Practical information: Summary of views from the 4G mobile phone and virtual operator summit

From September 10 to 13, the 4G Mobile Phone and Virtual Operator Summit Forum hosted by Sina Technology was held in Jinggangshan, an old revolutionary base in Ji'an, Jiangxi. The conference brought together representatives of domestic operators, mobile terminal manufacturers, data research companies and virtual operators, and also invited well-known experts, bloggers and media reporters from the domestic communications industry to participate in the discussion and look forward to the future of the industry together.

Sina Technology 4G Mobile Phone and Virtual Operator Summit Forum was held in Jinggangshan

I was also invited as a special guest to attend the 4G Summit. During the three days, I not only listened to the keynote speeches of leaders from all walks of life, but also participated in many public and private seminars. The main forum of the conference was held on September 11th, which mainly consisted of speeches and roundtable discussions by representatives of domestic 4G mobile phone manufacturers and virtual operators. The following is a scan and review of this summit.

At this conference, representatives from the three major operator groups and their branches, including China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom, attended the summit. Operators generally believed that 4G brings operators opportunities for super-speed development. The wonderful views are summarized as follows:

Ge Qi from China Mobile: China Mobile has deployed 410,000 4G base stations, and it is expected to exceed 500,000 by the end of the year. It has become the world's largest single-standard 4G operator. As of June 30, 2014, there were 20.44 million 4G users, and the traffic generated by 4G users accounted for 13% of all 600 million mobile users. There are 458 4G terminals in the network. Currently, 41 TDD commercial networks have been launched in 25 countries, and another 70 networks are planned to be deployed. It is hoped that terminal manufacturers will support VoLTE and RCS in the future.

Ge Qi, deputy general manager of China Mobile's General Department, gave a wonderful speech at the meeting

Li Feng from Jiangxi Mobile: The average monthly traffic of 4G users in Jiangxi Province has reached 700MB; China Mobile's TDD base station construction/development level has reached the level of seven years in the 3G era.

Ning Meng, an e-commerce company of China Telecom Tianyi: In the future, all telecom 4G mobile phones will be equipped with NFC function; the mobile payment industry alliance is jointly established by the three major operators; there are nearly 10 million cash registers in the country, 1.9 million of which have been transformed to support mobile payments, and there are still 8 million to be transformed;

Shen Wei, China Unicom Huasheng: China Unicom will leverage the advantages of 3G/4G integration and integrate service rates, terminal brands and networks; China Unicom Huasheng expects to cover more than 300,000 mobile phone dealers through the B2B platform and strive to achieve a transaction volume of 100 billion;

Terminal manufacturers participating in this summit held on-site discussions

Terminal industry chain companies, represented by mobile terminal manufacturers and upstream chip manufacturers in the industry chain, also expressed the strong desire of domestic mobile phone manufacturers to take advantage of 4G to achieve transcendence.

Zhang Zhen of Huawei: Huawei's market share ranks third in the world; the latest product Mate7 is a strategic product; Huawei must re-examine the importance of open channels;

Xiaomi Lin Bin: The original brand before "Xiaomi" was Red Star; the sales volume of mobile phones in the first half of the year reached 26.11 million units, with a sales volume of 33 billion including tax; online sales accounted for 70% of Xiaomi's sales; the data volume of Xiaomi Cloud has reached 33PB, and about 647TB of data is uploaded to the cloud every week;

Lin Bin, President of Xiaomi Technology, shared Xiaomi's ideas in the 4G era at the conference

Coolpad Cao Jingsheng: Coolpad’s domestic 4G mobile phone sales rank first; the sales volume of the Internet brand “Dashen” series has exceeded 5 million; it has begun to break into the European and American markets;

Meizu Li Nan: With the release of MX4, the number of Internet service providers connected to meizu has reached 169; when conditions are ripe, we will consider applying for a virtual operator license;

Meizu Technology Vice President Li Nan spoke at the meeting

OPPO Wu Qiang: Return to products, build the OPPO brand with technological innovation and product thinking based on user needs; OPPO fully embraces 4G; OPPO internally promotes rapid development with a full-staff innovation mechanism;

Xie Wei of ZTE: Building a MICT strategy in the 4G era, hoping to deepen cooperation with operators in traffic management;

Qian Guoliang of Leadcore Technology: The current development center of the chip industry has shifted from Europe and the United States to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and mainland China. In October, Leadcore officially launched the 28nm process 5-mode 10-band LC1860 LTE SoC, with a hexa-core A7 clocked at 2GHz; LTE-A will be launched next year.

