Behind the collective criticism from competitors: LeTV’s “buy a membership and get a TV for free” has changed the way the industry plays

April 14th, an originally ordinary day, has become another national carnival because of the new meaning given to it by LeTV.

On April 15, LeTV announced the full battle report of this year's ecological "414 Hardware Free Day": LeTV's total ecological sales exceeded 2.32 billion yuan, of which total membership sales exceeded 2.02 billion yuan, and the total sales of the most powerful super TVs and super mobile phones exceeded 549,000 and 582,000 units respectively, with remarkable results. In addition, the total sales of smart hardware and derivatives exceeded 85 million yuan, LeTV Game Center TV version had a single-day recharge of 1.09 million yuan/mobile version had a single-day recharge of 10.73 million yuan, Yidao Car Rental had a total sales of more than 54 million yuan, and Wangjiu.com had a total sales of more than 45 million yuan. Ecological partner Midea Air Conditioning also had a sales of nearly 1 million yuan, and Mengniu Hi MILK had sales of more than 700,000 yuan.

Competition in the domestic market is fierce. It is rare for a single brand to cause such a big fluctuation in the market within one day. It will inevitably be discussed by many people and even bombarded by competitors.

For example, regarding LeTV’s “buy a membership and get a TV for free” approach, a well-known domestic competitor said that LeTV’s membership fees were “profiteering” and that the so-called “free day” was actually a means of “clearing inventory” of hardware. They complained that LeTV “binds users with long-term membership fees and ignores the product life cycle”…

But is this really the case?

Membership fees need to be linked to membership value

Just as Xiaomi phones have always found it difficult to break through the 2,000 yuan mark and the price of Apple iPhones has always remained high, the amount users spend needs to be proportional to the value they receive. The same is true for the membership fees offered by Internet TV.

At this stage, it has long been an indisputable fact that LeTV is the Internet company with the richest content among video websites. Even without special events such as the "414 Hardware Free Day", last year, the total number of LeTV's paying members exceeded 20 million. The unique ecological content has become an important reason for attracting users.

In terms of film and television resources, the popularity of last year's annual dramas "The Legend of Miyue" and "The Rise of Phoenixes" is so great that it is difficult to measure with data. This also shows that in addition to mastering a large number of film and television copyright resources, creating and reserving a large number of high-quality IPs has also created higher value for LeTV in membership services.

In addition, the exclusive content output including LeTV Sports is something that other video websites that only have video content cannot achieve.

LeTV Sports currently covers the copyrights of major European leagues such as the Premier League, Serie A, Ligue 1 and Bundesliga. In addition to football, tennis events mainly based on ATP and motor sports including F1 are also covered by LeTV Sports' copyright scope. For example, F1 racing has the highest broadcasting standards in the world, and LeTV is also the only video media in China that is qualified to broadcast live .

LeTV members plus LeTV's hardware terminals present users with an ecological content system with comprehensive value. Compared with competitors, even if they spend hundreds of millions of US dollars to invest in content, they only get a gathering of resources from all parties oriented towards entertainment content. In this situation, LeTV members can be said to have completely presented a "one against a hundred" posture.

Control the product life cycle or extend the product life cycle?

In an era when Internet thinking permeates hardware, the combination of software and hardware is reflected incisively and vividly in the product form. "Buy a membership and get a TV for free" is the core element of TV Super TV's great victory in the "414 Hardware Free Day". On the other hand, competitors' criticism of it for "clearing inventory" and "ignoring product life cycle" really makes sense?

The hardware development history of Internet TV is becoming more and more similar to that of smartphones and even PCs. Apart from the membership content advantages mentioned above, in terms of parameter configuration, the reason why LeTV Super TV is named "super" is also intended to provide users with the most extreme performance.

Even the most entry-level LeTV Super TV X40S still provides users with a quad-core Cortex-A17 architecture CPU, Mali-T760 MP4 GPU and 2GB DDR3 large memory, which is above the industry average. LeTV's high-end TV products are powered by top chips such as Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 and Mstar 6A938. It is no exaggeration to say that the performance is close to that of high-end smartphones.

LeTV, which is considered by its competitors to "ignore product life cycles", is objectively trying its best to extend the product life cycles. In contrast, a product with only 1GB of RAM and the previous generation Cortex-A9 architecture processor chip was also released as a new product by its competitors last month. LeTV's extreme attitude towards super TVs has undoubtedly brought greater pressure to other brands in the industry.

The “free hardware” approach will lead to a reshuffle of the industry

There is no doubt that behind LeTV's six words "Buy a membership and get a TV for free", what users "buy" is a membership that is more worth buying, and what LeTV "gives away" is a TV that is ahead of its competitors. Looking deeper, LeTV's exploration of "free hardware" through 414 can trigger more thinking in the industry.

On the one hand, "414 Hardware Free Day" has made LeTV a practitioner of the "hardware free" topic that has been discussed in the technology industry, and has achieved remarkable results. The practice of using content services to feed back hardware costs has made people see that the ecological development advocated by LeTV is not empty talk.

On the other hand, it is precisely because of the ecosystem that LeTV has the basic conditions to achieve "free hardware". LeTV's content services are closely related to hardware products, and have a beneficial impact on Yidao Car Rental, Wangjiu.com and many ecological partners. This is also something that very few manufacturers can do.

People often say that at the beginning of a change, the person or group who makes the change will always be questioned first. From the disruptive development that has always been advocated to the "free hardware" that has been put into practice, LeTV may be in such a stage. This also means that whether it is controversy or "bombardment", it is inevitable. But after that, the market and era under the new product model will inevitably come into being.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.