Image source @ Visual China
Text | Kasumitsu Society, author | Wang Dalu and Shirley, Editors | 0016
When 2021 comes to an end, how should we remember it?
At this time last year, Time Magazine rudely "closed the coffin" for 2020 with "The Worst Year Ever". With good hopes for 2021, we eagerly hope that the world will turn over the pain and open a new chapter.
In 2021, is the world getting better?
No one can give a definitive answer. But in this year, Chinese Internet people who have experienced various tests, especially those Internet companies that have crossed the ocean to the world, must have been deeply touched. From their mouths, we can perceive the real appearance of the industry in 2021:
Some people say that this is a year of "big waves and sand": the Internet industry has once again experienced a round of "big test", whether domestic or overseas, one new policy after another, new changes, so that Internet companies bid farewell to barbaric growth. After fierce competition and reshuffle, some companies have folded in the shock, while some companies have become more "colorful" under the grinding.
Some people say that this is a year of "seeing the sun in the clouds": after the "ban order" and "takedown order", the ill-fated TikTok not only topped the world with 2.5 billion downloads, but also left the American giant Meta (former name: Facebook) and YouTube in terms of user time, becoming a "time killer" for global users. The Internet goes to sea "big wind and waves", "fish are also big".
Some people feel that the background of this year is "soil": although the road to the sea is changeable, the way to win without change is "localization". The road out to sea is dusty, and what is left in the end are those who can roll in the "soil". We see that "international indigenous peoples" such as Transsion and Chizicheng are taking root in more and more vast lands. They believe that the nine-story platform starts from tired "soil", and they also understand that if they want to grow up, they must have deep enough roots.
Some people think that the theme of this year is "broken": when everyone thinks that Amazon has the absolute right to speak, Chinese sellers can only passively "obey", SHEIN relies on independent station play to break through the constraints of the platform; when everyone defaults to Europe, America, Japan and South Korea are synonymous with the "quality" of the game, Miha you opened the door to the developed market with "Original God"... Mature tracks and markets are still running out of new players, and the traffic class is not solidified. The aura of Silicon Valley is dimming, and the upward channel of Chinese companies is getting wider and wider.
Not broken, not standing. This year has indeed experienced a tragic "baptism", and the entire industry seems to be more and more "volume", but in the eyes of some people, this is precisely the process of "good money expelling bad money". Because real gold is never afraid of fire refining, the more "rolled" the industry, the more sophisticated the quality of the product; the more rules, the healthier the way of operation. After baptism, there will be a new birth.
In any case, it is certain that in 2021, "going to sea" has become the biggest certainty in the Internet industry. And after experiencing this year of nirvana, in 2022, the industry is moving towards a new life...
1. Spotlight
At the end of the year and the beginning of the year, various overseas industry conferences arrived as scheduled.
Many overseas practitioners found that "the number of participants has obviously increased.". In addition to the peers who have already gone to sea, the investors who were originally domestic and wanted to know about going to sea, those who were ready to go to sea, and those who were watching from the shore came. Compared with the cold and niche in the early years, the 2021 Overseas Industry Summit is in full swing.
The Internet overseas industry, which has been developing for more than ten years, has heated up rapidly during this year.
Last year, a series of domestic policies such as "anti-monopoly", "interconnection" and "anti-addiction of minors" became the "sword of Damocles" hanging above the Internet giant. "Enclosure expansion" has become a thing of the past, and "low-key survival" has become the most important KPI.
Where are the new growth points? A series of policy guidelines vaguely give an answer:
In May, when Premier Li Keqiang went to Zhejiang to investigate local overseas enterprises, he proposed that Chinese enterprises and brands should better integrate into the international market and carry out free and fair trade.
