Which super TV is the best? Konka leads to a debate on the current development model of smart TVs

The already established Chinese TV industry has experienced a new turning point after the advent of the smart era and the entry of new Internet forces. According to data from a third-party survey agency, the sales volume of Chinese Internet-connected TV terminals will increase by 38% year-on-year in 2014, with traditional manufacturers and Internet companies playing the main driving role.

In this wave of changes in the television industry, in addition to Internet companies like LeTV that have entered the traditional television industry, there are also traditional TV manufacturers seeking transformation.

On March 18, Konka and Tencent jointly launched the new Super TV T60, with the purpose of Internet transformation. It is understood that this press conference is the last press conference held by Konka before moving out of the existing Konka headquarters compound on Shennan Avenue. Later, Konka headquarters will move to the "Konka R&D Building" in the Science and Technology Park, and the prime location of the original headquarters will be transformed into another urban complex in Nanshan District, Shenzhen. In the foreseeable few years, this project will undoubtedly bring Konka a steady stream of cash flow and provide strong financial support for Konka's Internet transformation. In other words, Konka's Internet will not be short of money.

Konka launches T60 super TV

Judging from the super TV T60 launched this time, Konka's transformation strategy is to adopt a "cross-border model". T60 has in-depth cooperation with Tencent, and its biggest advantage lies in "providing one-stop content services". Since it is fully equipped with Tencent's core businesses, such as Tencent Video, Tencent Games, QQ Music and WeChat Connect, a QQ account can experience a complete set of audio-visual entertainment content services on TV.

Facing the huge pie of smart TV , no traditional consumer manufacturer or Internet giant wants to miss it easily, and Konka is no exception. However, unlike the traditional TV industry, smart TV is a unique industry involving multiple stakeholders, which requires the joint participation of licensees, content providers, hardware manufacturers and the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television.

Let’s take a closer look. For TV, especially Internet TV in the era of intelligence, content and service are the soul of hardware. Their quality may directly affect the power-on rate and indirectly affect the market share of each terminal. Therefore, cooperation based on hardware and content has gradually become a trend. Konka and Tencent’s cross-border Tencent TV T60, TCL and iQiyi’s in-depth cooperation TCL iQiyi TV, Haier and Alibaba’s shopping TV MOOKA are all classic cases in the industry.

In the final analysis, all of these collaborations have only one purpose, which is to build an ecosystem. However, each company has different resources and roles, and their strategies are slightly different. If we clarify their ideas, we can basically classify the current development models of smart TVs into three categories, namely the "Konka model" that focuses on cross-border cooperation, the "LeTV model" that integrates the upstream and downstream industrial chains, and the "Damai model" that focuses on operators. Coincidentally, the three companies mentioned above have all launched their own "super TVs".

Which super TV is the best? Let's analyze them one by one.

Konka Model: It is understood that Konka Group mastered the UOC technology as early as 2001, 14 years ago. Konka called it super chip technology and launched more than ten "super TV" products in three series that year. Super TV set off a storm in the color TV market at that time. According to statistics at that time, Konka's P2962K super TV alone accounted for nearly two percentage points of the domestic color TV market sales. From this point of view, although the three companies are now called "super TV", Konka is still the originator of the term "super TV".

The Super TV T60 launched by Konka and Tencent is based on the great complementarity between the two parties, with great efforts in hardware configuration, control experience and content services. For Konka, the deep integration of Tencent's business not only effectively fills the gap in content, but also turns its original accumulation in hardware manufacturing into an advantage. It is a concrete manifestation of the ecological model of in-depth development from product-user-home-Internet.

The cross-border model chosen by Konka is currently a common model chosen by traditional TV manufacturers. Due to its long-term accumulation in the hardware level, it needs to cooperate with manufacturers who have this part of resources to make up for its shortcomings. For example, iQiyi TV and MOLKA Shopping TV are all taking the cross-border path.

The advantage of this model is that it can help traditional TV manufacturers find the direction of smart TV immediately and continue to stand at the forefront of smart TV. For Internet manufacturers, getting involved in hardware also has a high threshold. Using the terminals of traditional TV manufacturers to reach users is a good way. It can not only provide more channels for content dissemination, but also enable their products to quickly adapt and iterate with hardware.

But one thing is worth noting: at present, smart TVs are mostly seen as a new selling point for traditional enterprises to increase profits; however, for Internet companies, TV is their channel, which targets the back-end charges and possible derivatives for content and services. The starting points of the two are different, so how to reconcile and balance the common interests of both parties in long-term cross-border cooperation is a major test of this model.

LeTV model: Unlike the cross-border model and Konka, LeTV, as an Internet manufacturer, has entered the field of television. Although it has content resources, it needs to rebuild its own industrial chain ecology for industries such as manufacturing, which have a relatively long industrial chain. In the matter of building ecology, LeTV has done everything from hardware to UI to content. Its pioneering "CP2C" model has realized the commercial closed loop of product design, R&D, communication, sales, after-sales and operation, and then circulated to product design. Each link can directly reach users throughout the whole process, and users can deeply participate in product design and R&D.

At present, LeEco's model may be the ideal state of the smart TV business model. First of all, 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, its disadvantages are also very obvious. Since traditional manufacturers are still big players in the TV industry, integrating the supply chain is a huge project, which means that it will take a long time for this model to expand. In addition, LeEco's model has shortcomings in terms of supply capacity and cultivating customer payment habits.

Damai model: Damai is a unique operator model that forms hardware + content + advertising + application + broadband. Its core advantage lies in the network environment provided by Damai Super TV, that is, Damai Super Broadband bundles its own broadband business on top of the business model of LeTV Super TV, thus forming a five-fold business model; its profit potential is indeed not small, but the most significant problem is that the operator model needs to be scaled up quickly to reduce operating costs, but Damai’s products and brands do not have advantages at present, the products have just been released, and the sales model is still gradually taking shape and being explored.

Which super TV is the best? It is still difficult to conclude which one will win in the end. In my opinion, whether it is the Konka model, the LeTV model or the Damai model, each company has chosen a development model based on its own advantages. As an Internet company that entered the TV industry relatively early, LeTV has changed the structure and gameplay of the TV industry. Traditional TV manufacturers such as Konka seek cross-border cooperation, which is also one of the ideas to quickly respond to changes in the competitive landscape. The Damai model makes full use of its operator advantages and intends to open up another way to play smart TVs. Whether it can succeed remains to be seen.

In short, we believe that the super TV models of the three companies all have their own core competitiveness and are constantly being optimized and improved. In the future, several models in the Internet smart TV industry will most likely coexist for a long time. We will keep a close eye on the outcome.

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.