After missing out on mobile phones, Tencent is unwilling to lose out on TV

Tencent's motivation for making TV

Sun Peng, founder of Wukong Remote Control, told Leifeng.com that the smart TV OTT business is different from the open PC market and is similar to the increasingly closed mobile phone market. He used 360 and Xiaomi as examples to describe that 360 can occupy a large market share on PCs, but it has not been successful in mobile phones. Xiaomi's own app store has brought a prerequisite advantage to its hardware sales and payment model.

It is foreseeable that the same will happen with smart TVs in the future. Terminal manufacturers will have much more say than in the PC era. At this time, it is increasingly important for Internet companies to find entry points.
BAT did not do much in the hardware field in the mobile phone era. As Xiaomi rose, the cost of pre-installing applications became increasingly higher, and the TV market was just starting out, so it had more opportunities than the mature mobile phone market.

Sun Peng also told us that the strength of the mobile terminals of the BAT companies determines how actively they develop their TV business. Baidu acquired 91 Assistant to make up for the shortcomings of the mobile terminal, and later launched Baidu Video Stick and iQiyi TV. Alibaba has the strongest sense of crisis. After its Cloud OS system failed to enter the mobile phone market, it directly turned to the TV market, and the effect was the best. Tencent's WeChat is intended to connect everything. When powerful Internet giants are eyeing the entrance to smart terminals, Tencent cannot sit idly by.

Nie Xuezhen, CEO of Cool Play Tribe, which is developing a sports platform for TV interaction, also told Leifeng.com that Tencent not only has rich content, but also has the support of first-level users and big data, which also gives it an inherent advantage in the construction of content output platforms. If Tencent, which has completed the "search + map + O2O" mobile terminal layout, seizes the opportunity of the emerging OTT market and promotes smart TV business, it will be equivalent to taking another step ahead at the starting line.

In fact, Tencent has long been involved in the TV industry. Among the seven domestic licensees, Ma Huateng is a shareholder and director of Future TV, and seems to have gained some initiative and even decision-making power in terms of TV content. In addition, Tencent invested in Taijie TV, the most widely used smart TV in China, a long time ago. Not to mention that in the past two years, Tencent has frequently interacted with traditional TV manufacturers such as TCL and Konka.

Let's look at the big picture. In 2014, the shipment of smart TVs finally settled at 31.1 million units, and the penetration rate of smart TVs was 58%, an increase of 14 percentage points. In 2014, the number of models launched on the market reached 832, accounting for 61% of the total models launched on the market. Sun Peng told us:

China has an estimated 700-800 million television stock. With tens of millions of smart TVs shipped each year, it won’t take a few years for all TVs in China to be smart. Tencent needs to hurry up and enter the market.
Smart TVs are likely to be an important display terminal for smart homes in the future. If you enter the smart home market, TV is an indispensable part. For example, when you are watching TV, it can remind you that the refrigerator door is still open, the front door of your house is open, etc. These are all good usage scenarios. This is determined by the fact that TV is the center of the living room in most families.

How Tencent plans to make television

In November 2014, TCL Group and Tencent developed a "WeChat TV"; before that, in December 2013, Tencent jointly launched WeChat TV with Skyworth and Future TV, which can realize functions such as remote control, micro EPG, WeChat payment, memory collection, breakpoint resumption and voice search.

How will Tencent develop TV this time? Sun Peng told us:

As an Internet company, Tencent must have developed its own TV OS, which is similar to the path of Alibaba OS. It can find a licensee to rely on, and then it will have content. So, what about the hardware?

An industry insider suggested that Leifeng.com observe the stock market changes of Shenzhen TV manufacturers in recent days, so he sought advice from financial market practitioners. As of today's close, Skyworth rose 28 percentage points against the market in the five trading days this week, and rose rapidly at the end of the 6th, and finally closed up 29.74 yuan per share; Konka and TCL performed flat, fluctuating with the overall trend of the market. Skyworth rose! In this week when the overall market fell, it rose 28% against the trend. Could it be Skyworth? Skyworth activated 6.2 million smart TVs in 2014, and has also cooperated with Tencent, so this possibility cannot be ruled out.

Another industry insider brought more exciting news to Leifeng.com - Tencent's partner is most likely the mysterious and cool Foxconn! Foxconn has its own TV division and has made the latest product prototypes to present to Tencent (Skyworth and Konka may have similar actions) and just wait for the factory director's nod. LeTV and Xiaomi TV, both Internet companies, have chosen Foxconn as their OEM factory, and the possibility of Foxconn + Tencent is not small. In addition, he also told us that Tencent's TV box is also on the way to leaving the factory, and the industrial design is very beautiful.

How to enter the TV market?

As we all know, Tencent seems to have been defeated repeatedly in the field of smart hardware, and the TV market is not easy to attack. Last year, LeTV and Xiaomi sold less than 2 million TVs in total out of the more than 40 million units sold. How will Tencent promote its smart TVs?

An industry insider told Leifeng.com: In the future, TVs may be of different brands, but the living rooms will belong to Alibaba and Tencent.

Ali OS promotion will pay 30 yuan subsidy to TV terminal manufacturers for each TV, 10 yuan for installation, activation and deep activation~ and the value created by each terminal user is about 1,000 yuan. In view of the genetic elements, traditional TV manufacturers are not good at the underlying development of the system. Ali Cloud OS is promoted very quickly. Feng Sen, the founder of Lebo Technology, told Leifeng.com that in 2015, in addition to providing subsidies to terminal manufacturers, Ali will also provide subsidies to some channel dealers and will go deep into third-, fourth- and fifth-tier cities~

Tencent OS will also take the subsidy route, after all, Tencent is not short of real money; as for the price war commonly used by TV manufacturers, Tencent will surely not show weakness. In addition, Tencent has many advantages in making TVs: TV users' demand for content is reflected in movies, games, shopping, etc. Tencent has been working on videos for a long time, and in 2014, the penetration rate of video websites ranked in the top three, not much behind Youku and iQiyi, but not comparable to Xiaomi and Alibaba; Tencent is the only one in the game industry, and it is not difficult to adapt to TVs; in terms of shopping, he thinks that with the maturity of WeChat in the social field, in the application scenario of TV, WeChat Pay and Alipay may not be unable to compete...

This sounds like everything is ready, but, WeChat TV was previously managed by Tencent SNG (Social Network Business Group), and Leifeng.com learned that Tencent has begun to change its organizational structure. The company's Tencent Interactive Entertainment Department (IEG) has independently established a "Living Room Department" to create the concept of an entertainment living room, and the battle to seize the living room is "smoky". This TV development is very likely to be led by Tencent Interactive Entertainment. Tencent Interactive Entertainment's money-making projects are mostly games. Whether it can convince the factory manager to invest heavily in smart TVs also leaves a question for this incident. Moreover, Xiao Ma Ge said at the two sessions two days ago that Tencent must first be a connector and focus on developing content. At the end of October last year, Tencent announced that it would promote the WeChat and QQ hardware platforms and officially open them to offline. Relying on big data and social tools to benefit hardware manufacturers, Tencent's good intentions can be seen.

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.