Video site gathering TV products

Video site PPTV recently announced the launch of set-top box product "PPbox" in Shanghai. Prior to this, LeTV has been sold for 3 months and has recently released smart TV. Previously, Gu Yongyi and Gong Yu also expressed their interest in TV products when they accepted an interview with NetEase. Youku and iQiyi will consider entering. For a time, after the war on the mobile side was started, the video website would compete on television again.

In fact, TV screens are indeed a coveted field. Computers, mobile phones, tablets, and TVs are seen as the “four screens” that are indispensable to modern people. The first three are basically firmly established by Internet companies. Live, only TV, still in the hands of traditional media.

According to relevant data, there are 400 million households in China, and the number of television sets is much higher than 400 million, of which the "non-smart" TVs account for the vast majority. The average price of 300 yuan per box, can be calculated that the demand for set-top box market may exceed 100 billion. The person in charge of PPbox Shan Xiaolei also introduced that last year the entire set-top box market shipped about 5 million units, this year will exceed 10 million.

Moreover, the "box" entry cost is not high, "based on the Android platform to be a box, preloaded with some applications, this is basically no technical threshold." Express broadcast CEO Wang Xin think so.

What is the significance of the video site to grab the "fourth screen"?

Internet companies do hardware and their ideas are the same: we sell content and services, not hardware. Tao Tao, PPTV CEO, said, "Our purpose is to accept PPTV video services in the living room." Like LeTV, we hope to create a platform effect through the rapid expansion of the number of sticky users in our own brand terminals, and then in value-added services, advertising, applications, etc. In terms of achieving rapid growth.

For PPTV, preemptively occupying this large screen in the living room is on the one hand, and perhaps there is another deeper reason. When reporters try to verify with the founder of PPTV Tao Tao, "If the box is sold well, one can Making the company's cash flow look more healthy, and secondly, it gives investors a better story to tell.” Tao’s smile represents the default.

Cross-border problems remain unresolved and the long-term nature of Internet companies, after all, is not in hardware. The "cross-border" problem has also been placed in front of the entire industry.

Dan Xiaolei admitted frankly that PPTV has been exploring this path for two years to get out of today's PPbox. The company's set-top box business division also accounts for more than 10% of the company's total. More than half of the people in the team are Design the product for the box. How to achieve the ultimate integration of software and hardware is a great test.

The more powerful opponents are set-top boxes from operators and broadcasters. Analyst International Analyst Zhang Hao believes that operators’ network TV business has gained market recognition with its advantages of early entry into the market and rich operational experience; traditional radio and television networks have strong resources with rich content resources and comprehensive and in-depth channel resources. Its market position, the addition of On-Demand, interactive, and retrospective functions of the GM STBs in the past two years have provided huge user support in terms of user experience and brand services. For Internet companies newly involved in the box market, Services, brands, and product experience still require great efforts.

In addition, channels are also a thorny problem for video websites. In the box products of existing video websites, the sales channels are basically online. LeTV Box and Super TV are sold on its own LeTV Mall. It has not cooperated with other e-commerce sites. Low pricing has also directly made it impossible to reach offline channels. PPbox also said that in the early stage, it will mainly cover the existing 300 million users, develop them into the first experience of users, and have no mature sales channels. The limitations of sales channels make sales prospects of video site boxes worry.

Internet companies to explore the hardware, the pioneer or the sample of martyrs are also vividly remembered: those who once had their own mobile phone products, the success of Ali Baidu or Shanda, now have no mention of mobile phones. This shows that the path of Internet companies to cross-border to hardware is not as beautiful as they thought. Well, nowadays, video boxes and super-televisions are also good. They must also prepare for a bright future and a tortuous road.