When it comes to mobile phone photo editing software, everyone should be familiar with it. Every girl must have several different photo editing apps on her mobile phone, and there are also many boys who download these apps. Meitu XiuXiu , Snapseed and PicsArt, as the three software with higher rankings in the photo editing industry, each has its own advantages and disadvantages. The author of this article has analyzed these three. Let us take a look at the results.

1. Market background

In today's information age, information technology is developing at a rapid pace, and the speed at which technology drives market development is also accelerating.

The market users are mainly Generation Z. This user group has considerable numbers, strong purchasing power and a wide range of acceptance. It is this group of users that shapes the product form and market development trends in the new environment.

Compared with older consumers, Generation Z is more willing to show themselves and their works on social media. We have noticed that young people are communicating through emoticons, short videos, pictures and stickers. They rarely use text to communicate. Therefore, mobile social media that mainly uses picture and video editing is widely used among the new generation.

In order to be more influential on social media, user groups must edit content themselves. In other words, image editing is a necessary consumer product that was born after the popularity of social media. From a global perspective, snapseed and PicsArt occupy half of the market as image editing software. In China, image editing software led by Meitu XiuXiu is also widely popular.

According to statistics, Meitu has nearly 100,000,000 independent device users per month. Moreover, since the global popular snapseed and PicsArt were introduced into China, they have been catching up in terms of the number of users, media information index and search index.

In the past year, PicsArt's user base in China has been growing at a rate of 10%-30% per month, and China has become PicsArt's fastest growing market.

2. Analysis of business profit model

We can divide the current model of image products on the market into two parts: tools involved in image beautification and modification, and communities for communication and sharing. Most products are either a mix of both or lean towards one or the other.

The profit models we can think of are nothing more than "free + advertising", in-app charges or subscription services. To sum up, the current mobile phone image processing software modes mainly include the following points:

2.1 Advertising Model

Targeting large user groups, accurately targeting advertisements can generate considerable commercial benefits.

2.2 E-commerce Model

Selling other types of products to the same large user base generates certain revenues.

2.3 Service Upgrade Unlock Mode

More functions are provided by purchasing membership services, and the membership price can be determined according to the length of purchase time.

3. Competitive product analysis

3.1 Competitive Product Experience Environment

3.2 Strategic Level

3.2.1 Product Positioning

From the perspective of product positioning:

Meitu is positioned as a new social product that integrates photo editing, video editing, and community life. It contains many basic image processing functions and is easy to use. It is suitable for groups such as beginners who have no photography foundation or have a photography foundation.

Snapseed is positioned as a comprehensive and professional photo editing tool, including 29 advanced photo editing tools such as brightness, contrast, saturation, highlights and shadows, white balance, curves, and masks. It is suitable for advanced photography enthusiasts and professional photographers with a basic knowledge of photography.

PicsArt is positioned as an APP that encourages users to "create and design" pictures, rather than a simple editing APP. It focuses more on the combination of creative tools, content and community, and is suitable for contemporary young people with personality and innovation.

3.2.2 User Group Analysis

1) Analysis from the perspective of user age

The users of the three image processing apps are mainly concentrated in the 20-39 age group, among which the 20-29 user group accounts for the largest proportion - MeituXiuXiu, Snapseed and PicsArt account for 59.46%, 49.05% and 48.71% of this age group respectively.

By comparing the user attributes of the three apps horizontally, we found that Snapseed accounts for a very significant proportion among users over 40 years old, especially those over 50 years old. The maturity of users is also in line with Snapseed's basic characteristic of having a large number of users over 40 years old, an age group where professional photographers are more concentrated.

PicsArt has a particularly large share of users under the age of 19. With the diversification of social development, the latest generation of young people are more and more daring to innovate. They express their independent spirit of pursuing individuality through creative design of pictures and dare to share. This coincides with PicsArt's focus on the combination of creative tools, content and community.

Meitu XiuXiu accounts for a large proportion of the 29-39 user group, but the gap with Snapseed and PicsArt is relatively small. It is speculated that the main reason is that Meitu XiuXiu is the first domestically developed online image processing tool. It contains a variety of basic image processing functions and is fast, convenient and easy to operate, which can meet the needs of today's busy office workers with tight schedules.

