Lao Duan said: How far is Huawei from television?

In the second half of last year, Huawei Honor's official Weibo account forwarded a Weibo post about a TV launch conference, which immediately caused an uproar in the industry, but the most revealed mystery was just a one-night stand between Coocaa TV and Honor mobile phone. However, various speculations and associations have not stopped. How far is Huawei from TV? Lao Duan has a history of cooperation with multiple departments of Huawei for more than 12 years, but he is also unaware of Huawei TV. Here I just want to rely on my familiarity with industry trends and Huawei's character to fabricate a logic that Huawei must make TVs. If I can promote and promote Huawei's TV business, I will be at ease and smile.

Let me first shout out to Mr. Xu, Mr. Yu, and Mr. Liu of Huawei, do you know? Haha!

First of all, I strongly support Huawei in making TVs. IT companies, Internet companies, and video websites can all make TVs very successful, so why can't Huawei make TVs well? There may be 100 reasons why Huawei should make TVs, but today I will change my perspective and only talk about one unique reason: "operator TV". I once wrote "Lao Duan said: The difference between boxes and TVs". Boxes and TVs have been taking two completely different development paths since the day they were born: one is the vertical (operator) market, and the other is the horizontal (retail) market. But today, boxes have gone from the vertical market to the horizontal market, and tomorrow TVs will definitely rise from the horizontal market to the operator market, Lao Duan stubbornly believes so. In fact, operators making TVs are not something that has only started today. The first one to covet this market was Shenzhen Guowei, which invented a national standard N years ago: machine-card separation. And this module called CAM card was successfully installed in almost all TVs. However, since this interfered with the cable network's set-top box procurement and control interests, the development has not been satisfactory. However, SMIC accidentally became the No. 1 in Europe. Recently, SMIC established a converged TV company, still aiming at DVB+OTT. The biggest change this time is that the cost is extremely low and it has in-depth cooperation with cable networks.

In fact, in recent years, operators including China Telecom, China Unicom, Cable TV, Dr. Peng and others have been intentionally or unintentionally selling TVs, with millions of sales each year. But this is not the operator TV I am talking about. These TVs are just sold to operators and have different sales channels. The product itself is no different from other TVs. In fact, the biggest difference between TV and set-top boxes is the cost, one is a few hundred yuan and the other is thousands or tens of thousands of yuan, because 70 to 80 percent of the cost of the TV is on the screen. This difference has caused the TV to be less suitable for the tastes of operators. The cost is so high and it is so difficult to replace that it cannot be bundled with the operator's basic broadband and other value-added services for marketing. In the past two years, the modular TVs that have been fooled by Lao Duan have completely loosened the above burden. After the TV is split into "screen + box", the screen can be replaced without changing the box. The box with CPU as the core can be updated every six months, while the screen update cycle is seven or eight years. Therefore, after modularization, operators can create a new "new TV model" with relatively core competitiveness that bundles TVs with broadband services.

Therefore, the operator TV I am talking about is definitely not the TV form on the market now, but a modular, operational, annually updated "home Internet large screen" that can carry the most services at the lowest cost. Moreover, the operators mentioned here are not only the basic network operators of telecom and cable, but also virtual operators that operate video, games, TV and other TV screen businesses, video websites, games, and e-commerce platforms.

For operators, since phone calls are already being taken over by Tencent OTT, not to mention OTT TV, selling TVs is most likely to be the killer weapon for operators to continue to maintain their advantage in home Internet. Every year, China has an additional market size of 48 million TVs. This is a cake that already exists and exceeds 100 billion yuan. The temptation is unquestionable. The next question is simple, who is the best at selling TVs to operators? From the perspective of technology and products, Huawei seems to have everything ready for TVs except the screen! If Huawei can also bundle DVB+OTT together: across cable and telecom operators, and vertically connect the cloud and terminal products, it may accidentally create the best TV video user experience of "live broadcast + on-demand + broadband" that I have been advocating for 2 years.

Huawei friends: Aren’t you excited when you think about this? At the Honor Road press conference on December 26, after Liu Jiangfeng introduced the dual-eye phone, Shan Gang set the price of the Honor Box 2nd Generation, which has the best performance, at 298 yuan. This price doesn’t make money, but it has earned a lot of confidence in Huawei’s commitment to OTT. I really don’t know how far Huawei is from TV, but I responsibly tell the readers of Lao Duan: Operator TV is really not far away from us, so stay tuned!

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.