Image source @ Visual China
Text | Zinc Finance, author | Zhao Jiahe, Editor | gale
Capital is once again eyeing the smart projection track.
Recently, the home intelligent projector "Zhima Cinema TV" has obtained a series A financing of 100 million yuan, with a valuation of 1 billion yuan. This is the second large financing that the smart projector industry has received in less than 30 days, and on March 15, another projector brand , JMGO Nuts , has just received 1 billion yuan in financing.
It is understood that "Zhima Cinema TV" is the first officially certified Douyin brand, and this financing is led by CICC Capital; behind the 1 billion yuan financing of Nuts, it is OPPO and Junsheng Capital and other well-known investors. In fact, in the projector track of previous years, the number of financing incidents is decreasing year by year – from 15 in 2018 to only 6 in the whole of 2021. It has been difficult to integrate the capital of the market, until now it has set off a contest again.
Judging from the current short-term market situation, the increasing trend of "home economy", coupled with new consumption labels such as "happiness" and "immersion", intelligent projectors have gradually gained the favor of young people, the main consumer group. In the long-term development end, the smart projector has a huge possibility of becoming the entrance to the family scene in the 5G aiot era. Coupled with the frequent shots of capital in the track this time, I can't help but feel a little windy.
A Guosen Securities research report at the end of 2021 said that projectors are still one of the areas with the lowest penetration rate of new consumption at present, and the growth expectations in 2022 are strong. In this boundless blue ocean, an "audiovisual battle" has begun.
01 Pole meter, big brother is difficult?
The "Zhima Cinema TV", which killed the capital in less than a year, is a well-deserved dark horse in the field of home intelligent projection.
After the launch of the product in May 2021, it was strongly supported by Douyin and became the first officially certified Douyin brand in less than half a year. Its M1 series, which is mainly based on "the first projection of young people" and suitable for small bedroom scenes, has also rushed to the top 1 of the Douyin category list.
But the dark horse can still only be regarded as a "recruit egg", and the biggest player in the current smart projection market is still a pole meter.
Jimi Technology was founded in 2013, when the concept of "screenless TV" was just hot for the first time, they used this as an entry point to successfully catch up with the first wave of wind, and in August 2014, they won a 100 million yuan A round of financing based on the Oriental system. Subsequently, the ZX4 launched in June 2015 was built into a million-selling industry blockbuster in one fell swoop, opening up the smart projection market.
At the beginning, Jimi, including other entrants, only positioned the product as a "smart TV branch". But then a series of actions by Jimi really opened the gap with the large troops.
Since 2016, Jimi began to launch a more high-end H series than the Z series, the product line is positioned as a home entertainment flagship, taking the lead in repositioning smart projection as a separate market category, and began to benchmark TV products in terms of picture quality and hardware, and launched a series of products such as 1080p laser screenless TV.
Synchronously, it is the upstream and downstream layout of the content ecology. In June 2015, Jimi received a financing of 300 million yuan from Mango Cultural Creation, followed by three consecutive rounds of financing from Baidu from 2017 to 2018. Since then, Jimi has first owned the content resources of Mango Media, and then also accessed Baidu's iQiyi and other content channels.
Subsequently, in March 2021, it successfully landed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board and became the "first intelligent projection stock" in China. According to the jimi prospectus, from 2018 to 2020, its market share has been firmly in the leading position.
Source: Jimi prospectus
However, it can be seen that Jimi has not been able to gain too much market share. From 13.2% in 2018 to 22.2% in 2020, including until now, Jimi as the head has not yet exceeded 30%.
According to the market tracking report released by IDC, from the perspective of the overall projection market, Jimi is led by only 21.2% of the market share; subdivided into the household market, although the sales volume of Jimi still exceeds the sum of the four nuts, peak rice, dangbei and millet behind it, but the sales volume accounts for only 27%.
And as a common problem of most hardware manufacturers, Jimi has not been able to get rid of the dilemma of being "stuck neck" by technology. It is understood that the core parts of the DLP projection technology applied by the jimi projector, its patent is in the hands of Texas Instruments (TI) in the United States, so Texas Instruments has also become the largest supplier of jimi, once the supply chain has problems, it is bound to lead to shipping difficulties.
In terms of self-research, at the investor research day on March 31 this year, Jimi also said that as a product in its segment, "suppliers are not willing to invest too much to cooperate with optimization." So the company was forced to go down the path of its own manufacturing." However, Jimi, which has previously exploded such incidents as "the R&D expense rate is less than 5%, the quality complaint problem exceeds that of peers", and "16 patents are sued for invalidity", has not yet been completely resolved.
However, overall, despite the flaws, the basic disk of Jimi made it "sit back and relax" during the stage, and the real gunpowder war zone was behind him.
02 The second echelon of the war is glued
Behind the pole rice that has been advancing all the way, the one who bites the tightest is the "millennium old two" nut.
The development of the two has been the same from the beginning, Luo Yonghao even confused jimi with nuts in the early years of live broadcasting, which can see the brand recognition of the projection market by the outside world at that time.
It can be said that since the 2014 Jimi A round of financing rush, nuts have also entered the "arms race mode" at the same time.
Let's start with a set of interesting timelines.
In August 2014, Jimi obtained a round A financing of 100 million yuan from Chuangdong, and in December of the same year, Nuts also received a round of financing of 60 million yuan from IDG Capital, Dachen Venture Capital and other investors.