The agenda on the afternoon of the 11th mainly revolved around virtual operator business. Representatives from mainstream domestic virtual operator license holders have reached a consensus: the resale business affected by unfavorable factors such as wholesale and retail inversion should combine their respective advantages to strive for a breakthrough.

Representatives of virtual operators participating in the summit held an on-site discussion

Huang Jianhui of D.Phone: The virtual operator business is still in its infancy and faces challenges, such as the inverted wholesale-retail relationship and serious number problems. D.Phone's retail business has shifted from large stores in core business districts to small stores in transportation hubs, shopping centers or communities; from a single channel to O2O; from bargaining sales to fixed-price sales;

Leyu: plans to open 10,000 brand stores in 2016; launch the Miao Health application service; start to build new customer relationships and play the fan economy; hopes to become the fourth largest operator in China;

21Vianet Meng Qi: 21Vianet is the third batch to obtain a virtual operator license in China; the future virtual operator business will still focus on B2B; it has obtained Hong Kong TDD30M spectrum in 2012, and hopes to use new terminal technology and networking models to build a network in Hong Kong;

Chen Liang of Aishide: Aishide's virtual operation has signed contracts with the three major operators. The license code resources, billing system and customer service, customized terminals and other preparations have been completed. It has been 100 days since the number was released. It mainly provides services to cross-border, groups and individuals; future terminal products will include tablets, smart TVs, routers, etc.

Wang Xianshu of Bus Online: When China's virtual operators started, the mobile phone penetration rate had exceeded 100%, and there was almost no room for new growth; the wholesale-retail price inversion problem was serious, and the retail price was higher than that of the three major operators; the ARPU of Bus Online virtual operators was around 35, and the user acquisition cost was 40 to 50 yuan. Although it was still losing money, Bus Online virtual operators would still vigorously promote voice services with free call charges;

Wang Xianshu, Chairman and CEO of Bus Online, delivered a speech

Kang Zhibin, Share Communication: Share Communication believes that virtual operators still have a large space for business development; it launched the "Collect" and "Green" brands of Share Communication for customers and primary and secondary school students; it established the 10039 Golf Club, hoping to tap the customer potential behind the golf group;

Li Jie of Youku Tudou: Youku Tudou applied for the virtual operator license mainly because of the virtual operator's payment channel; at the same time, it believes that content is strongly related to users, and cited Virgin and Disney Communications, which have relatively good virtual operator development worldwide, to prove the importance of content resources; Youku Tudou believes that virtual operators are a kind of business capability of Internet companies under the new situation, and Youku Tudou itself does not set virtual operator operation goals;

Deng Kai, Telling Mobile: Telling Mobile's virtual operator business should become a bridge between Telling Communications' traditional main business (mobile phone distribution) and Telling's Internet business (such as Tower Reading Literature and Opera Browser);

As a representative of data research institutions, data from Canalys summarized the business status of mobile phone manufacturers and virtual operators: it is expected that 70% of mobile phones will be 4G phones next year; virtual operators should be viewed calmly.

Sun Qi of Sino: 40% of the global mobile phone market's production capacity and 30% of sales come from China; in 2014, 4G mobile phones are expected to account for 20%; it is expected that nearly 70% of mobile phones on the market will support 4G in 2015; products in the price range of 2,000 to 3,000 will reactivate open market channels; it is expected that the virtual operator market will be difficult to exceed 30 million next year, and virtual operators should remain calm and give full play to their respective business characteristics.

Sun Qi, Vice President of Sino, mainly elaborated on the 4G market situation in 2014 from four aspects

The influence of online sales and marketing in the 4G era on users has increased; 5.5 inches is close to the limit of user selection; in terms of the premium of functions for products, fast charging, professional photography, high resolution and other functions have higher premiums, while fingerprint recognition, information protection and other functions have relatively low premiums; the products of various manufacturers are beginning to become celebrities, and the product life cycle has been extended. The traditional strategy of flooding the market with products should be rethought;

The development of the 4G market is unbalanced. The sales volume of 4G mobile phones in Guangdong province is lower than that in Beijing. The monthly sales volume through e-commerce channels exceeds 8 million units. How to operate the e-commerce channels well has become a skill that all brands must master.

Comments: This conference was a large-scale symposium hosted by Sina Technology. It was also the first large-scale discussion after the domestic communications industry entered a new situation. It systematically scanned the rapid development of the 4G market and the newly launched virtual operator business: 4G is thriving, and virtual operators are still in their infancy. The conference also exposed many problems and dilemmas, which are bound to be encountered and need to be overcome in the process of development. Here, we sort out the views of the guests at the conference, hoping that you can get useful information from it, and we also hope that China's 4G and virtual operator industries can continue to develop rapidly.

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.