However, as people's aesthetic pursuits continue to improve and the pressure of life increases, more and more people require refined photo processing and hope to be able to creatively design and process pictures by themselves to enrich their lives and reduce stress.

2) Analyze from the perspective of user gender

Overall, the ratio of men to women using these three apps is close to 1:1. The scale and frequency of men's use of Meitu XiuXiu is relatively higher than that of women. It is speculated that the main reason is Meitu XiuXiu.

Although the audience group is large, since women are more familiar with photo-editing software, they use more types of photo-editing software, and the daily usage customer base and frequency are easily dispersed, so the frequency of using Meitu XiuXiu specifically is relatively low.

Men generally know less about online image processing software, because Meitu XiuXiu does have a larger user base than Snapseed and PicsArt, and has earlier software and more derivative products. Therefore, when men think of photo editing software, they will subconsciously choose Meitu XiuXiu, so the frequency of use is relatively higher than that of women.

3) Analysis from the regional dimension

The people who use online photo editing software on mobile phones are mainly in the southeast coastal areas, central China and parts of North China. From the perspective of provinces, they are mainly concentrated in Guangdong, Shandong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and other provinces. From the perspective of city index, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Chengdu and Chongqing are generally at the forefront and are all first-tier and new first-tier cities. The above regions generally have the characteristics of rapid economic development, superior geographical location and rich cultural and entertainment life, etc. People have a richer source of materials.

From a horizontal perspective, Meitu is far larger than Snapseed and PicsArt at the regional and provincial levels, and its user base is larger, so Snapseed and PicsArt will have greater room for development.

3.2.3 User Demand Analysis

According to Baidu Index for the three image editing software, the keywords related to Meitu Xiuxiu with rising search indexes include puzzle, watermark removal, cutout, ID photo background change, and photo production;

Keywords that are highly related to PicsArt and have increased search indexes include photo portfolio, class emblem, poster, logo design, how to use PicsArt, Picsart tutorial, etc. This shows that most people in China are not very familiar with PicsArt;

The relatively obscure and professional words that are strongly associated with Snapseed and have high search indexes include Niu Image, Polarr Photo Editing, Godfather Photo, etc., which also indirectly confirms Snapseed's comprehensive and professional positioning.

3.2.4 User Experience Comparison

1) Snapseed

The interface of Snapseed is mainly black, white and gray. It adopts a flat design style and the content is extremely simple. You can click to select a picture at any position on the interface.

In addition, there is a reminder of the word "Open" in the upper left corner. It is a lightweight APP with a single usage path. After editing, you can directly click the export function key to complete the entire process of image editing and application. The usage path is as follows:

2) Meitu Xiuxiu

The interface of Meitu XiuXiu can be divided into three major areas. Community content creation and communication occupies the main visual area, and the main functional categories are located at the top of the page and are sorted according to limited functional levels.

The common navigation is at the bottom of the page. The + sign in the middle at the bottom can be used to select pictures and add filters and BGM to further share them to the community. The main usage paths are as follows:

3) PicsArt

The main interface of PicsArt is also divided into three major areas. Like Meitu XiuXiu, content processing and creative community occupy the main visual area. The image editing location and common navigation are located in the lower part of the page, and the search function and functions such as discovering and following creative artists are located in the upper part of the page.

By clicking the purple + sign at the bottom of the page to select the picture you want to edit, users can not only choose photos in the mobile phone album but also choose photos published in the community and shared by community experts for secondary and multiple creations.

In addition to a variety of filters, editing materials such as special effects, stickers and GIF files also appear in the PicsArt content library, which can encourage users to "create" pictures rather than just simple editing.

Therefore, the usage path of PicsArt is more complicated than that of Meitu XiuXiu and Snapseed. In addition, since it contains more than 3,000 photo editing functions and special effects, more than 10 million free material pictures, and more than 3 million stickers, its use requires a higher network. The main usage paths are as follows:

3.2.5 Comparison of shared publishing channels

According to the analysis of the same mobile phone, it can be found that the three APPs can share pictures after processing and saving successfully. Among them, Meitu XiuXiu has 56 sharing channels; Snapseed has 49 sharing channels; PicsArt has 44 sharing channels.

