Smart Box: Standing at the center of Internet+

In 2014, the smart box market reached 10 million units. Its explosive growth rate caught many industry predators off guard. For example, the online video leader Youku did not catch a boxed express until late 2014. Jingdong Mall statistics show that the box has become one of the largest sales of smart hardware products in 2014. More importantly, the rapid growth of the box market is far from over.


Admittedly, compared with cell phones, TVs, PCs, tablet computers, and smart bracelets, the box is a very cheap product: the mainstream price of 199-499 (of which 80% is not more than 299 yuan) is almost all other types of intelligence. A fraction of the product's selling price.

For this reason, it is difficult to convince the box as a key product for sales of a manufacturer or a key product for profit. - Dozens of smart box companies, one-year sales, but also less than LeTV TV sales in September 2014 to 11 gold week scale. Especially in the context of the majority of box manufacturers still competing for points with the value of the entrance, rather than focus on profitability, box products can hardly contribute much to the smart industry. This is a box product with such a large volume of sales. It is difficult to be the reason for the “hot spot” in financial news.

However, the strategic value of a product is often not based on its short-lived sales or profit value. For example, water and electricity in our lives are not the bulk of spending, let alone the same issues as house car tickets, or love and childbirth. However, there is no one for water and electricity. Even if it is not half a day, the lives of millions of our people will be disrupted. In the future, box products are just in such a position.

The author believes that sales are limited and profits are not high. Color TV companies such as TCL pay more attention to the whole machine than to boxes. Communication companies such as Huawei are more concerned with mobile phones than boxes; video companies LeTV pay more attention to super TVs than boxes... These manufacturers The importance of the internal division of labor cannot be a criterion for evaluating the strategic value of the box in the future of the home Internet, especially in the context of the current Internet+concept.

Although boxes are inferior in the sequence of internal product importance for a single type of manufacturer, observers have taken note of the fact that the richness of the vendor camp that launches box products is not available in any prior smart product. In addition to Skyworth, Tmall, Baidu, China Telecom, Huawei, and other integrated giants, there are more than a dozen brands focused on box products. This industry span illustrates a simple truth: the box is the "hub" of the most important family's Internet intelligence ecosystem.

The 2015 box will continue to heat up

Later in 2014, Youku, China’s largest online video platform, took the last train of the box; in the second half of 2014, China Telecom introduced smart box products in the IPTV segment; in the spring of 2015, the domestic color TV industry’s share of more than ten years, Lao Haixin, increased. The input of the box product line; BOE and Barley introduced a brand new split TV set around April 2015: These products are composed of a box and a display host; in May 2015, Tencent strengthened the box product line. Ecological cooperation...


The facts show that after the high growth of box products in 2014, the market has not entered a relatively stable state, but tends to structural restructuring and accelerated growth. Among them, the core performance is: new entry, or new strengthening of the box product line of companies, often represent new industry forces; the new company to strengthen the box product line is the dominant giant of their respective fields; a branch of color TV product form began To split type, box-essential product development.

These industry changes fully illustrate the importance of the box market: Hisense believes that the standard for measuring the success of the smart TV market has changed from a simple market size to an operating rate, activation rate, and activity rate. With the amount of active users of smart TVs to measure the success or failure of a color TV company, the contribution value of a 200-yuan box and a 10,000-yuan TV is comparable. ——Even more manufacturers believe that the low cost and high replacement rate of box products and the high cost and low replacement rate of televisions make the box a key product for “reigning rivals' active customers”.

Considering the higher replacement rate and lower cost of boxes than televisions, the continuous advancement of box-based product technology, the development of split TV, the proliferation of non-broadcast video applications, and the substitution of traditional TV models, box products The future market scale will be unprecedented - even a "big category" product that may exceed the sales volume of color TVs by 45-50 million units per year.

Internet video, shopping, games, social networking and other companies regard the box as a weapon to snatch the living room TV screen; color TV makers regard it as a weapon that instigates competing brand stock customers; Telecom, Dr. Peng and other network operators believe that the box is its entry point. The entrance of home triple play hardware and value-added service market; In the pursuit of ultra-thin TV screen, TV display part and smart box computing part of the service life of the major mismatches, smart TV will eventually usher in the split trend of some products; Traditional radio and television network television signal operators believe that the box is the standard middleware that realizes the transformation of service content; Internet cloud service manufacturers believe that the box is the core hub of their cloud products landing smart home; home appliance manufacturers are also willing to use the box as the core of smart home control one……

Each of these potential market choices can almost provide sales support of 10 million units per year. Therefore, the author thinks that the scale of 10 million in 2014 is just the starting point, not the top point, for smart boxes. How high is the top of this product? Perhaps Yitai may also be uncertain.

Actively face Internet +, triple play box protagonist

In May 2015, the State Council proposed a three-year growth rate and fee reduction plan for the Internet. Among them, the most important point is the complete replacement of copper cables by optical fiber, and the widespread adoption of 20M in urban markets and 8M in rural areas. What is the relationship between this policy action and the box?


Second, long-tailed applications of box products will gain a better environmental foundation. Most of these product applications are cloud applications. The experience quality of cloud applications is closely related to the actual communication bandwidth. On the other hand, the rapid adoption of the 4G network and its increasingly low cost will also promote the application resonance of the box-centric home Internet and the mobile-centric mobile Internet.

