The author | Jiarong
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In 2005, china's internet users exceeded 100 million for the first time, and there are countless stories in the Internet.
That was the era when PC-side channels were king.
After the online game "Journey" was launched, Lu Yonghua, vice president of the company (later renamed Giant Network), led the branch manager to start the street sweeping movement in the second and third lines. At that time, in addition to pulling banners and posting advertisements, in order to quickly occupy the computer desktop, the game company did not hesitate to go out of the computer in the Internet café under the wallet for gamers to try games for free.
In order not to waste the opportunity of "charter flights", the giant began publicity three days in advance. Other peers generally only charter one day, and Giant Network will definitely charter two days. It was by capturing the user's mind that "Journey" became the first online game that most people in that era came into contact with.
Such a "stupid method" is inseparable from huge manpower, and in 2008, the giant's ground push team has exceeded 3,000 people.
With the deployment of 3G mobile networks and the emergence of smart phones, the Internet access capabilities of mobile intelligent terminals have been greatly enhanced, major Internet companies have scrambled to seize the entrance, and mobile Internet applications have exploded.
Lei Jun once said bluntly at the 2010 Global Mobile Internet Conference: "In the next decade, mobile phones will replace computers." "But twelve years have passed, and the PC side has a tendency to rebound from the trough."
On January 19, Douyin launched a PC client version in the Lenovo Software Store, or because it has previously been launched on the Web side, the Douyin PC side did not set off any splash. Coincidentally, Kuaishou has also been equipped with PC clients and web terminals, and the "national application" WeChat is also constantly improving the PC-side ecology.
In the wave of the mobile revolutionary desktop era, Lei Jun is not the only one who bets on the code App. But with the expansion of more scenarios, the market no longer dares to say which basket can put all the eggs.
01 PC counter-attack is imminent?
There is no doubt that the portability of mobile phones in the mobile era is undoubtedly its strong barrier, but with the broadening of the track, several major super apps on the Internet have been launched on the PC side recently, and Internet players are not satisfied with only mastering "convenience".
Under the user's "slide and slide" interaction habit, is it superfluous to regain the computer in the mobile era? The so-called "merchants do not do loss-making business", behind the online PC side is inseparable from the anxiety of the mobile phone terminal and the possibility of the PC side.
With the increase in mobile Internet penetration, as of September 2021, the total scale of mobile Internet users in China has reached 1.167 billion, although it has broken through the record high, but the growth rate has also shown a slowdown trend. Internet traffic has faced a growth ceiling, and it is imperative to dig deep into the value of existing users.
Occupying the PC side is undoubtedly the first choice for the development of stock advantages, which also makes the value of computer desktops re-examined.
Once upon a time, weChat positioning "mobile social applications" in order to strengthen the stickiness of the mobile phone end, in the early stage of the online computer end made it more dependent on the cooperation of mobile terminal applications, such as logging on to the PC side every day must use the mobile end to scan the code, but with the strong demand for the PC side, WeChat also put down the "obsession", and constantly improved the "independence" function of the PC side, in addition to letting go of the "automatic login device", but also constantly opened the circle of friends, video number and other entrances.
Compared with the limited visual range of the mobile terminal, how to adapt the layout of the page is crucial, and the visual range of the PC side as a complete terminal has provided more possibilities for the design and interaction of the software.
After kuaishou and Douyin were launched, the user's video viewing habits were brought into the "vertical screen era", at that time, Snapchat, a photo sharing application comparable to the instgram, also found that the advertising completion of the vertical screen video was 9 times higher than that of the horizontal screen video, but it was also difficult to show the large-scene visual effect due to the limited vertical visual range.
Games are no exception, even in the period of rapid development of mobile games, Ding Lei also bluntly said that "users' love and loyalty to PC games, as well as the experience of large screens, are not replaced by mobile games." ”
Taking the viewing data of the opening ceremony of this year's Winter Olympic Games as an example, although the mobile phone terminal has launched the Olympic live broadcast, the vertical screen of the mobile phone is difficult to meet the user's experience of watching horizontal video. Conviva, developer of video analytics technology, pointed out that at the opening ceremony of this year's Winter Olympics, large-screen devices such as smart TVs, connected TVs and game consoles accounted for about half of the viewing time.
In recent years, the growth trend of large-screen consumption has been rapid. Some insiders have pointed out that the horizontal screen is more suitable for professional production content, and the vertical screen video may show the characteristics of "short". Under the successive layout of Kuaishou and Douyin in the field of pan-knowledge, the PC side undoubtedly provides a basic "large-screen hardware" for its development of horizontal video and medium-long video.
The web version of Douyin has achieved "slip a slide"
In addition, although the current Web version of Kuaishou still relies on the traditional mouse to "click a little", the Web version of Douyin has enabled users to watch videos by "sliding and sliding". This means that with the breakthrough of technology, the PC side has broken through the moat of the interactive experience advantage of the mobile terminal.
There are also major bottlenecks in the data storage space and battery life on the mobile side. Under the homogenization of video App and video account content, WeChat video number relies on the identity of "national social software", compared with independent Apps do not occupy too much data storage space, will not be too threatened, and Kuaishou, Douyin can not lie down straight.
In terms of PC and mobile phone development costs, Xue Tao, a former P7 technical expert of Alibaba Group, told "New Entropy" that in the same business context, the program complexity and maintenance costs of the two are not different, but from the perspective of client programs, mobile apps need to consider the difference in operating systems, Anroid, iOS client programs need to use different languages to achieve, the cost is more expensive.