In July, the Ministry of Commerce, the Cyberspace Administration of China and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly issued the Guidelines for Overseas Investment and Cooperation in the Digital Economy, encouraging digital economy enterprises to accelerate the layout of overseas R&D centers and product design centers, carry out international cooperation in the industrialization of digital technologies, and accelerate the docking and integration of foreign advanced technologies and domestic industrialization advantages.
In October, the Ministry of Commerce and 24 other departments jointly issued the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Trade in Services", which for the first time included "digital trade" in the development plan for trade in services, pointing out that it is necessary to seize the opportunities for the development of the digital economy and digital trade, actively support the trade of digital products, and create a good environment for digital products to go global...
On the one hand, the stock market with stricter supervision, on the other hand, the incremental market encouraged by the policy, how to choose is obvious. In 2021, "must go out" has become the consensus of almost everyone.
The action of the big factory is the most eye-catching. This year, the giants invariably stood up and released a clear signal of "globalization". Whether they have already gone out, are about to go out, or have gone out and hit a wall, they have all posed resolutely going to the sea.
First, Ali suddenly "changed the lineup", set up the "overseas digital business" section, and sent Jiang Fan, a core figure who had high hopes, to press the front. Subsequently, Tencent Games established Level Infinite, an overseas game distribution brand, with offices in Amsterdam and Singapore in the Netherlands, announcing that its business team has a global service scope.
Tencent Games has previously been "buying" overseas, and this year's series of layouts have been regarded by some as a signal of "personally coming down". After all, games are the focus of domestic regulation, and after several waves of policy tightening last year, overseas markets have become more important to Tencent.
Compared with Tencent's increase in overseas, Jiang Fan's going to sea has more intriguing meanings. For Ali, whether it is "Jiang Fan" or "going to sea", it is a keyword worth speculating on.
In fact, Ali has been overseas for several years. Its acquisition of Lazada was once the largest B2C e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia, but Lazada's development has not met expectations after being "taken over" by Ali, and has even been far behind by the latecomer Shopee. The major shareholder behind Shopee's parent company, Sea, is Ali's old rival in China, Tencent.
Source: iPrice website, data as of January 13, 2021
Not only e-commerce, Alipay's "copy global" plan has been repeatedly frustrated, UC and Vmate have been shut down, and Ali's attempts to go overseas in the financial and Internet fields have also suffered setbacks.
But Ali may have no choice. Its domestic e-commerce business has peaked, and from the second quarter of fiscal 2022 released by Ali, after deducting the revenue brought by the merger of Gaoxin retail, the revenue growth rate in the second quarter was only 16%, a record low since its listing in 2014. Therefore, despite repeated defeats, Ali could only try again, and handed over the burden of "changing his life against the sky" to Jiang Fan, who was good at breaking through.
Jiang Fan, Source: Alibaba
Although full of "last resort" meaning, this year, both super giants have raised the strategic priority of going to sea. Byte, Kuaishou, Xiaomi, Didi, Meituan, iQiyi, etc., are also accelerating the pace of globalization, because going overseas for growth has almost become the "Huashan Road" for Internet companies.
This year, going to sea has become a "must-answer question" for Internet companies, and it has also begun to become a high-frequency vocabulary written by the media and analysts.
Ten years of accumulation, a burst of time, the industry for the first time stood in the spotlight.
2. Growth
It is undeniable that the heating up of the industry is also closely related to the achievements of Chinese players going to sea this year.
This year, the giants and players who have been going to sea for many years are growing at an alarming rate and proving the possibility of Chinese companies succeeding in going to sea on various tracks.
The most conspicuous is ByteDance, which has ushered in a new milestone in overseas markets.
The latest data released by the American cloud network security service company shows that in 2021, TikTok has replaced Google as the world's most trafficked Internet product.
Overseas short video tracks, Chinese applications led by TikTok occupy the top spot in various markets. TikTok's penetration rate in North America is close to 40%, and Kuaishou's Kwai has a penetration rate of more than 20% in Latin America.
