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Meitu seems to have been on the road to transformation, but it is difficult to find an end
Written by / Lai Hyun-chi
Editor/Lee Ha-lin
The New Year has passed, and the Spring Festival has finally come to an end. From Chinese New Year's Eve meal to receiving red envelopes, every link seems to be indispensable to a photo.
In this era of Fengtu Bi P, Meitu Xiuxiu has also ushered in a wave of small climax - according to relevant data, the total use of Meitu formulas launched with brands such as Wang Laoji, Peace Elite, and Starbucks during the Spring Festival exceeded 57 million.
However, the era that belongs to Meitu seems to have passed, and its latest return to the center of public opinion is because of a storm of "speculating on money and losing money". A look at the social platforms that rely on retouching frequently to find that meitu's status is being divided by some emerging, niche retouching software, and even no lack of "still using Meitu to show off?" You and the influencers are almost a retouching software" argument.
The number of APP monthly active users has declined year by year, the company's market value has fallen all the way, has become an indisputable fact, and looking back at Meitu's many transformation roads, from making mobile phones to developing communities, to expanding game business and "speculating in coins", either ended in nothingness or was controversial.
In the future of Meitu Xiuxiu, after losing "them", it seems that it is difficult to be "beautiful" again.
Young people have at least five retouching apps on their phones
"What are the good retouching apps that Internet celebrities don't want to tell you?"
"Don't just use Meitu Show anymore, not advanced, no texture!"
"Circle of Friends Aesthetic Essential Software, Let Your Photos Blow Up Circle of Friends"
……
When retouching becomes a thing that people are accustomed to, a process that must be experienced before sending a circle of friends, and even an "aesthetic" science, retouching software has also become a traffic password. However, Meitu, which is called the originator of mobile phone retouching software, seems to be facing elimination.
Judging from the recommendations of many social platforms, more and more retouching software is emerging in recent years, either focusing on segments such as filters, special effects, text and stickers, or having more massive and unique features, which both rob users and dilute traffic, so that Meitu Xiuxiu is no longer the only choice.
"Now you open your phone, and without more than five retouching software, you can't even think of retouching." After 00, Yueran likes to take pictures, and also loves to share photos on various social platforms, and more than half of her mobile phone memory is for retouching software and photos, "each retouching software has its strengths, such as Snapseed is specially used for contouring, butter camera stickers are best looked at retro filters are the most abundant, Harajuku wind will choose steam wave cameras, Vsco filters the most, Glaze main oil painting sense, quickshot sky filters are the most powerful and most convenient, and puzzle sauce is specially used for puzzles." ”
All kinds of retouching software
As for shooting different things, the software used by Yueran also has differences, "Selfies are mostly used with light faces, wearing commonly used picsart, food should be selected foodie..." In Yueran's view, if you only use Meitu Xiuxiu, "it looks easy to appear very textureless, although there are many filters, but there is no too unique, it belongs to the software of all essential oils, it looks like all kinds of functions are available, but everything is not too fine." ”
The "Yueran" who votes with "hands" is not a minority, and the trajectory of the fall of Meitu Xiuxiu's monthly active data is a very powerful evidence. At the time of filing the prospectus in November 2016, Meitu's monthly active activity was 456 million, and then began to decrease, and by the end of December 2020, Meitu's monthly active activity had dropped to 261 million. By the first half of 2021, that number had shrunk to 245 million.
According to the "Analysis Report on the Development of China's Mobile Internet Industry in the First Half of 2020" released by the big data monitoring platform Trustdata, there are many players in the field of Meitu, and although Meitu Xiuxiu is still in the leading position, it is followed by the Douyin department's Jimeng Faceu and a sweet camera developed by Kuaishou and has a rapid growth rate, one of which has a sweet camera growth rate of nearly 20 times the average growth rate of the Meitu application.
"It can be seen that Meitu Xiuxiu still wants to keep up with the preferences of young people, filters and stickers, including the new Meitu formula are keeping updated, but now the choice space of young people is too large, just a filter or sticker is difficult to attract them and ensure stickiness, either there must be a phenomenon-level reaction of the filter effect, or there must be a difficult to replace the strength, large and all is no longer the needs of young people, on the contrary, small and beautiful is." Some insiders pointed out so.
And miaomiao after the 90s believes that Meitu Xiuxiu is always a step slower, "whether it is the reshaping of these emerging functions of the facial features, or the fiery film-sensitive filters, in fact, they are not the first to be made by Meitu Xiuxiu, but when these functions and filters trigger a phenomenon-level reflection, Meitu Xiuxiu is busy launching similar ones." ”
From Meitu mobile phones to short videos, from the momentum to the disappearance
The decline in the monthly active number of Meitu Xiuxiu, of course, has a certain relationship with the positioning of the retouching software itself, as an Analysys think tank once pointed out that Meitu lacks irreplaceability, and a large number of users have a low demand for randomness in tool applications.
Transformation has become inevitable, but meitu Xiuxiu's transformation road is actually mostly fruitless.
Meitu's first active attempt was to cross-border hardware, as early as 2013, Meitu released its first mobile phone, Meitu Kiss, focusing on high-level camera functions. According to Zhongguancun data, this 3G mobile phone is divided into two colors, shell white and cherry blossom powder, the front and rear cameras have reached 8 million pixels, priced at 2199 yuan, and soon set off a consumer boom - its sales rose by 1000% in 2014.
