Editor's introduction: On July 11, WPS was exposed to the topic of deleting users' local files on Weibo hot search, and in its development history, there have also been other large and small storms. The author of this article analyzes the development history, essence, business model, etc. of WPS, hoping to justify the negative hot search of WPS.
After the WPS hot search, Kingsoft CEO Zhang Qingyuan said in a later interview: "Kingsoft is a heroic company, Kingsoft heroism is mainly shaped by Qiu Bojun and Lei Jun, who are the objects of worship of the entire company." Heroes often have dreams, responsibilities, and perseverance. ”
When I saw this passage, I felt the same way, as a six-year-old user of WPS, I felt the need to correct the negative hot search of WPS once.
1. Recent controversies
On July 11, WPS was exposed to the topic of deleting users' local files # on Weibo hot search, or the first position. As a veteran user of the product, of course, I understand the doorway: WPS cannot do this kind of thing, nor does it disdain to do this kind of thing.
Are local and cloud files deleted?
To delete local files, WPS must scan all the disks of the computer, must occupy the computer's resources, not to mention the frequency of scanning, as a hundred million-level national software, if WPS does this, it will soon be discovered, rather than until now controversial. After the controversy, some lawyers pointed out that if WPS really reviewed the user's local documents, it would obviously infringe on the user's privacy.
Obviously WPS deletes files from the cloud. Why is WPS doing this?
Just as the so-called Internet is not an extralegal place, nor can it become a gray area for hiding dirt and grime, the cloud is the same, if the illegal content exists in the cloud, it is not responsible for Kingsoft not to review and find problems. Although Zhang Qingyuan's response was "WPS did nothing wrong - just did what the information platform should do according to the legal requirements." "In my opinion, this is a reflection of the responsibility of the WPS team and even the entire Kingsoft company."
Is the cloud secure?
More secure than on-premises: WPS has a very large team in operations to ensure security. But local files, if the computer is lost or have a Trojan virus or the like, are actually more insecure. Zhang Qingyuan, CEO of Kingsoft Office, also said in an interview with the media: "We have actually spent a lot of money on privacy and data security in the past two years, and almost every year we invest an additional 100 million yuan to do this." ”
The post and topic of the network are written with the words "delete local files", which also shows that for users, the difference between cloud and local is not obvious, and users cannot figure out whether the document is in the cloud or local.
In an interview with the media, Kingsoft CEO Zhang Qingyuan also admitted that the boundaries between online documents and local documents are blurred, and users are easy to confuse, which is where improvement is needed. But when asked how to improve, Zhang Qingyuan said there is no particularly good method at present.
In my opinion, although this controversy is the first time that WPS is on the hot search, if you understand the development history of WPS, you know that this is just a small storm for WPS.
Second, the three stages of WPS development
The first stage: Microsoft entered China, and WPS turned from prosperity to decline
In 1988, Qiu Bojun joined Kingsoft, and after the release of WPS1.0 in 1989, it quickly occupied the entire domestic market and became the leader in Chinese processing documents under the DOS system. In 1990, Microsoft developed Word under the Windows system, and entered China in 1991, becoming a direct competitor with WPS. In the next few years, Microsoft began to develop Word support Chinese character processing.
In 1992, Kingsoft concentrated all its efforts on developing WPS95 and Pangu components under Windows, during which sales fell sharply due to the discontinuation of WPS under the DOS system, and the WPS95 and Pangu components did not achieve the expected sales.
Microsoft beat the WPS node in one fell swoop in 1996, Microsoft and WPS signed an interoperability agreement, the software of both sides can open both sides of the document. In the Windows system pre-installed Word and Microsoft found that pirated Word software can be fission-style spread and then choose to tolerate, so that the WPS market share fell to less than 3% when the lowest, had to survive in the cracks, in 2001 Microsoft unilaterally tore up the interoperability agreement, but also made Kingsoft on the verge of bankruptcy.
The second stage: China's accession to the WTO, state support, WPS nirvana rebirth
China officially joined the World Trade Organization on December 11, 2001, one of the important things is to combat piracy, and the government made an example of purchasing genuine software, the WPS thus fired the first shot of government procurement, coupled with the high sentiment of some nationalities after China's accession to the WTO, also turned to support WPS. WPS's market share has increased, but at that time, Microsoft's global market share has reached more than 80%, and it is clear that At this time, Microsoft is not only the leading boss, but also the industry standard setter.