Looking at the entire pan-entertainment field, the outstanding performance is also the live broadcast product Bigo Live under the Huanju Group, and the social product MICO under the Naked City Technology. Bigo Live has long been ranked in the top 10 of the total revenue of Apple and Google Store, and MICO has entered the top 10 of the best-selling social apps in more than 100 countries. After "dominating" emerging markets such as Southeast Asia and the Middle East, in 2021, they have achieved good results in the European and American markets.
From the perspective of development rhythm, China's short video, live broadcast and other industries as a whole are 1-2 years ahead of overseas, coupled with the advantages of the Chinese team in content operation, so that TikTok and other pioneers are almost difficult to find opponents overseas, not only in terms of download volume, the old traffic giants are left behind, but also in the user time, popularity to achieve catch-up.
As the first Chinese Internet product to truly realize globalization, TikTok has become the third largest global traffic platform after Meta and Google, and is also becoming a new "highway" for other overseas enterprises.
We have reason to believe that TikTok's success in the international market has opened up not only its own market share, but also more possibilities for Chinese Internet companies on the international stage.
In addition to TikTok, shein's story has also been told frequently over the past year.
The cross-border e-commerce brand continues to create growth myths. In 2021, it topped the list of iOS shopping apps in more than 50 countries and first among Android shopping apps in more than a dozen countries. The latest data from market research firm Apptopia shows that SHEIN has successfully surpassed Amazon in the 2021 ranking of shopping app downloads.
SHEIN set a bold goal this year – to catch up with ZARA within two years.
In the past, the "fast fashion" brand represented by ZARA quickly responded to the popular elements of the big-name show and shortened the cycle of clothes from design to production and sales to about 30 days. Today, SHEIN relies on the information system to achieve full-chain, transparent and real-time control of the supply chain, shortening the delivery cycle to 7 days.
Rich products, new and fast, low unit price is the biggest feature of SHEIN, it can do more than 3,000 new models every day, the unit price of each product can be as low as a dozen dollars or even a few dollars, which allows consumers to achieve "shopping freedom" in the case of weak global consumption caused by the epidemic.
As a result, SHEIN stood out and successfully entered the European and American markets - in 2021, SHEIN surpassed ZARA and Uniqlo in Google searches, and became the most installed shopping app in the United States.
SHEIN's performance is a microcosm of China's cross-border e-commerce in the past year. The data shows that in 2021, the year-on-year growth rate of China's foreign trade exports exceeded 20%, not only breaking the abnormal growth rate of 15% set by the epidemic in 2020, but also contributing a staggering nearly 40% to GDP.
Another area where breakthroughs have been made is in games.
According to data released by Google, in the first half of 2021, the overseas game market share of Chinese developers reached 23.4%, surpassing Japan, which accounted for 17.6%, and becoming the world's first. In 2017, that number was just 10 percent.
Source: Google X App Annie 2021 Mobile Game Insight Report
The "counterattack" comes from the amazing growth rate. In the first half of 2021, Chinese games generated $8.1 billion in revenue in overseas markets, a growth rate of 47%, nearly twice the growth rate of the overall overseas game market (24%).
In the past few years, the publishing capacity and number of products of Chinese game companies have been repeatedly concerned, but when it comes to high-quality games, more Japanese, Korean, European and American products. Today, that's changing.
In 2021, many games such as "Original God", "Wilderness Action", and "PUBG Mobile" have performed prominently overseas in terms of turnover and evaluation, and continue to rank at the top of the free game revenue list in the United States, Japan and other countries. In particular, "Original God" has repeatedly topped the BEST-seller list of the US App Store, becoming the first Chinese mobile game product with a single quarterly revenue of more than 100 million yuan in the United States.
Source: 2021 Twitter China Overseas Leading Brands Report
In November 2021, the new characters "Shen He" and "Yun Yan" announced by "Original God" quickly appeared on Twitter hot search, and even led a group of foreigners to enthusiasm for Peking Opera.
