Image source @ Visual China
Text | Intelligent Relativity, author | XL
Many manufacturers like to create a new concept to serve as the memory point of their own products, just like LeTV's "ecological anti" and hammer's "infinite screen" a long time ago. But Glory as a latecomer is very interesting, it canceled the shutdown of advertising such a point as "users are more important than making money", to shape itself into the industry 'clear stream'.
According to the "2021 Smart TV Switch-on Advertising Survey Report" released by the People's Network Finance and Economics Research Institute, the consideration after the picture quality and price when buying a TV is "whether there is a boot advertisement", and as many as 83.84% of consumers regard "boot advertising is too long" as a pain point.
Among the imported brands, SONY, Panasonic, Samsung, LG open screen without advertising, and there is a glorious smart screen in the domestic TV. It can be said that the glory wisdom screen is to set up a very "positive" value label for itself in the "improper" atmosphere. From the user's point of view, removing the on-off advertisement may be just a small function that is popular, but does this represent a higher dimension of product thinking for manufacturers? What is Glory's strategy of abandoning this cake and breaking the unspoken rules of the industry?
"Put long lines and catch big fish"
Judging from the current situation of the industry, there is chaos in TV switch-on advertising. The legal provisions stipulate this, such as requiring manufacturers to limit the start-up advertisement to a certain period of time and informing consumers on packaging. However, on the one hand, this disguised recognition of the legitimacy of the existence of on-off advertising, on the other hand, the actual effect of the constraint is not satisfactory.
In the above report, the proportion of smart TV advertisements longer than 30 seconds was 32.83%, the proportion of smart TV advertisements exceeding 1 minute was 18.17%, and the proportion of smart TV advertisements exceeding 30 seconds was only 16.18%. And consumers do not have enough right to know and choose, 84.85% of consumers only found out that there is a boot advertisement when using it, and 86.09% of the manufacturers did not set a one-click close button for boot advertising.
Since the launch of the smart screen in 2019, Honor has taken "no advertising on and off the machine" as the main highlight. This concept continues on the smart screen X2 43-inch new product.
In fact, there is a certain basis for the on-off advertising. Smart TV replacement cycle is long, domestic TV manufacturers hardware profits are not high, and switch advertising can bring considerable profit space, and even can be said that manufacturers can only "lie and earn" business. Taking the example of millet, it is probably possible to understand why domestic manufacturers are so reluctant to this cake.
According to the 2021 H1 financial report released by Xiaomi, the total revenue of Xiaomi Internet in the second quarter reached 7.033 billion yuan, accounting for 8% of the total revenue. Among them, the advertising revenue of Internet services benefited from the increase in hardware shipments, reaching 4.5 billion yuan, an increase of 46.2% year-on-year. The data is considerable and more sustainable than the hardware profits.
So why does Glory have the courage to give up this part of the "unreasonable profit"? According to the meaning revealed by the official, it can be summarized in one sentence: take a long-term view.
In the planning of Glory, the smart screen is placed in the key position of the smart ecology, which is not only a single function of the video and audio TV, but a terminal of ecological interconnection and scene integration, which is the transformation of the glory business thinking - compared with the advertising that reduces the user experience to make profits, the interconnection ecology behind the smart screen may have more long-tail value.
Now that this shift has been made, the user's experience must be put in the first place, and the "soft" experience of canceling advertising needs to be combined with the "hard" power of the configuration.
Take the glory smart screen X2 43-inch new products, because of the relatively small size, it is more suitable for young people and renters who nest in the bedroom every day. In order to ensure the experience, the audio and picture quality is equipped with 1.07 billion colors of full-color screen, but also developed a magic picture quality engine, support HDR high dynamic range, HSY intelligent precision color grading and other technologies; intelligent interaction, the voice command coverage of page elements is greater than 95%; multi-screen collaboration, mobile phones, tablets, notebooks can be wirelessly cast screens, support for picture, video transmission and multi-terminal collaboration.
Glory gave such an attitude: it should get rid of the old road of advertising profitability, and instead adhere to the user's thinking and tap deeper potential on the road of interconnection ecology.
The battlefield of the Internet of Everything
As we all know, the Internet of Everything has become a must for Internet hardware manufacturers, and the competitive landscape is changing.
Honor has long had a "1+8+N" strategic layout, which can currently realize the "five-screen linkage" between mobile phones, PCs, tablets, smart screens, and watches, and aims to break the four boundaries of categories, bottom layers, ecology and scenes in the future, and incorporate more intelligent devices into the interconnection center. But achieving this goal requires a very high threshold, demand insight and underlying technical power are indispensable, how far has Glory stepped on this road?
