Will operators dominate the smart router market?

Abstract: Although communication operators have increased their attention to routers and will use their access advantages to conduct joint marketing , it is almost impossible for them to adopt an approach similar to that of radio and television. They are unlikely to forcibly occupy the entry platform of the home router market, nor do they have the ability to do so, especially under the current anti-monopoly pressure.

As for informatization, although the home market has broad prospects, the development of this market is full of difficulties. First, the opinions of various leaders are different, and it is difficult to reach cooperation, which makes consumers at a loss; second, consumers' demand for home intelligence seems strong, but in fact it is dispensable, and customers' stickiness is not strong. Therefore, the market development of home informatization often requires long-term cultivation and multi-party cooperation.

It turns out that relevant companies have set their sights on smart TVs and TV set-top boxes, because video services are considered to be the areas most likely to be accepted by users and have real market value. However, just when everyone was full of confidence and various businesses were booming, a series of counterattacks from a certain bureau almost made this simple wish come to nothing.

In this situation, the value of routers has been highlighted again, stepping back from TVs and set-top boxes. With the trend of intelligent routers, Internet companies have taken advantage of their advantages in network applications and have entered the smart router market in a big way. Internet companies have a different way of thinking. For products, on the basis of making high-quality hardware, they focus more on service functions beyond hardware, understand user needs better, and attach importance to user experience. The entire product has undergone a huge change, and a greater impact has followed.

Three forces of smart routers cannot be ignored

In the future, there will be more and more devices that can be connected to routers in family life. Televisions, stereos, refrigerators, washing machines, and even light bulbs, sockets and other various devices are eager to connect to the wireless WiFi network. The router will become the central organ of the smart home, and the competition around this core device will become more intense.

Today, in the smart router market, the stranglehold of three forces has become increasingly obvious:

1. Traditional router manufacturers. These companies have been making routers for a long time and have strong technical advantages and industry experience, as well as a large base of old users. However, these manufacturers originally had a hardware mindset and did not pay much attention to the long-term realization of customer value and the upstream and downstream industries related to routers.

2. New Internet smart router companies. The biggest difference between Internet router companies and traditional router manufacturers is that they can quickly respond to user needs, whether it is intelligence, security, or smart home integration, which are not available in traditional router products.

3. Operators’ routers. Operators are the providers of broadband services. After providing broadband interfaces, they can naturally provide customers with routers. There are two ways to do this: one is to give away or bundle routers, and the other is to directly provide optical modems with routing functions.

In today's smart router competition, Internet companies rely on their own advantages and distribution capabilities to gain an advantage, but these companies have also encountered new challenges. Because the mantis stalks the cicada, the oriole is behind. When communication operators realize the value of smart routers, they will not be content with the fate of being piped. What follows is a battle for router entry.

Therefore, many people began to worry that since the Radio and Television Administration can ban televisions and set-top boxes, will the communication operators with pipeline advantages kill the so-called smart routers?

Operators will aggressively invade the router market

According to media reports, after a small-scale pilot, Shandong Unicom, Hebei Unicom, Henan Unicom and other companies are preparing to promote optical modem devices with built-in wireless routing functions to users. In fact, telecom operators in many regions, such as Shanghai Telecom and Zhejiang Telecom, have already started to promote optical modem devices with built-in wireless routing functions on a large scale in the year before last, hoping to firmly control the entrance to the living room.

According to the revelation, the way operators promote routers is to write the user's account and password into the optical modem device that supports the wireless routing function. After the installer completes the debugging, the operator's network management system automatically closes the management entrance of the optical modem device. In this way, users cannot enter the management interface of the optical modem device, and configuration is naturally impossible. In other words, in the future, communication operators will monopolize the entrance to wireless routers.

The tip also mentioned that according to reliable sources, in the future, China Unicom and China Telecom, the two major broadband operators, will force user account information to be written into the optical modem device to promote their own router products. Once the user account information is written into the optical modem device, in the future, if users want to use their own purchased routers, they can only connect them to the operator's router device and become a secondary router. The operator can technically block or completely block the routers that the user privately connects to.

The credibility of this news is still questionable. Although communication operators have increased their attention to routers and will use their access advantages to conduct joint marketing, it is almost impossible for them to adopt a similar approach as radio and television. They are unlikely to forcibly occupy the home router market as an entry platform, nor do they have the ability to do so, especially under the current anti-monopoly pressure.

The smart router market will see new alliances

No matter how many manufacturers there are, and no matter how colorful their products are, ordinary people usually only have one smart router in their homes. Therefore, the home market is not as large as the individual customer market for businesses. At the same time, routers in the home are shared, and there is no need for multiple devices to be used at the same time. Therefore, the market space for smart routers for homes is much smaller than that for mobile phones, PADs, etc.

In the past, Internet companies have been cooperating with traditional router manufacturers, either producing under their own brands or enriching the product value of traditional manufacturers with their own content, but with the entry of operators, this triangular market has become more complicated.

The operators will certainly not produce them themselves, and it is even unlikely that they will launch their own brand of router products in the near future. They will more likely cooperate with router manufacturers and conduct joint marketing through broadband access opportunities. Then who the operators will cooperate with is very critical. Will this market become the world of contract phones?

In the future, the best cooperation model is that router manufacturers, Internet companies and operators cooperate, and the three can coexist for a long time after reaching an agreement on profit distribution. They should never hope to eliminate other competitors. It is better for different manufacturers to cooperate to build an industry alliance and unified technical standards, which can promote the maturity and rapid development of the entire market.

If a manufacturer hopes to completely turn an operator into a pipeline, it will definitely be counterattacked. On the contrary, if an operator wants to monopolize the market, it will definitely be defeated by Internet companies. If they undermine each other, it will only be a lose-lose situation and no one will succeed. Only when multiple parties cooperate can everyone be a winner.

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.