This effect was unimaginable in the past. Chinese games have always been known for their ability to monetize commercially overseas, and their cultural influence has always been a shortcoming. If this bottleneck can be broken, Chinese games may enter a new stage.
Not only to seize the market, China's Internet companies are even "creating a market".
According to App Annie, overseas consumer spending on books and reference apps exceeded $980 million in the first half of 2021, up 65% compared to the first half of 2020.
Today, wangwen has become a big business overseas, and the main initiators of this business are Chinese companies. Palm reading and reading began to go to sea as early as 2015 and 2016, and under the catalysis of the epidemic, the global online text market ushered in an outbreak, which also attracted more players to enter.
In 2021, Byte and Xiaomi entered the market of online text through Fizzo and Wonderfic respectively, and Amazon also had to launch a fiction creation platform Kindle Vella to cope with the impact of online text apps.
According to the data, in 2021, the overseas users of Chinese online literature are expected to exceed 145 million, and the market size is expected to exceed 3 billion yuan.
With the growth of market size, online text going overseas has also changed from simple translation and copyright sales to ecological going to sea - cultivating local writers, producing overseas original content, and building a global original ecology. In the popularity list of some head platforms, overseas original works have accounted for as much as 40%.
In the early years, foreign users were madly fascinated by the world of "Xiu Xian" written by Chinese authors; now, on the platform built by Chinese companies, they chase the "werewolf" theme novels created by local authors in Europe and the United States to feel sad and happy...
2021 is a veritable "harvest year" for Chinese overseas enterprises, and more importantly, they have finally entered the core area of leading global trends and aesthetics from southeast Asia, India and other "five rings" - Developed markets such as Europe, america, Japan and South Korea.
These growths and breakthroughs will undoubtedly bring more confidence to those who come after.
3. Storm
It has to be said that although 2021 is "fruitful", it is not "smooth sailing". In fact, many industries are struggling to put pressure on them.
The first is pressure from overseas governments, especially the U.S. government.
In 2020, the Trump administration signed a ban on the download and use of apps such as TikTok and WeChat in the United States. The Indian government has also cracked down on chinese apps on a large scale, banning Chinese apps such as TikTok, WeChat, Kwai, and Eggplant Quickcom, while also hitting the confidence of Chinese companies going abroad to "go global".
Although biden lifted the ban on TikTok in June 2021, a new executive order to "conduct a broader security review of foreign software" was quickly introduced. Liu Dian, a scholar at the Chongyang Institute of Finance at Chinese University, said that the rise of Chinese Internet companies has challenged the global Internet hegemony of the United States, and the United States will always remain vigilant.
In addition, in the Middle East, the hot land of social entertainment, overseas enterprises have also encountered challenges from the policy level.
In 2021, Egypt requires the topic of licensing social products to make a splash in the industry. According to local media reports, unauthorized apps have been spreading toxic ideas with the intention of inciting unethical behavior. Destroy Egyptian social values and spread evil among members of society, especially young people. ”
It is understood that at least two social entertainment platforms from China have been rectified, and even some practitioners have been arrested and imprisoned.
Industry rumors suggest that Egypt may plan to join forces with the Arab League to set up a Media Oversight Committee to overhaul social apps from overseas or ban unlicensed social apps. This move is to maintain the local cultural atmosphere, but also to better control the tax.
In addition to the government, the pressure also comes from the controllers of overseas ecology - Meta, Google, Amazon and other big platforms.
Since 2017, Cheetah, TouchPal, Handi Mobile and other companies have successively experienced sanctions on platforms such as Google, and since then, the survival of these tool companies in overseas markets has become extremely difficult, and it has not improved much to this day.
In 2021, platform regulation of tools continues, or even more stringent. In September last year, Pixalate released the "Report on Removing Mobile Apps in the First Half of 2021", showing that Google Play and the App Store had more than 800,000 apps removed in the first half of 2021, and tool products were naturally the majority of them.
