The Baidu network disk youth version that has been waiting for more than a month is finally coming.
In mid-to-late November, under the impetus of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's "Information and Communication Service Perception Improvement Action", the first batch of eight network disk manufacturers in China signed the "Self-Discipline Convention on User Experience Guarantee of Personal Network Disk Service Business", promising to launch "undifferentiated rate" products within 2021 to provide users with undifferentiated upload and download services. As a major domestic network disk manufacturer, Baidu Network Disk also promised to launch a new product independent of Baidu Network Disk "Baidu Network Disk Youth Edition" APP at the end of the year.
On December 20, Xiao Lei had the honor to participate in the internal testing activities of Baidu Net Disk Youth Edition, so what was the specific experience of Baidu Net Disk Youth Edition? With the arrival of the new industry convention, the personal network disk industry will also open a new chapter, and where will the network disk industry go in the future?
Keywords: concise and fast
In the PC and smartphone industry, the term "youth version" stands for simplification and lightweight, and Baidu network disk youth version is no exception. On the application interface, Baidu network disk youth version only retains the basic functions, the bottom only "file", "scan" and "transfer" three interface switch buttons, the overall design of the UI and the richness of the function can be described by the word concise, suitable for those who care about the lightweight design of the network disk users.
In terms of download speed, Baidu Net Disk Youth Edition focuses on high-speed download experience, without the need to open additional members. After Speedtest test, Xiaolei is in the WiFi environment download speed of 209Mbps, converted to 26.125MB/s (8Mbps = 1MB/s), when downloading a 937MB size package through Baidu Network Disk Youth Edition, the whole process takes less than a minute, and the peak download speed can reach 31MB/s. In order to ensure the objectivity of the data, after five times of measurement, it is a similar result, that is to say, the download speed of the Baidu network disk youth version can run full of broadband.
It should be noted that the initial free storage space of Baidu Network Disk Youth Edition is 10GB, and the files in the original Baidu Network Disk support importing into the Youth Edition (three import opportunities), and the entire import process is extremely fast, with the import time of nearly 1GB files taking less than a second. After the file is imported into the Youth Edition network disk, the files in the original Baidu network disk still exist, and users can continue to download or delete data in the original disk or the Youth Version network disk.
In addition to uploading and downloading, Xiaolei's Baidu Network Disk Youth Edition (version 0.1.0) only has document scanning and text scanning functions. From the actual measurement point of view, document scanning is to generate PDF format files by taking documents on mobile phones, and text recognition can quickly identify the text in the photos taken. After the Xiaolei test, the convenience of text scanning is that it can directly copy the scanned text, but also export it into a Word document file, the recognition rate of the text is high, in the face of a casual picture (light conditions are general), it can be recognized without error, the overall use experience is biased towards brisk, no gorgeous animation, in line with the "youth version" of the product design concept.
In terms of audio, Baidu Network Disk Youth Edition is equipped with a "smart audio" black technology. Open a live recording file with a duration of more than 9 minutes on the network disk, the network disk will automatically convert the audio to text, and when you drag the recording progress bar, the text progress bar will also change in real time, allowing us to listen and watch. However, it should be noted that smart audio only supports Chinese Mandarin document conversion, music and English and other foreign languages are not currently supported, and it is expected that more languages can be supported in the future.
After xiaolei experienced it, he found that the function of Baidu network disk youth is not much, but it is enough for office workers and student parties, especially text recognition and intelligent audio functions support the output of the recognized documents in Word form, eliminating the cumbersome steps of intermediate format conversion.
In addition, it is worth mentioning that the video playback function of Baidu Network Disk Youth Edition can be played directly in the original picture quality format for videos saved in the cloud. As shown in the following figure, the network disk directly plays 2K picture quality video, and can play at the highest double speed, to know that other similar products on the market are either chipping the picture quality, 2K becomes 1080P or 720P, or can only be played at 1.5 times the speed, only the video downloaded to the local to view the original picture quality video. The Baidu Network Disk Youth Edition saves the download step, as long as your network speed is fast enough, you can view the original video.
Through the above experience, it can be seen that Baidu Network Disk Youth Edition takes a lightweight development route and is a supplement to Baidu Network Disk to attract users with a differentiated use experience. Of course, the Baidu network disk youth version experienced by Xiao Lei is only a private beta version, and it is expected that more practical black technology will be added to the official version in the future.
Compared with Baidu network disks with more space and more functions, Baidu Network Disk Youth Edition uses simplified functions and 10GB of free storage space in exchange for faster download speeds. For the network disk industry, "unlimited speed, large space, free" is an impossible triangle in the industry, after experiencing the initial stage of the industry, manufacturers should appropriately do "subtraction" to maintain the benign development of the platform and the industry.
