application upgrades reached 98.8%, and the time for application entry was less than 2 minutes. Judging from the samples of the following year, the number of application upgrades also surpassed that of competitors. More importantly, the optimized application search has deeper data mining capabilities. For example, Wandoujia can know that WeChat has had 108 versions in history, that 430,000 people use installation packages that are copycat applications, and that 630,000 application installation packages have advertisements in the notification bar. These data laid an important foundation for the subsequent "mobile content search". For the Android system, the end of 2012 and the beginning of 2013 was a special time node. The mobile game market, which has the clearest profit model, is the first to show an upward trend. In October 2012, for the first time, a mobile game with monthly revenue exceeding 10 million appeared on the Android market. The joint operation of games is one of the largest sources of revenue for application distribution platforms. Various channels are competing for differentiated game resources. They hope to be the first to release good games, which will bring many new users to the channels. But Wandoujia has no advantages in this field. "Wandoujia is not accurate enough, there is no precise classification, no refined operation." Li Daolong, COO of Youai Network, told "China Business Weekly", "Relatively speaking, professional game channels like Jiuyou are more refined than app stores. Although 360 has not made refined distinctions, its volume is too large." Game dealers pointed out that Youfangcun had cooperated with Wandoujia on the two games "Bubble Three Kingdoms" and "One General Becomes Famous". CEO Sun Guobin defined Wandoujia as a "medium-sized channel operator" and its users are "light users". Whether it is the fresh style of the UI interface or the large number of medium and light games on Wandoujia. In comparison, "360 has more novice users and a large user base; 91 has higher-quality users and is more professional; UC has more heavy games and more professional mobile game players." Wang Junyu himself does not like the term "game joint operation". He does not want Wandoujia to become a company with a strong "operational sense". For this reason, he stopped the regular model of daily application launches at the end of 2013, even though the revenue from this model was good. "It dilutes the user's attention. When you see many first-released products every day, you don't think the first release is a big deal anymore," Wang Junyu said. "It's too operational and doesn't fundamentally solve the user's problem." These practices, reflected in the performance, make Wandoujia appear "less profitable." According to the financial report of 91's parent company NetDragon, its revenue from mobile Internet in the first quarter of 2013 was 144 million yuan. Cui Jin told us in a previous interview that Wandoujia's monthly income at that time was around 10 million yuan. This number is only 1/5 of NetDragon's. Even so, Wandoujia still announced that it had reached break-even in the second quarter of 2013 and a new round of financing was nearing completion. Baidu's acquisition of 91 Assistant became a turning point in breaking the balance of the industry. "The acquisition by 91 has given great affirmation to this model," said Lin Xinhe. "Originally, only a small fund was in talks with us, but after the transaction, a large fund with a single investment of US$50 million also came in." Wandoujia's financing amount eventually reached US$120 million, and they took another step forward in their search business. Last September, Wandoujia released a new "video search" function covering four aspects: TV series, movies, variety shows and animation. Users no longer need to open different video clients to find a video. They only need to search for the video name in Wandoujia, and the installed video client (if not installed, they will be prompted to install it) will play it. In the Wandoujia 4.0 version released in January this year, multiple entertainment content categories other than videos, including games, e-books, wallpapers, themes, etc., were also integrated. The significance of this function is that Wandoujia has transitioned from simple "application search" to "in-application search", further demonstrating its ambition to become a search engine in the mobile Internet field. Unlike the search engine market on the PC side, there is no giant like Baidu on the mobile side that occupies more than 70% of the market share. The industry has not even reached a consensus on what the form of mobile search is. Perhaps it is this relatively primitive and chaotic situation that has won a time window for small companies like Wandoujia. Currently, more than half of Wandoujia's technical teams are focused on in-app search. Before entering the in-app search market, Wandoujia also launched a series of new features with the version upgrade. For example, the "Clean Up" function can help users clear copycat apps and forcibly embedded ads in apps on their phones. After users subscribe to the "Zhuizhukan" program for a certain TV series, Wandoujia will automatically download updated episodes for users under Wi-Fi conditions, making it convenient for users to watch in conditions without Internet access, such as on the subway. These features have helped Wandoujia retain its existing users and generated a certain amount of word-of-mouth, but they are still not enough to make Wandoujia stand out from its strong competitors. As Wang Junyu said, it is impossible to turn Wandoujia into a Porsche, which makes in-app search the most powerful weapon for Wandoujia to convince itself and its investors. "If it is still just an application distribution platform, it may just be a giant grabbing the value of the traffic entrance." Du Yongbo, managing director of China Renaissance Capital, said, "If it is mobile content search, each company has its own plan and strategy. No one knows what the final product form will be. If you make yourself a content search entrance and can really reach Baidu's (on the PC side) market share, then investors will definitely be more optimistic." In the eyes of many people, this is another "story" that Wandoujia tells for its new round of financing. Wang Junyu believes that Wandoujia's transition from app search, mobile app search to in-app search is a "smooth process, but we have been holding on to this concept without saying anything." Developers have had mixed reactions to in-app search. "The difficulty of in-app search lies in cooperation. For example, if you want to search for a restaurant nearby, you need Dianping to access it and open up its data to you, which will make developers a little worried." Ma Jiliang, founder of Mobvoi, said that he believes that Wandoujia's advantage lies in "these businesses are not easy to implement in large companies, and Wandoujia can seize the opportunity." Qi Junyuan, founder of team collaboration software Teambition, believes that companies like his that have high requirements for user data will not connect to Wandoujia's system. Chen Hua, CEO of Changba, expressed the same view. "In-app search may be more attractive to video sites. For apps like ours, it is also a promotion and publishing platform." Chen Hua said. As Wandoujia shifts to in-app search, the biggest beneficiaries will be content developers, represented by video developers. "If you look at the usage habits of users, except for social networking and maps, all the top ones are related to content." Wang Junyu said, "The demand for content is mainly video. All the video websites you can think of are now connected to the in-app search." Now Wandoujia's data is still growing: the number of new users is 800,000 per day, an increase of 20% to 30% over the second half of last year. After 4.0 was launched, the usage of videos and e-books for the entire product doubled. But if Wandoujia wants to truly develop independently, it needs to do more.