Specifically from the perspective of its competitors, Huawei, Xiaomi and OPPO, which entered the game later, have the most reference value.
According to the data of Zhongyikang, from January to July 2021, the cumulative sales scale of Huawei TV on the online end was 167.1 thousand units, with a market share of 1.7%, ranking 12th in the market; the cumulative sales scale of Honor TV was 149.5 thousand units, with a market share of 1.5%, and the market ranked 13th, which can be described as no difference.
But the two product positioning directions are different. Reflected in the configuration, that is, Huawei's smart screen is more advanced, belonging to the high-end, high-end positioning: for example, it has a 120Hz high brush (Honor Smart Screen X2 is 60Hz), 500 ~ 1000nit peak brightness (Honor 280nit brightness), 3 \4GB running memory + 16\64GB body memory (Honor X2 is 2GB running + 16GB body memory), and also carries a high-performance 4-core processor + 4-core GPU (Honor X2 is a 4-core processor + dual-core GPU).
It is said that Huawei's smart screen can be equipped with a 24 million \ 13 million pixel specification AI camera, and the honor smart screen has enough differentiation - honor smart screen X1 4G memory version (2022 model), honor smart screen X1/ X2 series, there is no camera.
Therefore, the "Intelligent Relativity" believes that "the glory of smart screens seize the Huawei TV market" is inaccurate. The price of the new glory smart screen is still close to the people (65-inch smart screen X2 offers 2699 yuan, 55-inch 1999 yuan), combined with the configuration has been quite sincere. At the same time, there is also a blessing at the after-sales service level - giving away a three-year warranty, etc., this kind of road, comparable is the main cost-effective millet.
According to zhongyikang data, from January to July 2021, the cumulative sales scale of xiaomi TVs on the online end was 2207.7 thousand units, with a market share of 21.9%, ranking first in the market, and has the brand appeal accumulated by relying on the cost-effective strategy.
Interestingly, the Glory Smart Screen Series and the Xiaomi TV 5 Series had a "disassembly battle", which was caused by Lu Weibing, the head of the Redmi series, who posted a blog questioning the false propaganda of the Honor Smart Screen "6 * 10W". At that time, the disassembly machine was involved in the glory smart screen (55 inches), the glory smart screen Pro (55 inches) honor smart screen X1 (65 inches), the disassembly compared to the Xiaomi TV 5 (55 inches, 75 inches), xiaomi TV 5 Pro (55 inches, 75 inches), xiaomi full screen E65A (65 inches).
Before the dismantling, online public opinion sidedly supported Xiaomi 5, but the follow-up video came out, "Xiaomi was crushed by the glory smart screen" was basically recognized by insiders, and the dismantling of the machine also had a tangible impact on the sales of Xiaomi TV.
Take the Jingdong platform, before the dismantling of the Xiaomi TV 5 series Jingdong self-operated comments is about 3W, the smart screen is only about 5000. After the dismantling, the sales of the honor smart screen series involved have ushered in a significant increase on the Internet, and many netizens said that it was only after watching the dismantling machine that it was "planted" and then purchased the glory smart screen.
As for oppo smart TV, it basically exists as a negative teaching material. According to GFK data, OPPO TV ranks about 20th in the color TV market, with a market share of less than 1%, and the brand's voice and recognition are almost negligible.
OPPO TV business can not afford to make waves, on the one hand, the pricing strategy is embarrassing, oppo TV online average price reached 5457 yuan, much higher than the glory of 3098 yuan and millet 2317 yuan, and the brand and product can not match such a high pricing.
It should be known that the average online price of traditional giants such as Hisense and TCL is only about 3,000 yuan, and the Samsung of foreign capital is 5650 yuan. The OPPO product itself is not technically strong enough, lack of differentiated highlights, for example, in its 75-inch products, it is still relying on MediaTek's chip technology to achieve picture decoding, and the screen has no mid-range TV has become the standard partition light control, and its picture quality can be imagined.
On the other hand, OPPO's layout in AIoT is late and the strategy is not clear enough, the role of TV in the AIoT strategy is not prominent, and there is no overall strategy to advance to drive the development of the TV business, which is also the point that Glory is trying to avoid, or need to narrow, the gap with Xiaomi.