MeituXiuXiu > Snapseed > PicsArt.

3.3 Product Function Comparison

According to the above description table, it is obvious that Snapseed and PicsArt lack basic photo taking functions compared to Meitu Xiuxiu, while Snapseed has a large number of iterative image processing functions that PicsArt and Meitu Xiuxiu do not have.

In terms of image editing functions, Meitu, Snapseed, and PicsArt provide 18, 15, and 17 editing functions for users respectively, which are almost the same in number but each has its own focus.

In terms of portrait beauty functions, Meitu XiuXiu and PicsArt provide 16 and 14 functions respectively, while Snapseed only provides 4 portrait beauty functions, which is a big gap compared with the former two.

In terms of special effects, Meitu XiuXiu provides 45 special effects, while Snapseed and PicsArt provide 89 and 110 special effects respectively. For users who want convenience, the latter two are obviously more advantageous in terms of choice diversity;

In terms of major functional categories, there are 26 categories in total, of which MeituXiuXiu meets 15, Snapseed meets 7, and PicsArt meets 21. It can be seen that PicsArt is more comprehensive in terms of functions.

In general, from the perspective of software functions, PicsArt has the most comprehensive functions, followed by MeituXiuXiu, and Snapseed has a slight gap.

3.4 Main interface settings and function comparison

3.4.1 Image editing function

From the interface settings, we can find that compared with Meitu XiuXiu and PicsArt, Snapseed does not have a separate image editing window, but all functions are displayed in one interface. The Meitu XiuXiu image editing function uses a horizontal scroll bar and cannot include all editing functions.

All the functions of PicsArt are directly hidden in the editing window, which helps users browse all functions and save time. The three image editing functions have their own characteristics. Compared with the other two, the editing function of Meitu XiuXiu is more basic and easier to use, and is suitable for beginners or photography novices.

In terms of professionalism, Snapseed = PicsArt > MeituXiuXiu, but in terms of interface classification, PicsArt > MeituXiuXiu > Snapseed.

3.4.2 Portrait beautification function

In terms of interface settings alone, the portrait beauty function areas of PicsArt and MeituXiuXiu are displayed as horizontal scroll bars, while Snapseed displays the function area as a progress bar in the middle of the edited image.

In contrast, the function area of ​​Meitu XiuXiu and PicsArt is not convenient for users to directly browse all the beauty functions, while Snapseed directly displays the functions in the middle of the edited picture, so that users can see all the functions at a glance, but it affects the user's intuitive feeling of the effect of the edited picture;

In terms of the types of beauty functions, Meitu has 16 beauty functions, PicsArt has 14 beauty functions and Snapseed has only 4 beauty functions. Compared with Meitu and PicsArt, Snapseed has fewer portrait beauty functions.

Function type: MeituXiuXiu > PicsArt > Snapseed.

3.4.3 Community sharing function

In terms of community sharing function, Snapseed (Android version) does not have community sharing function compared with Meitu XiuXiu and PicsArt. Meitu XiuXiu and PicsArt can publish the photos edited by themselves on the online community for sharing, which is also closely related to the product positioning of the two.

The difference is that if Meitu users want to edit pictures to have the effect of shared community pictures, they need to adjust the parameters according to the parameter tutorial published by the publisher, while PicsArt users can directly click to use the template without adjusting the parameters themselves. They only need to click Next to achieve the desired effect, which is relatively convenient.

3.5 Analysis and comparison of profit models

3.5.1 Meitu XiuXiu

For the Meitu Xiuxiu software, commercial profits are mainly based on advertising and e-commerce models. For example, when you open the Meitu Xiuxiu homepage, advertisements for Tmall, JD.com, Juhuasuan, etc. will appear, and users can directly enter the corresponding shopping APP link by clicking on it;

Secondly, other types of product advertisements are placed in the main visual area to attract the attention of the user group. For example, the upper part of the main interface can be used for paid personality and destiny tarot tests, and Dior AI smart beauty can be used to place makeup and cosmetics advertisements to achieve commercial benefits.