WPS found that Microsoft's Office (renamed by Microsoft Word upgrade in 1999) has become the habit of Chinese people to use document software on computers under the spread of pirated viruses, and Microsoft Office has become the default standard, which is an unavoidable and must face fact for any other manufacturer in this track.
If WPS wants to retake the market from Microsoft, it must consider how to get users to pay the least cost of conversion, and then give the product the greatest recognition and satisfaction. After four months of painful decisions, WPS decided in 2002 to abandon the 14-year-old traditional WPS technology, refactor the code, and rebuild it.
WPS benchmark is the leader of the boss Microsoft, WPS text, WPS tables, WPS presentation strictly corresponding to MS Office Word, ExcelPowerPoint, toolbar and some function buttons of the settings are almost exactly the same as MS Office, and WPS can make this decision In addition to the market share has been almost completely dominated by Microsoft, the more direct reason is that the country's 863 plan WPS has been selected, The state gave WPS 5 million yuan (in 2002) as a development fund.
Three years later, WPS Office 2005 came out, and WPS announced that the Personal Edition was permanently free. Once launched, the number of downloads exceeding 38 million in three months is the best affirmation of the Chinese people for WPS Office 2005. Looking back now, the decision of WPS Personal Edition to be permanently free is exactly what hits the eternal topic of The Internet of Things thinking: free to use, traffic is king. It was also this decision that helped WPS stabilize the popularity of the basic plate, and thus soared.
The third stage: WPS returns to the peak and bids farewell to the traditional release of the core strategy of "cloud office"
After the release of the 05 version of WPS, its market share has steadily increased, and it has gradually reached a level of parity with Microsoft. The point where WPS overtook corners and brought WPS back to the top was the mobile version of WPS released in 2011.
Fast forward to 2010, when, according to market research firm IDC, shipments of smartphones were 100.9 million units and PC shipments in the fourth quarter of 2010 were 92.1 million units. For the first time, smartphone shipments surpassed PCs. WPS in order to meet the user's needs for mobile office applications "simple and powerful", so WPS decided to all in the mobile terminal, launched the WPS Office mobile version, which was also Microsoft was not involved in the field at that time, WPS took the wind to "run forward". Ge Ke, former CEO of Kingsoft Office, said in an interview: "The early layout allows us to step on the dividends of the early Android outbreak. From 2011 to 2015, without investing a single point in promotion fees, the annual growth rate of WPS users was 300%. ”
It can be said that WPS mobility is the first phase of the strategy to return to the peak, and the second phase of the strategy to stabilize the peak position is the "cloud office" strategy released by WPS in 2015. The result of the battle two years later is: in 2017, the WPS Office PC and mobile users exceeded 100 million, and Microsoft's revenue in the Chinese market has dropped to 1.2% of global revenue.
From the third stage of WPS development, it is not difficult to find that WPS is on the verge of being defeated by Microsoft several times but reborn several times, and indeed as Kingsoft CEO Zhang Qingyuan said at the beginning of the article, WPS and even the Kingsoft team do have dreams and can persist.
Third, the essence of WPS products and WPS cloud strategy
1.WPS product essence: tool-based word processing software
WPS is word processing software needless to say, this is the meaning of the existence of WPS, is the basic disk of WPS.
1) How to understand the tool type?
Open the WPS client homepage, the default display is "Document - Recent", the left navigation bar in addition to "New, Open, Document, Calendar", "- " Below the horizontal line are "plug and play" tools, plug and play is to say that the default is not downloaded, but the volume is not large, the download is also very fast.
2) Why is WPS a tool-based file processing software?
WPS not only launched tools, but also "massive" tools, but also made an application market. The reason is because WPS wants users to process documents more conveniently and quickly, word documents to pdf, pictures to text, etc. can be completed in WPS, and users do not need to go elsewhere to find tools to deal with documents.
Imagine that to convert a word document into a pdf, users have to open Baidu search, avoid Baidu advertising, and preferably free software, and may bundle a bunch of "rogue" software when downloading and installing... And WPS is to create a one-stop document processing software, document-related processing scenarios, WPS are made into plug-and-play tools, application market search, loading tools, the use of tools in one go.
2.WPS cloud strategy
1) What is the cloud?
- Documents can be manipulated across endpoints and multiple devices
- You can automatically save and backup documents to quickly retrieve the original file and historical version
- After you create a share, you can enable multiple people to edit the document collaboratively
2) How does WPS do the cloud?
The cloud, as the strategy of WPS, is implemented in the details of the product.
For example, when sharing a document, the default, the first choice is to create a link to share, then the document must be uploaded to the cloud first.
