Baidu Cloud OS is dead, where will Tencent and Alibaba go next?

Without any warning, Baidu Cloud OS suddenly announced its demise through a Weibo post on March 11, saying, "Due to the company's business adjustments, we have had to painfully decide to suspend updates and maintenance of Baidu Cloud OS." Although there has been no news about Baidu Cloud OS for a long time, the news still made many people sigh after it spread online.

Why did Baidu Cloud OS die?

Since its launch on June 4, 2012, Baidu Cloud OS has been around for nearly three years. According to the list provided on the Baidu Cloud OS official website, as many as 133 mobile phones have been officially adapted to Baidu Cloud OS, covering Android models of mainstream brands such as Samsung, Huawei, OPPO, Xiaomi, Coolpad, ZTE, Lenovo, etc., and more than 150 models including unofficial adaptations, with a user scale of more than 10 million. It stands to reason that with such a scale and model coverage, coupled with Baidu's own strength, maintaining the daily operation of Baidu Cloud OS is not a problem at all, so why did Baidu make the decision to sacrifice itself? Xu Guoxiang, the chairman of Baidu Cloud OS, who is in charge of the company's business, explained that "due to the new round of financing that is underway, it is now in a critical period, so we hope to control the pace of investment in the Cloud OS business." However, analysis shows that this answer is obviously unconvincing.

Compared with the purity and smoothness of CM, the versatility and personality of MIUI, and the lightness and simplicity of Flyme, most friends who have used Baidu Cloud OS cannot summarize its characteristics and advantages. It is not too good or too bad, but mediocrity is sometimes fatal. In addition, many Baidu applications are built-in by inertia, and the user experience is greatly reduced. It is naturally difficult to break out of the chaotic third-party ROM without doing anything well. On the other hand, although Baidu Cloud OS is compatible with more than 100 models, most of them are not pre-installed at the factory. The overall experience of Baidu Cloud OS is even worse than the pre-installed OS of some big brand models. Some users still flash back to the original system or change to other systems after trying it out. In this way, the practical significance of flashing the machine is not great. Furthermore, the adaptation and maintenance and update of many models require a lot of manpower, which is a vicious cycle of getting twice the result with half the effort. It is not surprising that they will eventually give up if they continue to burn money and cannot see the future profit direction. To put it bluntly, the problem lies in the product.

Tencent has experienced many twists and turns, but TOS has high hopes for it

In addition to Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba, two of the BAT giants, have also been ambitious about smartphone operating systems in recent years. Recently, Tencent's TOS has been unveiled, which has attracted heated discussions. In fact, this is the third time Tencent has entered the third-party ROM market. As early as 2011, Tencent had independently developed Tita, but it was just a small-scale effort and naturally could not become a big deal. Later, the core members of the team left and created IUNI OS, which was popular for a while. In 2012, Tencent also invested 50 million in LeWa ROM. Although LeWa ROM has grabbed a lot of market share in the flashing market, the pre-installed part has always only penetrated some copycat brands and is difficult to enter the mainstream. TOS is back, and Tencent has invested more financial resources and energy. In addition to working hard to improve the product experience, there is reliable news recently that Tencent will also work with the well-known mobile phone brand TCL to launch its own brand mobile phone with built-in TOS system, which is expected to be released at the end of March. Although it is not sure how far the cooperation with TCL can go, at least it has changed the embarrassment of not being able to "harden" before.

Alibaba is on the right track, and YunOS has a clear outline

As for Alibaba, it has actually been implementing the path of deep integration of software and hardware for a long time. Its "making phones" can be traced back to 2011. Before the Xiaomi mobile phone was officially released, Alibaba YunOS and Tianyu launched the first dual-core mobile phone in China at that time, W700. However, because both parties did not expect the difficulties, W700 ended up with more thunder than rain. Alibaba YunOS remained silent in the small circle of Shenzhen small and medium-sized manufacturers for a long time. Living a dull life is obviously not reconciled for a giant like Alibaba. After several adjustments, Alibaba and Meizu began to "call" frequently in 2014. In October, with the launch of YunOS3.0 and cooperation with Meizu, YunOS finally reversed the industry's perception with its powerful performance. At the same time, Alibaba also announced that YunOS has reached a new milestone: after more than three years of accumulation, the number of users has exceeded 10 million. On February 9, 2015, Alibaba announced that it would invest USD 590 million (about RMB 3.7 billion) in Meizu Technology. The mobile phone industry is finally no longer a one-shot deal. The combination of software and hardware is exactly what BAT has not been able to do in the past few years. Not only that, after Alibaba Group announced the signing of the "Internet Car" strategic agreement with SAIC Motor in July last year, on March 12 this year, the two parties jointly announced to jointly invest 1 billion yuan to establish an "Internet Car Fund" and set up a joint venture to jointly create "cars running on the Internet", and YunOS is an important bridge for the two parties to join hands.

Post-play: How to develop in a healthy way?

Let's look at Xiaomi, which has the most potential to disrupt BAT in China. Its rocket-like growth in recent years started with MIUI. Xiaomi phones subsequently seized the right time, right place and right people to achieve unprecedented success. Xiaomi quickly expanded into mobile Internet-related fields. MIUI is no longer limited to mobile phones. It has been adapted to tablets and TVs and is stepping up its layout in more fields. Today, Alibaba's approach is very similar to this. Although it does not make its own hardware, its investment in Meizu means that it has a guarantee of more than 10 million mobile phone shipments every year. In terms of software, YunOS and Powered by YunOS ecosystems have layouts in multiple fields such as mobile terminals, Internet homes, and even Internet cars, and have penetrated to varying degrees. A complete ecological chain has begun to take shape.

Looking back at the past few years of BAT and even many other mainstream domestic mobile phone ROMs, any mobile phone manufacturer with a certain shipment volume (more than one million units per year) will hold the OS tightly in their hands, such as Huawei, ZTE, Xiaomi, Lenovo, OPPO, and vivo. Unless the BAT giants make a big move like Alibaba's investment in Meizu, they can only enter the market stably and effectively. Only the support of large-scale hardware shipments can make the OS viable. Otherwise, no matter how good the experience is, it will be self-high. The same is true for the foreign webOS. Even though many people later lamented that webOS was ahead of iOS for several years, it could not save its fate.

How closely Tencent and TCL are tied together will be the key. If they are only deployed in domestic models, the scale will not be enough. Although TCL's annual mobile phone shipments have exceeded 70 million units, about 90% are from overseas markets, and the proportion of smart phones is relatively low. The actual pre-installed volume of TOS is not optimistic, so it is not ruled out that Tencent will increase its investment in attracting more manufacturers. It will be too late if it does not spend money now. According to the latest news, all the core members of the Baidu Cloud project team have jumped to Meizu and started to develop the Meizu FlymeOS patchrom project. Flyme based on Alibaba YunOS will be adapted on a large scale in the future. With strong financial support, tens of millions of installed units and rich model adaptation, Alibaba is on the right track in making phones, and the future is promising.

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.