Not only that, Meitu XiuXiu also provides a free photo development service. You can develop photos for free. If you exceed the quantity limit or want to develop photos with more creative features, you will need to pay.

On this basis, Meitu Xiuxiu also launched a customized Meitu service, where users can pay to combine edited photos with daily necessities to create DIY creative products and generate commercial profit income;

In addition, a game box window is also set up on the main page of Meitu XiuXiu. The female casual game jointly released by Meitu and Forgame (Yunyou Holdings) has entered the mobile game market. Based on its own huge user base, it connects the game entrance on the mobile terminal to achieve commercial benefits.

3.5.2 PicsArt

PicsArt's profit model is mainly based on membership upgrade services and advertising. It offers a 7-day free trial period, and then users pay for membership according to their needs. There are three types of membership:

1. Continuous half-year package is 50 yuan, and it will be automatically renewed for half a year;
2. The annual subscription is 333 yuan, and it will be automatically renewed every six months;
3. Continuous monthly subscription, 30 yuan per month.

By upgrading the hospital upgrade service, users can unlock more features such as fonts, massive stickers and special effects, and can avoid advertisements.

3.5.3 Snapseed

Snapseed has become a free product since it was acquired by Google. In addition to Google's strong financial advantage, the Google+ logo that appears on the Snapseed startup screen also indicates that this free product serves Google's social platform.

Use mobile image editing tools for free as a promotional tool to attract users, and build platform services on this basis.

4. Conclusion

Analyze the pros and cons of Meitu XiuXiu, PicsAr, and Snapseed from a macro perspective

4.1 Meitu Xiuxiu

4.1.1 Advantages

Photo sharing channels are more extensive than PicsAr and Snapseed, which is conducive to the spread of user effects and increase exposure frequency;

The photo editing and portrait beauty functions are more diverse than those of PicsArt and Snapseed, and the functions are simple and easy to use, so novices can quickly get started.

There are a variety of business profit models, including advertising, e-commerce, games, etc., and the huge user stickiness effect is used for bundled sales (Meitu mobile phones).

4.1.2 Disadvantages

The variety of special effects functions is far behind PicsArt and Snapseed;

The interface settings are relatively complex, and the usage path is relatively complex;

Community shared picture tutorials cannot be directly applied to templates and require users to adjust parameters by themselves, which prolongs the processing time;

Only one photo can be edited, imported, or exported at a time; it is not suitable for batch processing.

4.1.3 Optimization Suggestions

Add more material effects and creative design tools, and the community sharing is diversified and multiple languages ​​can be set to provide choices;

Simplify the usage path, make the main page design more flat, and consider merging the picture beautification and portrait beautification windows to give users more creative space;

The community shared photo templates are optimized, and combined templates are provided to facilitate users' direct use experience and reduce editing time;

Appropriately reduce the window for advertising delivery to increase user experience and add batch photo processing function.

4.2 Snapseed (Android)

4.2.1 Advantages

The interface is flatter and simpler, the usage path is simple and you can click anywhere to open the photo;

The functions are relatively professional. After being acquired by Google, all services are free and there are no advertisements, which improves the user experience.

It has the ability to process a large number of photos simultaneously and iterate.

4.2.2 Disadvantages

The number of fine-tuning functions for characters is quite different from that of PicsArt and Snapseed.

Lacks the most basic photo and short video functions;

There is a lack of a picture sharing and communication community.

4.2.3 Optimization suggestions

Added editing functions specifically for character refinement;

Add photo taking function and provide community sharing and communication function.

4.3 Picsart

4.3.1 Advantages

Massive effects, stickers, and nearly 10 million materials provide users with a wide range of options;

The community shares rich and diverse content, and users can also publish their own works to participate in the Challenge Cup and have a chance to earn money;

The navigation window can search for thousands of image creators, which is helpful to stimulate the user's creative potential and interest;

Leverage fan culture and celebrity effects to help promote products through self-traffic.

4.3.2 Disadvantages

Lack of basic photo and video recording functions;

High requirements on network status;

The business profit model is single.

4.3.3 Optimization suggestions

Add photo taking and short video editing functions;

Optimize the impact of network on the software usage experience;

Increase business profit models without affecting user experience.

Author: MERCURY

Source: MERCURY