Through the comparison, the glory smart screen positioning is clear, the hardware passes, the price advantage has not been turned on and off advertising, so why can the Xiaomi TV still have the market share of the first place? In addition to the rich full product line, there is another important reason, that is, the ecology of millet has risen.
As of 2021H1, Xiaomi has achieved 374.5 million AIot connected devices, an increase of 34% year-on-year. Imagine if the washing machine, air conditioner, sweeping robot, door lock, etc. at home are all millet, is it strange or even blocked to buy a glory TV in the living room? At least until now, the number of families equipped with Xiaomi smart homes has clearly surpassed honor and Huawei.
Nowadays, many smart TVs are mentioning the concept of "living room entertainment center", "smart home control center" and "family information hub". But at present, in addition to the "living room entertainment center", several other "centers" are not a reality. Especially in the dimension of "smart home control center", smart TVs have to face the two opponents of smart speakers and smart home central control. In the smart speaker, there are giants such as Ali, Baidu, and Xiaomi, and the smart home central control has strong latecomers such as Oribo.
However, letting the TV control other smart devices in the home, which differs from smart speakers, sounds only in the form of interaction. And there is an additional challenge: now smart home appliances are all in their own formation, brands are incompatible with each other and lack the motivation to be compatible with each other, how to solve the problems caused by this?
As a new category of smart home, the "smart home control center" faces the problem of overlapping functions with other terminals and compatibility with other homes, and the "home information hub" appears to float in the cloud due to the lack of use scenarios.
"Concept is greater than reality" is not the first time that Glory Wisdom Screen has faced doubts. The cancellation of the on-off advertising can bring word-of-mouth and short-term sales win-win, while deepening the consumer's memory point, there is a kind of ingenuity to be small and broad, but how to solve the above problems and realize the vision of glory for the smart screen is the answer that really needs to be found from the construction of the interconnection ecology.
Whether the nature of "no ads" can stand up to scrutiny
During last year's Double Eleven promotion, the sales and sales of the Honor Smart Screen X2 65-inch single product won the double championship of Jingdong Home Appliances. If this is to give up the profit of the boot ads in exchange for more users, it is also a good deal.
But subjectively divergent, the glorious deal may be much more cost-effective than the above. For example, the glory smart screen dares to decisively abandon the on-off advertising, in addition to the user's favorability, will it also be because it makes the advertising profit point in a more ingenious place?
Let's follow the viewing process to and from this direction. Boot into the main page, the entire Hongmeng OS is smooth and clean, the entrance of the three mainstream video applications Mango TV, Cool Meow TV, and Aurora TV have achieved the top menu of the first screen. However, when used, it was found that the built-in video software of the smart screen did not have Galaxy Kiwifruit (iQiyi), nor did it have Bilibili, which was loved by some young people. To solve this problem, users need to take a USB stick to install third-party applications.
This deliberate exclusivity is not new, and Skyworth also kicked Aurora TV out of the field. So the main page of the above three mainstream video applications, which film and which variety show to put on the home page resources, and traffic distribution are also the glory to decide?
More importantly, although Honor has been stripped from Huawei, the Honor Smart Screen is still bound to the Huawei account, which basically means that the Honor Smart Screen can still grasp accurate user portraits. So can it be imagined that even if the smart screen advertisement is not done in the boot interface, it is easy to do it on the home page of the video application? Can I customize an advertisement with thousands of faces based on user portraits?
If it is such a model, it can probably be understood like this: domestic TV is like a "greasy tongue" salesman, who loves to use open-screen advertising to "bombard" users, while Glory uses technology to give advertising more possibilities, add layers of packaging to themselves, and make more money with a sense of sincerity and less copper odor.
After all, business is not about charity. But in any case, leaving aside the assumptions of these executives, the glory smart screen gives up the revenue of the on-off advertising, which really requires courage, and indeed sets up a much-needed benchmark for the industry.
You know, china's TV industry in 2021 has not reversed its decline. The data shows that from January to September 2021, the retail volume of China's color TV market fell by 16%, showing a downward trend for 7 consecutive months.
TV manufacturers have been shouting for many years to "return to the living room", and have also done many innovations in various aspects, and consumers do not pay much for it. As the first smart TV manufacturer in China to switch on and off without advertising, Honor deserves a rare sentence and expectation, after all, it conveys a concept to the market for consumers:
Consumers prefer to see TV makers make changes in some of the places that really improve the user experience, rather than price wars and peer battles.
References: "2021W35 Weekly Study: Smartphone Brands Enter the Traditional TV Industry Review", Tianfeng Securities