But this sales peak came and went quickly, and the sales growth rate of this mobile phone was once in a state of stagnation. According to the prospectus data, Meitu's net losses in 2015, 2014 and 2013 were 2.2 billion yuan, 1.8 billion yuan and 25.8 million yuan, respectively.
In the following years, Meitu mobile phones have indeed attracted many female users by relying on the T series, many female users will use Meitu mobile phones as a backup machine for taking photos, cherry pills limited, magic card girl cherry and other limited joint models are aimed at female users, earning enough eyeballs.
As the farewell letter previously released by the official Weibo of Meitu Mobile Phone wrote, "The story began in the autumn of 2012, and we, who have been focusing on the image APP, came up with the idea of creating a selfie phone, because we feel that there are so many girls who like to take selfies, and no manufacturer cares about the front effect of the mobile phone." But this road is obviously difficult to last, in the rise of many domestic mobile phone brands to turn over, Meitu mobile phones have not shown unique competitiveness, but trapped in the positioning of "selfie mobile phones". With the improvement of the camera function of major mobile phone brands, female users seem to have lost the reason to buy a selfie phone.
Meitu had to shut down its mobile phone business and exclusively licensed the mobile phone brand to Xiaomi Group in 2019. According to it Times, its smart hardware business sold 1.843 billion yuan, with a gross profit margin of -3.4%, and the situation of not making money and counter-losses, coupled with operating costs and various expenses, led to the largest annual loss of 879 million yuan since Meitu's listing.
In 2021, Meitu terminated its cooperation with Xiaomi Group and announced its official withdrawal from the mobile phone market.
At present, meitu mobile phones have become a historical symbol. Nowadays, searching for Meitu mobile phones on platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Weibo, most of the latest content is also lamenting that "the Meitu mobile phones bought by more than 4,000 people in the past are now abandoned as spare machines." "On major second-hand platforms, Meitu mobile phones that used to cost 2,000 yuan to 4,000 yuan are now mostly priced at 200 yuan to 1,000 yuan."
On the one hand, the fall of Meitu's mobile phone left the scene, on the other hand, the rapid development of short video platforms has made Meitu's short video and live broadcast platform "Meipai" lose its competitiveness early.
According to aiqicha's information, the meipai project was launched in 2014.
A number of projects under the Meitu umbrella
After its launch in May 2014, Meipai quickly appeared on the App Store free list, becoming the first non-game app download in the world that month.
However, according to IT Times, with the popularity of the two major short video platforms of Douyin and Kuaishou, Meipai has gradually shown a downward trend, from 2016 to 2019, the number of monthly active users of Meipai continued to decline, and the proportion gradually increased: 9.9%, 13.8%, 60.3%, 45.8%, of which in 2018, Meipai was ordered to rectify due to the problem of vulgar content, and the application was removed from the shelves for 30 days, resulting in the loss of a large number of users and Internet celebrities. At the end of 2019, there were only about 7 million users left in Meipai, which used to break 100 million monthly lives.
Looking back at Meitu's two major transformation paths, they have splashed on the industry track, and even called a quick start, but they have returned because of various problems and bottlenecks. Although the splash is large, it is fleeting.
Can the community save Meitu?
Although Meitu has made many attempts, including game business, beauty business and even coin speculation, in addition to mobile phones and short videos, the community seems to be the life-saving straw that Meitu is trying to grasp.
In September 2018, Meitu Xiuxiu was redesigned and moved towards the direction of community, trying to create another Little Red Book and create a community environment that "goes from discovering beauty to creating beauty".
However, the effect does not seem to be satisfactory. At present, open the Meitu Xiuxiu, in addition to the first push of its formula function of the home page, but also divided into plog, Yan research list and news and other sub-columns, and the plog's pagination includes popular, bucket circle, click, painting a picture, Hanfu circle, ootd and other subdivisions, corresponding to the wear, bucket map and daily photo sharing and other social content, however, due to vague positioning, chaotic functions, the overall feeling is more like the "smorgasbord" of the little red book and Weibo or QQ space. Zinc Scale found that even in the "hot" area, the number of likes is rarely more than 2,000, and the number of favorites and comments is far less than that of more vertical social platforms.
Meitu Xiuxiu's community interface
"To be honest, I basically didn't open the social area of Meitu Xiuxiu, and its significance for me is still stuck in the retouching, and these cumbersome and complicated layouts make me feel inconvenient." In Miao Miao's view, a large part of the reason why Meitu Xiuxiu's community has not been able to get out of the circle smoothly is that it does not have a unique competitive advantage and "gives people a very chaotic feeling".
And this is not an individual feeling, many users also complained on the social platform: "Why can't Meitu Xiuxiu do a good job of retouching alone, now it's too fancy." ”
In fact, due to the large number of basic users of Meitu Xiuxiu, community services are prone to a short period of false prosperity at the beginning, but it is not so easy to compete for the market. The data also verifies this, from the 2020 annual report, 57% of its revenue is still from online advertising, while the value of Internet value-added services is only 3.8% and the year-on-year decline is declining. The interim financial report for the end of June 30, 2021 shows that the revenue of Internet value-added services was 35.34 million yuan, accounting for 4.4% of the value, and the growth rate was still slow.
However, it is worth mentioning that Meitu Xiuxiu's premium subscription services and in-app purchase revenue are growing, and the above-mentioned interim financial report data is 2.11 billion yuan, an increase of 150.7% year-on-year. This may be a good signal, but compared with before the transformation, the problem of Meitu's user scale reduction has not been solved.
From tool products to selling mobile phones to social platforms, Meitu seems to have been on the road to transformation, but it is difficult to find an end.
END
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