Not only the app store, but also the censorship and banning of Meta and Amazon have also brought a lot of trouble to sea companies.
In particular, cross-border e-commerce has become the hardest hit area for platform supervision in 2021.
In May last year, Amazon sent out a flat thunderclap, forcing more than 600 Chinese cross-border brands to leave, citing violations of platform rules, such as using inappropriate comment functions, asking consumers for fake reviews, and manipulating reviews through gift cards. In half a year, more than 50,000 Chinese sellers were banned by the platform, and the intensity of store closures was unprecedented.
In fact, swipes, small cards, abusive comments... It is the sellers on Amazon, especially the Chinese sellers, who have been a problem, and the platform has struck hard to close a number of cross-border brands and sellers, which has sounded the alarm for countless practitioners.
The data shows that 42% of Amazon's top sellers in 2020 are from China, and 63% of China's sellers on Amazon's US site. In 2021, there will be more than 600,000 cross-border e-commerce-related enterprises in China. The "store closure incident" has forced the entire industry to brake hard, and Wang Xin, executive president of the Shenzhen Cross-border E-commerce Association, expects that the industry will lose more than 100 billion yuan.
Among them, there are many large-scale cross-border brands such as Shushu and Zebao, which have suffered heavy losses. In July last year, Tianze Information, the parent company of a tree, said that there were about 340 new sites that were blocked or frozen in 2021, and among the restricted funds on the Amazon platform, the known tree was suspected of freezing funds of about 130 million yuan, and the company laid off 1,400 people.
However, under the storm, there are also some companies that stand firm.
Anker Innovation, which is also rooted in Amazon, reached 8.143 billion yuan in overseas revenue in the first three quarters of 2021, an increase of 36.91% year-on-year. Anker has basically not been affected by the suspension, and still occupies the position of "bellwether" in the 3C category in Amazon.
Once upon a time, Anker Innovation, Patterson and Zebao were the three Chinese companies with the brightest sales performance on Amazon, but after experiencing the tide of rectification of the platform last year, only Anker Innovation was still operating in stores.
An Anker employee explained that Anker was exempt from punishment because "Anker has a deeper understanding of amazon community rules and more thorough enforcement."
David, a cross-border e-commerce practitioner, told xiaguangshe that Amazon's "wave of banning" has caused a huge shock in the cross-border e-commerce circle, but the brands that really do a good job in products and compliance management have not been affected, but have gained more market space.
A similar situation occurs in the Middle East social market.
Although the Middle East strengthened the supervision of overseas apps in 2021, the social overseas company Chizicheng Technology successfully obtained the No. 001 social license issued by the Egyptian government in this year, and it is also the only Local Internet social license issued so far.
It is understood that the products of ICO and YoHo under Chizicheng Technology have done a very good job in data privacy and content review. In the Middle East, they review unhealthy content through a combination of technology and humanity, and have established training mechanisms for content creators. In addition, its efforts in public welfare in recent years have also won the favor of the local government.
MICO initiated donations to local poor families during Eid al-Adha in the Middle East
Therefore, in the face of various changes and invasions in the outside world, the real defense can only "do yourself well".
"In the future, for enterprises that do not have long-term deep ploughing overseas 'from toC to toB to toG capabilities', the barriers and costs of going to sea will be much higher than short-term benefits." A CEO of a company going abroad told KasumitsuSha.
4. Baptism
In the sea industry in 2021, some people are shining, and some people are out of the market. What has caused this situation is not only the pressure of external supervision, but also the baptism of internal competition.
In 2021, the industry is heating up rapidly, but the experience of history tells us that when the giants pay attention to a certain track, it is the most fierce competition in this track; and when the giants begin to enter the field and exert their strength, the "blue ocean" is also becoming the "red ocean".
In fact, the threshold for going to sea in 2021 has become significantly higher, and competition is obviously intensifying.
