Operators have already shown their unique skills in entering the smart TV industry

January 29 (Reporter Zhang Zhichang) The cross-border combination of "Internet + traditional home appliances" has caused the smart TV industry to foreshadow an industrial upheaval that is different from other home appliance fields from the very beginning of its birth.

After traditional home appliance manufacturers represented by Skyworth, Konka, TCL, and Internet companies represented by LeTV, Xiaomi, and Alibaba have entered the smart TV industry, what kind of new forces will the smart TV field usher in has always been the focus of particular attention of industry insiders.

Recently, Dr. Peng, a virtual operator and my country's largest private broadband company, announced that it will release its own brand of smart TV products in early February. Compared with traditional manufacturers and Internet companies, what are the advantages of Dr. Peng, a telecom operator, in the field of smart TV?

More "connotation" than traditional manufacturers

Although it has always been focusing on broadband operation services, Dr. Peng has also begun to gradually expand into the emerging OTT market in the past two years. Prior to this, Dr. Peng acquired Home View World as the R&D center for its smart terminal and software business. It then released its first smart TV set-top box, Damai Box. Recently, it established an independent subsidiary, Damai Technology, to be responsible for the marketing of hardware products such as boxes and routers.

Damai Box can be said to be the only home entertainment service terminal product in the industry that integrates pipelines, content, terminals, and applications. Combined with Pengbo's original 100M broadband products, the promotion and sales of Damai Box are more competitive in the market than other TV boxes.

More importantly, through the existing high-speed connection pipeline between the cloud and the terminal, Pengbo has not only optimized the product operation of its own Damai Box, but also filled it with various extremely attractive content.

As a home Internet smart set-top box that integrates multiple functions such as video playback and cloud gaming, Damai Box not only provides 4K ultra-clear video playback without buffering or waiting, and allows users to watch movies online by dragging and dropping, just like a Blu-ray player, but also provides smart TV users with the unique Pengboshi game service of "cloud computing + gaming".

On the smart TV platform, the emergence of cloud gaming has made gaming no longer dependent on game consoles, and has also made game consoles continuously improve their performance in order to run large-scale games; the contradiction between terminals and the cloud has begun to stimulate the relationship between the two sides to become delicate, and Dr. Peng has taken advantage of this opportunity to develop the synergy between the cloud and the terminal, and has evolved cloud gaming into the most direct embodiment of its bandwidth services. This advantage is difficult for any traditional manufacturer to shake in a short period of time.

More “foundational” than Internet companies

The Internet field has always been the best position to expand users. Whether it is LeTV, which switched from content to hardware, or Xiaomi, which expanded from mobile to TV, or even Alibaba, which bought half of the Internet industry, they all valued the huge influence of the Internet trend on consumers.

However, unlike other Internet companies involved in the smart TV industry, Dr. Peng's start in the smart TV industry cannot be regarded as zero. As a vice president of Dr. Peng said, "Operators still have advantages in crossing over to the Internet. First of all, we have a user base. Dr. Peng's bandwidth service currently has at least 8 million users, who are Internet users themselves, making it easy for Dr. Peng to tap into smart TV users."

Prior to this, Li Dongsheng, chairman of TCL Group, once publicly stated that "the biggest dilemma of traditional color TV manufacturers is the lack of user stickiness. Often after the TV is sold, they lose contact with consumers." Therefore, both traditional TV manufacturers and Internet companies are focusing on user cultivation in the emerging home appliance field of smart TVs. From increasingly simple smart TV system operation optimization to the exploration of TV content such as video, games, education, and shopping, the "hardware + software + Internet" TV operation model seems to have been generally recognized by the industry.

But compared with these advantages that can be expanded in products, the high-speed bandwidth service foundation of Dr. Peng seems to be more difficult to surpass. With the pioneering hardware terminal products such as Damai Box, Dr. Peng's upcoming "Super TV" may explore the same development path as Damai Box, that is, combining TV products with the video services, 100M and 1G routers, 1G ultra-broadband services, 4K and other packaged services provided by Dr. Peng.

It can be predicted that Pengbo's cross-border entry into the Internet industry to develop smart TVs will not weaken its original basic business, but will consolidate the support capabilities of its localized traditional business.

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.