In May 2015, Nuts received a 200 million yuan B round of financing from Songhe Capital, Times Bole and Tianqi Venture Capital, and just 20 days later, Jimi talked about a 300 million yuan Pre-B round of financing from Mango Cultural Creation.
Just as Jimi holds the two major content resources of Baidu and Mango, the parent company of Nuts, Huole Technology, also cooperates with TV-side video apps such as Litchi TV, Jia Cinema Line, and BesTV.
JMGO Nut Financing Process Source: Sky Eye Check
Jimi Technology Financing Process Source: Tianyancha
After that, from 2016 to 2018, every year, the financing events of both sides were sung by you and I appeared, which was full of gunpowder and led to the benign development of the industry. Such alternate moves have continued until the listing of Jimi in 2021, and the nut projection that has high hopes for the "second share" is like not being able to find an opponent, and there has been no financing event since October 2020, until January this year, when it was defeated in the "second old" dispute.
According to the January 2022 domestic projector market report released by LOTTO, Dangbei's sales successfully surpassed nuts by a slight advantage, ranking only behind the extreme meter.
Image source: Lotu Technology
What many people don't know is that Dangbei Network and Jimi Technology were also founded in 2013, and in 2014, 2015 and 2016, they have continuously obtained financing from well-known investors such as Suning Tesco and Shunwei Capital. But at that time, it was mainly a smart TV application software such as the Dangbei market, and the real entry into the projection industry was in 2019.
For the market where the category positioning has been driven by the pioneers to mature, the way dangbei chooses to play is cost-effective. According to the parameter comparison of well-known products on the market, the price range of Dangbei is the lowest among the top three brands, while the lumen range of the product is the highest.
Image source: Billion Euro Network
Lumen degree in the projector parameters is a very important indicator, the stability of the picture quality and high definition have a great impact, the higher the lumen, it can be said that the better the viewing experience. It is also with the laser projection X3 series launched in 2021 that Dangbei has truly emerged in the projector mall.
After being squeezed out of the "second oldest" throne, the nut also reacted immediately, knocking out another financing of 1 billion yuan after 17 months.
It is understood that this financing will be nut's Pre-IPO round of financing, and oppo, which is led this time, is also its newly introduced industrial investor. Cooperation with other major players in the industry may be a new step in Nuts' strategy.
Hu Zhenyu, founder of Huole Technology, the parent company of Nuts, said in an interview with 36Kr that OPPO smartphones will expand the smart home ecology, and the two will intersect; at the same time, OPPO's supply chain resources and channels will bring benefits to nuts. At the same time, nut portable projection P3S products have also been launched on the OPPO channel.
In addition to OPPO, Nut has just partnered with the world-famous camera brand Leica to launch the O1 Pro series featuring ultra-short focal length projection.
It can be said that the first comer did not swallow the whole cake in one bite, and the latecomer can still get a piece of the pie; as the significance of the projector industry is continuously explored, the competition will become more and more anxious.
03 Add smart projection, where is the future?
In fact, no matter how the pattern changes, the plate of the smart projection market is still not large enough.
And countless brands are pouring in, and large factories are secretly burning money, and what they look at is bound to be more than just the projection equipment. Behind the intelligent projection is the future of smart home, the new possibility of intelligent Internet of Things.
Since the beginning of the smart projector, the benchmark product is the smart TV.
In 2012, the rise of the whole house intelligent concept made both the content and the scene gradually unable to keep up with the new way out found by the traditional TV of the times, and transformed into a smart TV equipped with a system. According to the "2020 China Smart Big Screen Development Forecast Report", the number of domestic smart TV device activations in 2020 is 260 million units, and the speed of smart TVs replacing traditional TVs is about 40 million units per year.
But as smart TVs gradually grasp the important position of people's living rooms, hardware screens will inevitably encounter bottlenecks. According to Aowei Cloud Network data, in 2021, China's smart TVs are gradually evolving from small size to large size with 65 inches as the dividing line, of which the market share of 65-inch smart TVs reached 21.8%, an increase of 3.9% year-on-year.
Under the trend of large screens, smart TVs will eventually be limited in space, hardware and other conditions. At the same time, due to the impact of mobile content ecology such as short videos and streaming media, it has also led to a decline in the operating rate of TVs among young people.
The intelligent projection can meet the higher requirements of the large screen, and at the same time, the small space such as the rental bedroom will not be affected.
From another point of view, if audio-visual equipment wants to regain user time on the mobile end, it is bound to achieve multi-scene penetration. Lightweight, stylish smart projection is ready-made teststone.
In the past year, Jimi Micro Investment has cooperated with brands such as Xiaopeng Electric Vehicle, Lime Micro Shadow and Chenxun Technology to achieve the penetration of new consumption scenarios such as "car theater", "cinema-style hotel", "cinema-style foot bath", "private movie café" and so on.
The content ecology including nut projection has also gradually expanded from film and television resources to new scenes such as fitness yoga, children's education, music, K songs, cloud games, etc., and launched brand accessories including wireless microphones, gamepads, and 3D glasses.
With the wide range of application scenarios, the future intelligent large-screen projection ecology may really become an important part of connecting smart homes and even whole house intelligence. It is precisely for this reason that whether it is 3C manufacturers such as Xiaomi and OPPO or Internet giants such as Baidu Ali, they have begun to secretly exert their strength in layout.
From the debut of simple entertainment equipment, and then discovered the infinite future possibilities, the intelligent projection war has continued to start. Under the competition of head scuffle and frequent dark horses, the industry is about to be pushed into the midfield in the future.