As far as the current technical conditions of some professional software are concerned, the operability of the PC side is indeed better, such as CAD drawing, Maya and other professional media design software, even if it can provide auxiliary and convenient functions through the mobile app, "but there is no doubt that it is difficult to imagine that you can complete these complex tasks on mobile devices." ”
02 "Desktop regression" or pseudo-proposition
Internet applications are like a reincarnation of the "favor" of PC and mobile apps.
Once during the period of rapid expansion of the mobile Internet, the market predicted that the "PC is dead" sound hustle and bustle dust. With several major super Apps including WeChat, Kuaishou, and Douyin dominating the mobile terminal to being launched on the PC side in recent years, the market cannot help but speculate that the next battlefield will return from mobile phones to desktops.
However, although there are these head traffic players "playing the front station", in Xue Tao's view, "mobile APP return to the PC side" has a certain pseudo-proposition component in it. The word "regression" is inevitably a bit "exaggerated" under the current APP online PC side has not become mainstream.
Xue Tao told "New Entropy" that the user's experience and the scale of user payment determine the developer's willingness to invest. "At present, some software is really not suitable for porting to the PC side, mainly in the difference in the operability of the device."
Mobile products have unlimited usage scenarios, high flexibility and fragmentation, which is unattainable on the PC side. Therefore, programs with high requirements for the convenience of the use of the scene and low difficulty of use, such as Meitu Xiuxiu, Taobao and i-time social software, are more suitable for installation on mobile phones.
The picture shows an e-sports mobile phone
And even game manufacturers with extremely high requirements for device performance and PC graphics cards cannot relax the battlefield of mobile terminals. Black Shark, ROG and Red Devils are eyeing the niche blue ocean of esports game phones. From the smoothness of the screen, the wider color gamut, to the hard-core processor, they are striving to narrow the gap with the PC hardware device.
On the other hand, cloud games based on cloud computing enable games to run in the cloud, transmit to the terminal in the form of video streams and then play freely through client decoding, which further reduces the configuration requirements of terminal hardware.
Although the Internet mobile phone has reached the traffic ceiling, the essence behind both the user and the traffic growth demand is how to monetize. QustMobile has predicted that the size of China's Internet advertising market will reach 636.33 billion yuan in 2022, of which mobile Internet advertising will account for 88.3%, PC advertising will account for only about 4.5%, and even less than 7.1% of OTT and smart hardware advertising.
The mobile terminal has such a hard-core monetization ability, and the PC side still has a lot of room for growth on the way to becoming a "golden rice bowl", and the mobile terminal is naturally still the focus of Internet development. In contrast, the manufacturers that currently occupy computer desktops, from WeChat, Kuaishou, Douyin, etc., are all riveting enough to occupy the user's mind on the mobile desktop, and then use the PC side as a scene supplement and as a secondary growth pole.
In Xue Tao's view, the deep reason for the return of some software is that it cannot bring a good experience to users. "Without practical application value, it loses commercial value." Rather than a regression, we think of it as a reaction to the developer's failed attempts on it, but the courage of this attempt is something to be appreciated, and the emergence of problems will promote technological progress. ”
Although there are currently mainstream apps competing for the FIRST to launch the PC side, and even the trend of competing for computer desktops. In a sense, the manufacturers who land on the PC side are more like a weather vane, allowing the market to re-examine the value of the PC side, but it is too early to conclude that the mobile phone software will return to the PC.
03 Full-scene battle of the inner volume
At the moment when the traffic dividend is gradually peaking, whether it is a mobile app or a PC application or a subdivided Web end, it seems that it cannot meet the ambitions of Internet players, so it has become an urgent need to develop and compete for more scenarios.
According to the traffic formula circulating on the Internet: "traffic = number of users x user duration", this is not the era when mobile Internet players make a lot of money in the huge pool of new user traffic, and now players are trying to find ways or from algorithm recommendations, or targeting private domains, the purpose is nothing more than to retain users and increase user time.
The scramble for "incremental" has never stopped. In the past, it was to find incremental users, or sink from first- and second-tier cities or target the high-end market. But when the user growth dividend peaks, the future increase of the Internet will explore more scenarios. With the development of more scenes, players who were previously calm cannot sit still.
The dual option of "mobile phone or computer" has passed, and now manufacturers are facing the era of all scenarios. The so-called full scene in a broad definition refers to the user's life full scene, including clothing, food, housing, travel and so on.
On terminal equipment, in addition to mobile phones and computers, audio, headphones, cars, VR and other products are available; in the consumption scenario, it is not limited to work and life scenarios, but is further subdivided into learning, fitness, work, sports, outdoors, roads, families, etc.
How to achieve linkage in various scenarios and seamlessly connect to squeeze out the user's time is a problem in all scenarios and dimensions. The era of intelligence of the Internet of Everything has arrived.
Ali's Tmall Genie, Baidu's Xiaodu and Xiaomi's Xiaoai are not satisfied with the identity of "smart speakers", and the ambition behind them is first to encroach on the user's family life scene, and then to aim to build a complete ecological construction. At present, such a "smart speaker" is not only a terminal that plays music, but also connects digital life content such as entertainment, health and shopping.
Whether it is a long and short video platform, it also aims at the full coverage of multi-screen scenes. iQIYI has launched four new screen channels of Kiwi TV, iQIYI VR, iQIYI Smart Home and iQIYI Internet of Vehicles; Douyin has also launched the central control screen of BealeTang, aiming at the car scene.
In times of uncertainty, imagination is the way to survive.
At present, more scenes are still being developed, and who can rush to the front to come out on top is not yet known, but it is certain that in the future, if you want to break through the peak dividend, players must be prepared to "roll inside" in the whole scene.
(Xue Tao is a pseudonym in the text)