Youku, LeTV, and iQiyi are all on the rise in the big screen battle

Since Youku announced its strategic investment and partnership with Alibaba last year, it has attracted great attention from the outside world. However, Youku has been slow to make any major moves. On the one hand, it has been blocked by LeTV, iQiyi, Tencent Video and other traditional business areas; on the other hand, these video websites' layout of "large-screen terminals" as a breakthrough has also made it feel pressured. Previously, Youku's determination to do "hardware" was also revealed. According to reports, Youku intends to make efforts in the "large-screen battlefield" in April, and may join forces with Xiaomi and Konka to start a "big-screen battle" with LeTV and iQiyi.

"No one watches TV" rumor shattered, big screen becomes a must-have

With the rise of mobile Internet, many industry players have been pessimistic about the color TV industry, and even put forward the "TV is dying theory". According to the "China Internet Network Information Center Statistical Report" released by CNNIC in January 2015, as of December 2014, the number of online video users reached 433 million, of which the TV usage rate was about 23%, that is, the market size of smart TVs has approached 100 million users, and the characteristic of online video user terminals extending from mobile phones and computers to TVs is obvious.

Data proves that as an important Internet portal for home entertainment, the huge commercial value of smart TV is being tapped. Whether a video website can seize a place in the large-screen TV terminal has become an important factor in determining the future fate of the website. LeTV, iQiyi, Youku, Tencent Video and Sohu Video, the five video portals that have survived the brutal battle, have all realized the importance of the large-screen portal and have rushed to the smart TV terminal.

From traditional advertising to large-screen terminal competition

In the domestic Internet sector, there is a clear pattern of one company dominating the market. Baidu dominates the search market, accounting for more than 80% of the market share; Alibaba dominates the e-commerce market, accounting for more than 75% of the market share; in the social media field, Sina Weibo dominates; in the pan-social field, Tencent WeChat and QQ almost occupy more than 80% of the domestic social software market. However, in the video field, while Youku ranks first, iQiyi, LeTV, and Sohu Video are all following closely behind, and the gap is not obvious. In this way, the dispersion of advertisers forces Youku to need a "big platform" to strengthen its own advantages.

"Large-screen terminals" have their own unique operating model. LeTV, iQiyi, and Youku have all developed large-screen terminals, but their layout models are very different.

As an Internet manufacturer, LeTV has entered the TV field. Although it enjoys content resources, it needs to rebuild its own industrial chain ecology when facing products with long industrial chains such as smart TVs. However, LeTV "does everything by itself" from hardware to UI to content. Hardware, advertising, and application stores are all its profit points. In addition, after acquiring a large number of users through cost-effective hardware, high-quality content can gradually cultivate users' payment habits. However, it also has its disadvantages. The big players in the TV industry are still traditional manufacturers. Integrating the supply chain is a huge project, which means that it is destined to take a long period of time for this model to grow. In addition, LeTV's model has shortcomings in its supply capacity and the cultivation of customer payment habits.

iQIYI, under its "iQIYI inside" strategy, has launched iQIYI TV in cooperation with TCL. From iQIYI's perspective, its "open" philosophy will encourage more manufacturers to cooperate with it, but at the same time, its "unique" promotion resources will also be divided up. TCL's other product, Mango TV, confirms this conclusion. For TCL, iQIYI TV may not be exclusively owned in the future, and it is inevitable that each company will have its own preferences in promotion.

For Youku, the layout of LeTV and iQiyi may have made it feel pressured. After cooperating with Konka and Xiaomi last year, it tasted the sweetness of large screens for the first time, but due to content control, it has never become popular. In 2015, Youku started to make hardware again. It is not surprising that there are news that Youku wants to "focus on large screens".

In-depth cooperation is the way out. Who will be Youku’s “partner choice”?

Video websites have entered the big screen market with their own models. However, Youku has only two options: copy the LeTV model and build its own complete ecosystem; or cooperate with TV manufacturers and win through integration.

LeTV is certainly successful. If Youku follows LeTV's path and builds its own open and closed-loop ecosystem, it may seem simple, but it is actually a very long and complicated road. As the big screen becomes more and more popular, it may be a wiser choice for Youku to choose the path of "integration".

For Youku, which has already made some arrangements in the large-screen market, it signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Konka in March last year, and subsequently cooperated with Xiaomi. One is a traditional TV manufacturer and the other is an Internet TV manufacturer. The cooperation experience between the two may have made Youku make up its mind.

As the "big boss" of content resources, Youku's cooperation with Konka is more about Konka's manufacturing and channel advantages in the TV industry. With Konka's more than 30 years of experience in TV production and research and development, Youku is looking forward to making the experience of using Youku as good as that of PC and mobile terminals, or even better, so as to capture large-screen users.

If they cooperate with Xiaomi, they will pay more attention to Xiaomi's "Internet" attributes and online marketing capabilities, and expect Youku's deeply rooted UGC attributes to create sparks with Xiaomi's fan economy.

What we can expect is that in this "Battle of Zhuolu", Youku's actions on the big screen will inevitably have a special impact on the existing strategies of LeTV and iQiyi in the large-screen market, and how the partners who jointly organize this "big move" with Youku will act is quite worth looking forward to.

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.