The era of subverting cable TV and Internet TV is coming

With the advent of the Internet TV era, the cable TV service industry is facing major changes and challenges.

As more and more home users stop using cable TV, Wired magazine says the turning point for Internet TV is coming.

Compared with traditional cable TV services, Internet TV is gradually crushing the cable TV market with its powerful market advantages and product experience. Whether it is domestic traditional TV manufacturers or international technology giants, the exploration of Internet TV products is driving the arrival of a new climax in its development.

"Intelligence" opens the door to Internet TV

In recent years, the intelligence of electronic products is leading the entire era to move towards "Internetization". As an important carrier of the entire family entertainment center, the Internetization of televisions has undoubtedly become a trend of the times.

Data shows that in 2014, my country's smart TV sales reached 26.5 million units. Prior to that, the smart TV sales in 2012 were only 10.9 million units, which increased to 17.1 million units in 2013. It is estimated that in 2015, the sales volume of smart TVs will easily exceed 40.55 million units.

The birth and development of the entire smart TV market has driven traditional TV manufacturers to transform, while also stimulating the rise of some Internet companies. LeTV Super TV, which was launched in September 2012, sold only 300,000 TVs in 2013, but by the end of 2014, it had achieved its sales target of 1.5 million units a month ahead of schedule, and set a sales target of 3 million to 4 million units in 2015.

If TV manufacturers have changed people's perception of TV, then people have changed the way they watch TV.

The birth of Internet TV has ended the embarrassing situation of users watching "whatever is available" and brought them into the free Internet era of "watching whatever you want".

A study shows that about 7.6 million households in the United States have stopped using cable TV services, while in rural China, more and more home users are jumping directly from "satellite" TV to Internet TV. The transition from traditional TV to Internet TV is more reflected in the continuous expansion of user demand.

Just as Internet companies challenge traditional TV manufacturers, the emergence of highly competitive Internet TV services has also greatly forced users to be disappointed with traditional TV services. More importantly, using lower prices to enjoy better services is becoming a common understanding among all Internet TV users.

Internet TV is the future

Whether in foreign markets where streaming services are prevalent or in the domestic market where video websites continue to dominate, live TV programs represented by sports events are becoming the "last straw" that keeps traditional cable TV from collapsing.

In fact, watching live TV programs is not a rigid need for users. Compared with other TV content, sports competition programs with strong timeliness may be intended to provide viewers with an exciting sense of presence, but compared with the Internet TV broadcasting method where users can freely choose the time, place, and number of sessions, this is still slightly inferior.

More importantly, with the continuous development of the Internet TV industry, more and more Internet TV content service providers are working hard to eliminate this disadvantage. Take LeTV as an example. The birth of its hardware product Super TV is actually an important measure to further improve its vertical integration ecological chain of "platform + content + terminal + application" based on its original content resource advantages.

In order to bridge the "last mile" for Internet TV to completely replace traditional TV, LeTV has also built its own LeTV Sports Channel to provide Internet TV users with live broadcasts, on-demand broadcasts, information and other video services comparable to those of cable TV.

Of course, direct content cooperation between sports leagues and Internet TV services, bypassing cable and satellite TV providers to widen the gap between Internet TV and traditional cable TV, will be a trend for Internet TV services to completely replace traditional TV in the future, and this trend will become more and more obvious and effective.

There is no doubt that the rapid growth of Internet TV users represented by Super TV not only proves to us how huge the emerging Internet TV industry is, but also warns us that the road ahead will be long and there is still a lot of work to be done.

At this stage, we may not be able to predict how Internet TV will develop in the next few years, but we can be sure that the services generated by Internet TV in the future will be completely different from the current traditional cable TV.

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.