Ali Baichuan is here: Who might have a headache?

Yesterday, Alibaba Wireless launched the Baichuan Plan, which aims to export infrastructure and build an open mobile Internet application development and commercialization platform.

As you know, Alibaba has its own independent Alibaba Cloud business, which is also considered a strategic business for the future. What is the difference between them?

In the "cloud + terminal" strategy emphasized by Jack Ma, Alibaba Cloud belongs to the infrastructure behind the scenes, and its services are mainly concentrated in key industries. In the first half of the year, Alibaba Cloud made rapid progress in many fields such as radio, television, and finance. At that time, I said that Alibaba was already the largest public cloud company in China.

Although Ali Baichuan also provides services for water, electricity and coal, it focuses on the application level, directly connecting to commercialization and serving application developers, brand companies and merchants.

You can see that Ali Baichuan is actually built on the application layer of Alibaba Cloud. From what Xiaoyaozi (Zhang Yong) said yesterday, I think its significance has surpassed the ecological construction of Ali Wireless, and it is fully expected to become a comprehensive platform for many businesses of Alibaba Group. I have a hunch that this business is likely to become more independent in the Alibaba system in the future.

Look at its implementation path: Alibaba never likes to provide only one module or link of service in its business, but to build an ecological chain. The same is true for the Baichuan Project, which covers technical services, commercialization, data, advertising promotion, and even extends to some incubation functions. Of course, its other face is also a mobile Internet entrepreneurship platform.

What’s so interesting about this platform? What impact will it have on the industry? Who do you think will be troubled?

1. Significantly lower the threshold for mobile Internet application development, standardize and make the entire industry chain process transparent, with a reasonable division of labor and professional people doing professional things. Of course, APP developers who used to charge exorbitant prices may have a headache.

In the past, the APP development system was chaotic, with different technologies, standards, and processes. In the early days, it was very expensive to develop an APP. One day four years ago, a friend and I went to an APP outsourcing company in southwest Shanghai. The founder was extremely arrogant. The development price for a simple reading APP with pictures and text was nearly one million RMB, which was a rip-off.

Baichuan provides an overall SDK package, so those brand companies and merchants with certain technical capabilities don't have to be fooled by third-party developers. Of course, third-party developers will still exist, but the opportunity to make huge profits will be gone. If they switch to Baichuan, the service chain will be more segmented and professional.

Overall, Baichuan has lowered the barriers in the industry chain, shortened the distance between APP creativity and the application market, and enabled the resources of the entire mobile Internet market to be optimally allocated, forming a pattern where professionals do professional things.

2. An open platform and entrepreneurial platform that integrates technology and commercial advantage resources, a commercial closed-loop system. Small O2O enterprises and mobile Internet entrepreneurial platforms will have a headache.

This is not the first time that Alibaba Wireless has opened up, but previously it was too open, with services limited to open development interfaces and necessary technical support. This has led to various applications launched by developers, due to their different subsequent commercialization capabilities, or even not participating in commercialization, so it is difficult to form competitiveness in terms of technology, commercial promotion operations, and data needs. The data they have accumulated cannot flow back to the Alibaba platform. Overall, the entire market is disordered.

Baichuan platform provides a complete solution covering technology, data services, and commercialization. Alibaba Baichuan even has some entrepreneurial incubation functions. For the APPs it likes, it will provide entrepreneurial venues and financing support.

Don't ignore this piece of information: Ali Baichuan will also rely on the Taobao platform to authorize APP to import Taobao's O2O chain, realize Taobao account login, access the transaction system, and open up the entire chain of promotion, payment, and background management. In addition, Taobao and Tmall's electronic vouchers, points membership, and Ali AutoNavi LBS services will also be integrated into it.

Therefore, Baichuan itself can also be regarded as a service integration of Alibaba's O2O resources.

This is a very long chain. If Alibaba Baichuan is formed, those small O2O enterprises and those popular mobile Internet startup bases will have a hard time in the future if they still insist on operating in isolation. It is best not to let Mr. Kai-Fu Lee and the Innovation Works he founded see these words, which is really a headache. Of course, mentors like Kai-Fu Lee can go to Baichuan to guide entrepreneurship.

3. The existing mobile Internet portal structure will be disintegrated. Tencent WeChat service accounts, Baidu direct accounts, and various vertical apps will also be suppressed.

In terms of commercial services, Baichuan actually relies on Alibaba's large e-commerce platform to support the APP market, divert vertical applications, and break down the past mobile Internet entry structure.

The so-called portal is no longer an overly concentrated single platform. The latter cannot accommodate more. If it is integrated abruptly, it will cause the entire portal to lose its value. Do you think Baidu Maps will become the culmination of portals? I still use it for navigation, and only occasionally use its "discovery". WeChat can be regarded as a platform, but its vertical commercial service functions are very limited.

You see, Meituan and Dianping have already started to strengthen the layout of vertical apps. Yesterday, at the Baichuan Conference, Diaoye and Li Yu were all working on vertical applications.

Therefore, those models that always try to cram too many services into the entrance will be disrupted by platforms like Baichuan.

4. Mobile distribution platform providers that lack more commercialization capabilities, mobile terminal providers that make money by integrating apps, and even application stores of mobile terminal companies may be in trouble.

Baichuan Future is actually also a mobile distribution platform. As I said, it will be an APP supermarket that can be taken according to needs in the future, and products can be defined according to applications. In this way, those application distributors who do not have more commercialization capabilities will face challenges. Haha, not every company is Zhou Hongyi's 360.

In the past, mobile terminal companies made profits mainly through application distribution. However, after Baichuan emerged, it became difficult for terminal companies to rely on this. In the past, various applications were relatively more dependent on terminal manufacturers due to their lack of commercialization capabilities. In the future, they can free up their energy to cooperate with offline operations. Although terminals cannot be avoided, their voice will be weakened.

Many app stores established by terminal companies will find it even harder to survive in the future. In fact, even companies like Samsung have closed some of their app stores over the past year. Even Apple, a big company, has already felt that a large number of apps are deposited on its platform and never see the light of day.

In other words, Alibaba Baichuan will indirectly control downstream terminals in the future, from mobile phones, tablets, TVs to distribution platforms of various smart hardware terminals.

Of course, I believe that the mobile terminals of the future will not be as single-shaped as they are now. Various handheld devices, wearable devices and more IoT terminals will be integrated with a large number of APPs.

Of course, no one can guarantee that Ali Baichuan will succeed. My judgment is that although Ali has abundant resources, there is one thing that should limit its expansion speed, that is, the transition from mobile Internet to the world of Internet of Things.

As I said above, the current mobile terminals, that is, the user terminals, are still very simple in product form, namely mobile phones and tablets, and TV applications are far from popular. This situation has caused most of the various applications on the two major platforms of Apple and Android to become useless. After all, the number of applications that can be integrated by existing mobile terminals is limited. The craze for building application stores has faded.

The future growth of Alibaba Baichuan and more open mobile Internet application platforms will depend on the speed of popularization of the Internet of Things on a larger scale, which will open up a huge outlet for massive applications.

Finally, I would like to add that although I said that if Alibaba's hundreds of rivers were to form an army, many companies would have a headache, in fact, every time a platform-level service is born, the ecological effect it produces will be far greater than the scattered competition in the past. It's just that the market needs to adapt and accept whether it is named "Ali" or something else.

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.