In the eyes of evan, a practitioner at sea, the key word in 2021 is "volume". He said that it is becoming more and more difficult to simply buy for growth, more and more products, users are becoming more and more picky, products are hard and easy to be eliminated, "it is no longer the time to make money with your eyes closed."
David told Xiaguang She, the illegal merchants targeted by Amazon this time have a characteristic: the category is highly alternative.
For Amazon, after banning such merchants, the GMV of this category on the platform will not change much, and Amazon's self-operated brands will also grow; for other sellers, the sales of their own products have also increased.
In addition to compliance, another important reason for Anker's ability to maintain growth is that in the past two years, it has continued to expand its category and expand its market scope, and to a certain extent, it has also avoided "volume" with other Chinese companies on Amazon's single platform.
"Chinese cross-border sellers have experienced the double days of ice and fire in just one year, which is essentially an inevitable trend after the end of the barbaric growth stage of the e-commerce industry." David said.
Not only e-commerce, in 2021, many tracks are transitioning from "barbaric growth" to "orderly competition".
For example, in the game track, "boutique" and "branding" have become the key to product breakthrough, and even have to make choices.
If you want to achieve high-quality products, you must increase investment in research and development. Lilith CEO Wang Xinwen said that the current team is "often the size of more than 100 people", and the former "workshop-style" production model is becoming more and more unfeasible.
An exaggerated statistic is that over the past year, global game makers have invested 16 times in the budget invested in brand advertising. Talent marketing, game live broadcasting and other means are becoming more and more popular.
Some practitioners said that in the early days, due to the production and research capacity and cost constraints, the quality of overseas games was poor, and they also took the route of short-term harvesting of buying quantities. However, in recent years, the quality of games and long-term operation have become a trend, which means that in addition to buying, it is necessary to increase the order of organic users and the overall payment value through brand strategy. "I've always wanted to do it, and now is the time."
Another example is social entertainment, under the intensification of competition, "localization" has become a compulsory course based on overseas markets.
In September this year, TikTok's monthly active users exceeded 1 billion, becoming the world's most visited Internet platform in 2021. In contrast, Kuaishou's overseas figure is slightly lonely.
In August 2021, Kuaishou Internationalization Division launched a product merger campaign code-named "Trinity", merging three originally independent applications of Kwai Middle East, Latin America and Snack Video, which focuses on the Southeast Asian market, into one Kwai product. At the same time, the organizational structure of Kuaishou's overseas business has also ushered in an adjustment.
This is already the fourth time that Kuaishou has adjusted its overseas business, but it is not optimistic in terms of results. After more than 5 years of going to sea, Kuaishou's overseas business has still not improved greatly, and it has been repeatedly hit by Waterloo, forming a strong contrast with its biggest competitor TikTok.
Source: "Short video industry special topic of the sea - the time for the long wind and waves"
"We have done it for 56 nationalities, so what is so difficult about going to sea to do dozens of countries?" At a meeting of the overseas products department at the end of 2017, Su Hua was full of confidence and told the crowd. However, in the process of going to sea, Kuaishou's localization homework is obviously not as good as that of its opponents.
And TikTok's localization efforts are well known in the industry. From the perspective of the team alone, Byte has opened offices around the world, recruited people from major companies in Silicon Valley, and created a "local executive team", providing a solid guarantee for TikTok's global development.
Naked City Technology successfully obtained a license in the Middle East, also thanks to its solid localization capabilities, and the company was also called "International Indigenous" by the media. Its CEO has said that social going to sea should take "ten years" as the smallest unit, do business planning rooted in the local area, and in terms of organizational collaboration, they believe in "forward decision-making".
At present, TikTok is still accelerating its global layout. In the eyes of some practitioners, TikTok has produced a "siphon effect" in the industry.
The so-called "siphon effect" is the phenomenon that a product attracts all the resources of other regions, making itself more attractive than other products, and continuing and strengthening the process.