In short, the national broadband speed increase, fee reduction, and popularization projects will be huge benefits for the box. In particular, broadband projects in towns and rural areas will make boxes from the current urban consumption as the main, and turn into urban-rural all-you-can-eat, and the market scale potential will increase by at least 30%.

More importantly, this round of broadband speed-up projects was put forward in the context of the Internet+ and China’s economic upgrading. Its significance is more than any previous triple play construction policy. The need for the Internet to serve the entire socio-economic upgrading has also led to a qualitative change in the core structure of the triple play of this round of policies: complementation by the three networks, becoming dominated by the Internet and the mobile Internet, and others being complementary. This change fully reflects the advantages of Internet technology in the triple play.

Corresponding to the box product, the industry change that can be considered is that the radio and television network's attitude towards the box product should be more positive. The living room video and long-tailed value service, and the competition between broadcast and TV networks and the Internet of telecommunications companies, will become a pattern in which various types of network-wide business operators go forward separately.

From the perspective of content, though SARFT is no longer a single non-radio-electronics network video operation license, the existing seven licenses are not enough, but they are already relatively large. Because the licensee is a platform-based service, the first requirement for service quality is scale. Domestic Internet practice also proves that an industrial sector tends to survive 2-4 giants instead of a hundred flowers. What's more, in theory, many provincial TV stations will also obtain online video licenses. -- SARFT clarified its support for broadcast and television content companies to obtain online video licenses and participate in industrial restructuring.

It can be said that after the development of the current single-line single-line model of network video to the current development pattern of the network, the licenses have turned from insufficient to surplus: this is after the broadcasting and TV department clearly supported the local radio and television content companies to apply for Internet video licenses last year. The root cause of the latter action is less.

The above changes, the factual explanation, the network video this variable, has completed the "trend structural reorganization" of the entire video content and the three network applications, the later development will be mainly to the reduction and transformation of the necessary network, the Internet more High-speed increments and the same as eating. This will help the box products seize the core path of the Internet+ and achieve a second upgrade in marketing model and strategic value: Or, the box is the nuclear weapon that the Internet erodes the wide grid, and it is also the starting point for the wide network to realize the full service nirvana. It is the only change of direction of the IPTV business of the communication network.

Box: The core proposition of the long tail value of the home Internet

Does your company want to take its place in the home Internet? Faced with the Internet brand traditional TV companies how to keep the traditional color TV company's customer scale advantages? Smart family, who can become a central application brand?

Similar to this problem, have a unified answer: box!


A color TV brand may sell 5 million TV sets. This is a very impressive achievement. However, as long as the users of these TV sets use a small, inexpensive box of other brands, the “long-tailed customer” of color TV companies will be cut off. This kind of worry does not happen, but it often happens. Because of the smart part of smart TVs, the face of the ever-evolving intelligent technology, it quickly lags behind; this time, the display part of the TV is still perfect - customers can easily choose to buy a very cheap box products to achieve the entire experience system The upgrade.

Do you want to temporarily transfer the habits of smart air conditioners in your home to the air conditioner in your hotel room? At this time, you need internet communications and smart cloud services. You also need a smart box at home. Therefore, the box is not a black product in the traditional sense, but it is black and white. For the black and white white line breaks, for the smart home era appliances must be the proposition of the network, white giant, air conditioning expert Gree has acted, she is launching her own mobile phone - because the mobile phone is a universal smart remote control. Changhong, which is known for its black and white brand divisions, has unified the label of smart home appliances through the ChiQ sub-brand. - Maybe next, they will also be interested in the import product box, just like the previous statement of the United States.

In the future, the growth point of home electronics and electrical appliances consumption will not fall on a larger scale of industry, but will fall on more new applications. In the future, the competition points of home electronics and appliances will mainly focus on green energy, intelligence, and The innovation of sensors and networked applications; the future applications of consumer home electronics and consumer electronics will change from simple hardware purchases to continuous value-added consumption of software and content... In these transitions, the importance of boxes is not Conceived.

It is true that the pattern of dozens of brands in the box industry is not the final structure of the industry. Some deaths and the birth of some new brands will be inevitable. Even smart TV brands that have a high degree of overlap with the box product line will have a demise and new life. The key to this change is the understanding and grasp of the long-tail value and eco-survival concepts of the box-type smart products.

In 2014, Fang Hua Digital Media, an internet TV video license, obtained the investment focus of Ma Yun and Shi Yuzhu after financing of approximately RMB 6.5 billion. The first is the procurement and production of content; the second is the active development of the nation's television terminals. Among them, the television terminal includes not only the tv products that are embedded in the platform, but also the box hardware. At present, the license companies have also begun to integrate the interests of the traditional small and medium box companies. However, similar large investments and actions are not an exception in 2014: More than 50 billion yuan of investment will come to fruition this year and the next two years.

In this regard, we can say: The spring of the box is fast approaching, and chasing the long-tail value brought by the control of the customer base will make the household appliances industry including Internet companies, telecommunications and broadcasting and TV companies, and TV set off a bloody event. The hurricane industry war. The hardware center that detonated this war is both: Little "box".