It is time for network disk companies to do "subtraction"
This year, the Alibaba Cloud disk was officially launched, so that the domestic network disk market is lively again, and it is not difficult to understand that it attracts new users with the product characteristics of "no speed limit, that is, fast", after all, the Aliyun disk has no historical baggage, and the market volume is not large enough, so it can be done with large space while not limiting speed and free. However, when its user scale grows to a certain order of magnitude, it will eventually face the reality of soaring costs, so some of Alibaba Cloud disks now have a time limit, and the capacity validity period is mostly one year.
Recently, it has also been reported that Alibaba Cloud disk is opening a scaling fee test, and the price of 200GB of storage space is 108 yuan / year, and the payment can expand the capacity of the network disk. Xiaolei has not yet searched for related products, and is expected to only provide a small number of user tests.
Not only are foreign network disk manufacturers seeking a payment model to balance costs, but foreign Google Photoos services have also adjusted their storage space strategy, changing from free "high-quality" photo storage to 15GB of limited space, after which they need to pay to buy storage capacity.
Rationally, network disk enterprises now need to do appropriate subtraction, no longer advocate "free space" once again into vicious competition, on the old road of burning money and drainage, there have been some network disk products regardless of cost expansion, to the end can not bear the cost pressure can only stop the end, many users who are too late to back up data are also affected by this, the data can not be downloaded to the local within the deadline, which is not responsible for users and the market.
Looking closely at the product adjustment scheme of the main network disk manufacturers, the eight network disk products provide undifferentiated services in the upload and download rate, the main difference is that the free starting space is different, in addition to the Tianyi cloud disk, hecai cloud and Alibaba cloud disk, the free space of other network disks is less than or equal to 10GB. However, some network disks provide additional expansion functions, which are divided into two types: space expansion and feature function expansion. If you are not afraid of trouble, users can also open different network disks according to different product characteristics and use them in a combination.
In addition, Xiao Lei sincerely suggested that users should abandon the inherent concept of "everything is free", and good Internet services and content should also be worth paying, such as network disks, videos, music, books and so on. If everyone wants to be free, in the end the market will only die or decline, and the injury will be the users themselves.
Where does the network disk industry go from here?
Driven by the market environment and new industry conventions, domestic network disk enterprises have once again come to a crossroads. Under the guidance of the convention, the network disk products should be accelerated, and the network disk industry should also seize this opportunity to speed up, do "addition" in user experience, application scenarios and business models, and broaden the development space of network disks.
A big opportunity is that the 5G era is fully coming, and the demand for user network disks is stronger.
On the one hand, under the 5G network, the time cost for users to transfer large files is lower, and the development of smart phones "high-definition" makes ultra-high-pixel photos and 4K videos occupy more storage space, which need to rely on network disks to flexibly expand capacity, and the demand for network disk space will be much larger.
On the other hand, everyone has more and more smart devices, flexible cross-platform synchronization also needs network disks, and the "cloud" of various data has become the trend of the times. In the office and other scenarios, the trend of cloud processing will change the original single and fragmented office mode, and the cloud office collaboration ability will be like a network, connecting scattered individuals to the cloud for collaboration, and realizing functions such as online document editing, picture processing, online video browsing, online project management, etc. These are opportunities for network disk enterprises.
Network disk enterprises can seize the market demand brought by 5G, strive to do a good job in product innovation, abandon the old road of fighting space and speed, and expand the network disk from cloud storage to cloud computing, cloud collaboration, cloud processing and other services, while going deep into more life, office, learning, entertainment and other scenarios, so that users can willingly pay for value and experience.
For example, for different use scenarios of network disks, manufacturers can launch different versions, such as the home version of the main shared space on the home cloud, the standard board of the main large-capacity storage space, and the speed version for users with fast download needs; for example, manufacturers can cooperate with hardware manufacturers such as mobile phones and computers to launch industry customized products to give users a more native data storage synchronization experience; for example, manufacturers can also consider taking the route of combining software and hardware, and launching new products such as "hard disk cloud disk", which will be more convenient than NAS. At the same time, it can meet the personalized storage needs of users;
For example, manufacturers can face B-end customers, explore new markets similar to enterprise network disk services, give more enterprises that need digital transformation to help, Baidu network disk to try to explore the launch of the enterprise version, can allow enterprise users to work together under the same network disk account, file synchronization, the team can share super space, speed download, data sharing and other rights and interests, which is equivalent to enterprise team members can get the core rights and interests of super members, the industrial Internet is the real arena of the "second half of the Internet".
5G era network disk is the cloud data center for individuals and enterprises, in view of the future world is the digital world "meta-universe", data is the future of oil, around the storage, use, sharing of data will appear many unexpected needs today, network disk in the future may be able to explore the establishment of an open platform, so that more developers and enterprises to develop innovative applications and services around the data. Baidu Network Disk has previously cooperated with Yijiatong Technology to realize the cloud synchronization and sharing functions of multi-device interconnection of vehicle terminals based on cloud storage capabilities, making traditional semi-intelligent vehicle terminals part of the intelligent cloud scene. In the future, connecting more smart terminals, such as watches, smart speakers, and smart TVs, to attract more developers to provide users with innovative network disk services, may be the direction of the industry.