TikTok is becoming the preferred launch platform for domestic overseas products, but at the same time, it has also made overseas companies more and more "volume".
Looking back, in 2021 in the overseas industry, "external pressure" and "inner volume" run through the whole year.
A series of storms and baptisms also told the entire industry: only by practicing internal skills in product innovation, channel development, policy compliance, local operations and other aspects can we catch "big fish" in the "big winds and waves" like "TikToks".
5. New students
After nirvana, the overseas market in 2021 is also ushering in a new life.
Some industries have accelerated their entry into the right track after the reshuffle, and new ways of playing, new channels, and new opportunities have also quietly emerged.
David said: "The Amazon suspension incident has alerted many practitioners and will also drive the healthier development of the entire industry. For the supervision of the Middle East government, Li Yue, a social overseas practitioner, also said: "The policy is good in the long run, will play a role in regulating the industry, guiding healthy competition, and can promote platform production and precipitating healthier and better quality content." ”
It can be seen that cross-border e-commerce is exploring and nurturing new channels after experiencing the darkest moment.
The epidemic has brought a decade-old wave of industry to e-commerce, with Chinese cross-border sellers accounting for 70% of Amazon's new 290,000 new sellers in the first half of 2021. After experiencing the "wave of suspensions", more sellers began to pay attention to new channels.
In order to avoid the risks posed by a single platform, they chose to supplement the independent station to get rid of their dependence on Amazon and further strengthen the brand. By setting up a standalone station, let users remember these cross-border brands, rather than looking for a certain type of goods on the platform. According to Deloitte's "Asia-Pacific Digital Trade under Technology Empowerment" report released by Deloitte in late 2021, 24% of Chinese sellers have set up independent stations, and 47% of sellers have not built a website but have intentions.
Source: Deller research "Asia-Pacific Digital Trade under the Empowerment of Science and Technology"
In addition, ByteDance launched a cross-border e-commerce App - Fanno, which burst the cross-border circle as soon as it was launched. At present, Fanno is mainly for European countries, does not do self-operation, and only provides platform support for third-party sellers, and a large number of cross-border brands have new choices.
In addition, TikTok, which is regarded as the "starting point of global video e-commerce", has also accelerated its layout in the e-commerce field.
In November last year, TikTok Shopping increased its investment policies in Guangdong, such as the new British cross-border e-commerce merchants who settled in November, enjoying all order commission-free incentives for 90 days, and providing free shipping and shipping subsidies for orders. An electric toothbrush merchant present said that they were discussing TikTok internally, and the consensus was that "the night is not as good as the morning, sooner or later it will be on."
Needless to say, both TikTok Shopping and Fanno will be supported by TikTok's huge traffic pool, which will become a new platform for cross-border brands to focus on, and it will also be a platform that is friendlier to Chinese sellers.
New opportunities and benefits have also emerged on other tracks, including the most "rolled" game tracks.
On the one hand, "channel fee reduction" allows small and medium-sized players to reduce the cost of trial and error. On the other hand, "IP + gameplay integration" is becoming a new growth point for games to go global.
Under the wave of global anti-monopoly, the "Apple tax" and "Google tax" that have been criticized by the industry have been lowered. Following Apple's new policy for small businesses and indie developers in 2020, Google also announced last year that the service fee for all subscriptions on Google Play will be reduced from the previous 30% to 15% from January 1, 2022.
These policies of Google and Apple are beneficial to small and medium-sized developers, especially developers of content-based products such as games. The development cycle of such products is longer, and more research and development costs and operating costs need to be invested. Some game developers have feedback, "Google channel fee halving is good for self-development and signing products, and the reduction of the commission gives small and medium-sized companies more opportunities for trial and error." ”
According to the data, the actual sales revenue of China's self-developed games in overseas markets in 2021 reached 18.013 billion US dollars, an increase of 2.563 billion US dollars over 2020. Zhongtai Securities estimates that by 2024, the potential scale of the overseas game market will be about 4.5 times that of the current domestic game overseas revenue, and there is a huge potential room for improvement.
