Why hasn’t the fourth pole of China’s Internet emerged besides BAT?

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Once upon a time, when we talked about the Chinese Internet, we always talked about the three giants BAT. Behind this, we were always looking for the fourth pole of the Chinese Internet. There have been many companies in this fourth pole, such as 360, JD.com, Xiaomi, Vipshop, LeTV, Meituan, etc., which were once the objects of our discussion. But in the end, the distance between these companies and BAT seemed to be getting bigger and bigger.

Now basically no one mentions the fourth pole anymore. Why hasn't China's Internet produced a fourth-level super giant?

What I want to talk about first is why BAT can become the three giants. Baidu owns search, Tencent owns social networking, and Alibaba owns e-commerce. These three ecosystems can hardly be shaken by other Chinese Internet companies. Any Internet company that wants to subvert BAT in these three areas will eventually fail. In a nutshell, this is because BAT has traffic.

Let’s break down the reasons why the efforts of the companies mentioned above ultimately failed.

First, 360. After 360 launched 360 Search, everyone thought that this company could compete with Baidu. Moreover, 360's performance in the mobile application distribution market was not bad, and its overall revenue was in a period of rapid growth. However, with the development of mobile Internet, 360's security products were completely replaced by mobile phone manufacturers, leaving it with almost no chance. In the end, it was forced to transform into a hardware manufacturer. At present, this company has not yet entered the top three domestic mobile phone manufacturers.

Let's look at JD.com. With its B2C shopping mall model, JD.com quickly won the favor of consumers. The company formed its core competitiveness by building its own logistics. But soon its competitor Alibaba also discovered the importance of logistics and began to focus on its development. JD.com gradually abandoned its earlier accumulation and began to vigorously develop third parties, which eventually led to mediocrity.

Then there is Xiaomi. Xiaomi was originally the company most likely to become a giant. The company made mobile phones with the Internet marketing thinking and brought new life to the entire smartphone market. But its model was wrong in that it had no moat, and the Internet thinking could be easily copied by competitors. Xiaomi is not having an easy time now, and it needs more patience.

Next up is Vipshop. Vipshop became a monster stock at the time thanks to its special sales model. Its market value was very high, and it once surpassed JD.com to become the fourth largest Chinese Internet stock by market value. But the company made the mistake of trusting special sales too much and failing to make a good transformation at a critical moment. When special sales were no longer cool, it suffered a heavy blow from the market.

***Let's talk about LeTV. LeTV is still developing rapidly. It has established an ecosystem with smartphones and TVs as its core businesses, and this ecosystem is now bursting with huge energy. However, the problem facing this company is whether it can have sufficient cash flow. Once it breaks, the entire ecosystem will collapse. The future still needs to be left to time to see.