Only Yueme has no future: OTT market needs to improve cooperation capabilities to survive

Just after the 2015 Spring Festival, rumors began to spread that China Telecom's Yueme Box, which was suspended by the joint boycott of radio and television stations in various regions last year, is ready to make a comeback. But Lao Duan boldly predicted: China Telecom's Yueme Box will not be smoothly rolled out and sold as expected, and the reason is very simple: in China's OTT industry, there is no future for only Yueme. Only by pleasing everyone can there be money!

Yueme Box = Telecom IPTV + Public Network OTT, which is a cross-regional national IPTV, or an OTT box with live channels. Under the current radio and television regulatory policies and operator interest system, it is impossible to promote and popularize it nationwide.

First, Yueme violates the fundamental interests of the radio and television system in its monopoly of live TV channels. Last year, several influential TV stations jointly opposed Yueme, but in fact, this kind of cross-regional national IPTV has the greatest impact and harm on local cable networks, which means that the real protagonists who have been harmed have not yet come forward, not to mention that the content of the live channels is still owned by the radio and television system. After digitization and overall migration, local cable networks have not had an easy time in recent years.

Yueme's desperate promotion and free promotion with broadband purchase will attract a large number of existing cable network users to abandon cable set-top boxes and switch to Yueme, which will deal a fatal blow to the 50-60 billion basic cable TV subscription fees and value-added services of the 200 million cable TV users in the country. The radio and television and even governments at all levels will definitely not sit idly by, and the country has clear policies on the development of IPTV. This is a reasonable, rational and legal sword for radio and television. TV channels have never been a completely market-oriented business. @Wired Network , what do you think?

Second, even if Telecom takes a step back and only provides on-demand services without live broadcast, the Yueme box still has no future. You can see that the OTT on-demand content on Yueme cannot be compared with the content of TV sets, set-top boxes and even provincial OTT networks under the supervision of the seven OTT licensees in the current market, whether in terms of the amount of content, freshness and attractiveness. OTT requires policy supervision, but it is essentially a 100% market-oriented business. Operators are not good at operating highly market-oriented businesses, which is genetic. This is also the fundamental reason why WeChat can only be born in Tencent and not in China Mobile, and this is also the fundamental difference between WeChat and SMS.

In addition, the most critical resource for the success of OTT business is not bandwidth, but video content. In this regard, operators are not superior but at a disadvantage. From the product of Yueme Box itself, we can also see that compared with Xiaomi Box and Huawei Honor Box, there is still a long way to go in definition, design and experience. This deficiency comes from genes and system. I think it is not easy to catch up or even surpass. China Mobile also has to sell Apple, Samsung and Xiaomi brand mobile phones. Moreover, Yueme is a service brand that obtains content through profit sharing. It is difficult to compete with these independent hardware brands and video website brands.

Third, the management system of China's broadband operators has been a provincial model since its inception. China Telecom has been vertically integrated since the group, integrating content, independently establishing CDN and even independently selling. The provincial branches have basically become soy sauce. Unless the current provincial management structure of telecommunications is completely changed, the provincial branches will definitely not really work hard on this business, and it is also difficult to integrate at the KPI level. This two-line business development mechanism will cause resource overlap and waste within the telecommunications system, generate new friction costs and even contradictions. Historically, most of the non-core value-added business businesses of the three major operators directly led by the headquarters and vertically operated have ended in failure or nothing.

Based on the above three reasons, I think the model of Yueme, which only pleases itself but not everyone, has no future. So what model has a future? I think the core competitiveness of operator OTT is paid services, while the core competitiveness of public network OTT is media services. Both parties should learn from each other and achieve win-win cooperation. At present, the DVB+OTT model of the open cable network, such as Shenzhen Guowei's integrated TV, and the multi-binding cooperation model of the operator market, such as Dr. Peng's Damai TV, are beneficial and worth exploring.

I have always advocated that in China's OTT field, the most valuable core capability is neither product and technical capabilities nor operational and business capabilities, but cooperation capabilities. The open and win-win model of the industrial chain is more sustainable than the closed industrial chain, which is called a complete ecological chain in a nice way or a self-made model in a bad way.

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.