Riding on the "East Wind" of halving channel fees, game companies have gained more possibilities to create high-quality games such as SLG and RPG, and there are also more opportunities to IP their own games.
Gamma Data mentioned in the "2021 Global Mobile Game Market Chinese Enterprise Competitiveness Report" that it has created the music elements of well-known games such as "Happy And Happy", because the IP advantage has successfully nugged gold in the Japanese market, and it is expected that the game "Ensemble Stars" under the music element is expected to be happy elements! Music (Idol Dream Festival 2) will generate more than 1 billion yuan in revenue in the Japanese market in 2021.
The music element continuously enhances the popularity of the "Idol Dream Festival" IP in various ways. So far, the "Idol Dream Festival" IP has held 15 theme concerts, including 3D CG Live concerts, voice actor Live concerts, 2.5-dimensional stage concerts, etc., and has held many tours in many cities, with an average number of participants exceeding 30,000 per session.
The IP of games can not only form a subdivision category advantage, but also cultivate loyal user groups, continue to develop and launch a series of game products under the IP matrix, and also obtain IP operation income by carrying out IP-related offline performances, authorized cooperation, and launching peripheral goods.
Last year, Mihayou's "Original God" launched a "partner plan" on Twitch, and some insiders analyzed that for games of this size, the next step is to develop IP and precipitate the brand influence of the game. The continuous growth of NetEase's game revenue also depends on the sustainable operation of original IP to provide incremental revenue, such as Harry Potter: Magical Awakening.
The tool track that has gone through successive ups and downs has not collapsed, but has shown new vitality in this year.
In October 2021, App Annie launched the "China Non-Game Manufacturers and Apps Overseas List". What is surprising is that on the list of revenue Top 30, tool manufacturers account for 1/3, and Ruiqi Software and Hehe Information are among the best.
In the early years, many tool products that went to sea had wandered in the gray area, the monetization method was rough, and the user stickiness was low. In the past two years, some tool manufacturers have snuggled down to change and achieved breakthroughs in product models, demand insights, and monetization paths.
"In the past, tools were almost all advertising monetization, and even many used 'forced pop-up' and the like, but now tools are beginning to move towards refined operations and deeply cultivate services." A practitioner who went to sea told Xiaguangshe, "This year it is obvious that many tools are monetized through in-app purchases, and some extend to the hardware field. ”
In fact, the need for "tool classes" has always existed, but the specific direction of demand has changed.
This year, document scanning, plant recognition, meditation, parent-child and other types of tool products are rejuvenating, and even began to form a brand, occupy the user's mind.
In addition to the evolution of various segments, in 2021, there is a common new sign in the entire industry - the increased emphasis on "localization".
Some practitioners believe that localization is also becoming a trend for games to go global: "Overseas distribution has gradually entered the Red Sea market, in order to seek differentiation, many game manufacturers have begun to consider the localization of art styles, and whether the game content is suitable for local culture and religious beliefs, focusing on the localization from language versions to cultural fit and even worldview localization." ”
Going deep into the local area has even become a problem for tool manufacturers. A reporter in the overseas industry once said that in the process of contacting and communicating with tool manufacturers such as Xiaoying and Meitu, she found that they did a very good job in local market research.
Over the past year, it seems that all the overseas players have been talking about "localization", and competition and change have also tempered the localization ability of the entire industry. They continue to accumulate experience in adapting to the local market, pleasing local users, opening up local industry resources, and facing the local government, becoming more and more like "local enterprises".
This is the 2021 of the sea industry: writing glory, gathering eyes, experiencing wind and waves, and blooming in the wind and waves.
As for the future, the people who go to sea believe that the road is obstructed and long, but the line is coming.