For example, after opening the cloud document synchronization, the documents opened from the local area will be automatically synchronized to the cloud, and the WPS official has also made graphics and video tutorials for this purpose, which is convenient for first-time users to get started.
3) What is the significance of the cloud strategy?
For users: documents are in the cloud, safe and anti-loss; Documents can be opened across terminals, and modifications to documents are synchronized to the cloud in real time; Documents are stored on the WPS cloud server, saving local space; You can preview the historical version of the document...
For WPS: "bind" users through the cloud. Here are 3 examples:
Example 1: When exporting a document to a local, the WPS online format file does not support export.
Example 2: There is a limit to the number of exports.
Example 3: After the expiration of the paid membership, if not renewed, the cloud space will become back to the 1G of the free user, although the file will not be deleted, it can also download and open the document, but the writing operations such as uploading new documents and saving new versions of old documents cannot continue to be used in the cloud, and only paid members have the function of downloading documents in batches, at this time, non-paid users can only export documents one document and one document operation. So the heavier the user, the higher the cost of migrating documents to other platforms, and the more they will continue to use WPS.
Fourth, the business model of WPS
The main monetization model of WPS is divided into three types: licensing, subscription, and advertising.
1) Office software product license
- Quantity Authorization: Grant enterprise customers the right to use a certain version of the software, charged according to the number of licenses.
- Venue Authorization: Grants corporate customers the right to use an unlimited number of versions of the Software at their premises during the contract period.
2) Office service subscription
Individual users: Provide WPS members, rice shell members, super members 3 kinds of subscription services, compared to free users, members can enjoy more value-added services.
Institutional customers: Provide differentiated and specialized customized services according to customer needs.
3) Internet advertising promotion
For free users, WPS adopts the "free + advertising" profit model, providing advertisers with promotion needs with mobile phone flash screen ads, home page list ads, home page banner ads, PC recharge members publicity ads, etc.
4) Other profit models
WPS boutique courses, rice husk templates purchased separately, skin mall, WPS mall.
In the 2021 Kingsoft Office Annual Report, the profit model has been refined: personal office service subscription business, domestic institutional subscription and service business, domestic institutional authorization business and Internet advertising promotion service business. This shows that promoting domestic enterprises and institutions to shift from one-time authorization to subscription model is the path that WPS and even the whole Kingsoft are taking.
If I were a WPS product manager
Requirements: Let users know clearly that their documents are saved in the cloud.
Analysis: The status of the cloud is - unsaved, modified, pending synchronization, synchronizing, and successfully synchronized to the WPS cloud space.
- Unsaved: Newly created document
- Modified: Make arbitrary changes to the document
- Pending synchronization: Click Save to enter the pending synchronization state and initiate a synchronization request to the server
- In sync: The server receives the sync request, enters the sync program, and uploads the document to the cloud
- Success: Successfully displayed that it has been successfully synced to the WPS cloud space
At present, the cloud icons on the WPS, Office, PC side and the text description behind the icons are designed in the upper right corner of the interface, it is difficult for users to notice the change in status, and only the user will have a more detailed description of the cloud icon when the user stays in the cloud, and the user who has not actively studied or actively explored can not find it at all.
Let's say I'm a WPS—PC client product manager.
For users who have already enabled the cloud synchronization function: while maintaining the overall UI design style, the description is automatically expanded every time there is a state change, and it is automatically hidden after 5 seconds of display.
For users who have not yet enabled the cloud synchronization function: When the user opens the PC client, the cloud service settings page can pop up to guide the user to enable the document cloud synchronization function.
6. Conclusion
WPS's second hot search on Weibo was because Zhang Qingyuan said that WPS expects to completely shut down advertising by the end of 2023.
If WPS is determined, why not shut down sooner?
According to the financial report disclosed by Kingsoft Office, in 2019, WPS's annual revenue was 1.579 billion yuan, and the advertising revenue was 404 million, accounting for 25.58% of the total revenue. In 20 and 21 years, WPS advertising revenue was 349 million yuan and 405 million yuan respectively, accounting for 15.44% and 12.36% of the revenue. Of the total revenue of 868 million yuan in the first quarter of this year, advertising revenue accounted for only 7.5%.
In recent years, WPS has indeed been reducing advertising revenue, advertising has not stopped immediately, perhaps there are contracts, perhaps Kingsoft has not found a better business model to make up for the income that is about to be permanently abandoned, so it needs a soft landing as a buffer. But in any case, as ceo, Zhang Qingyuan promised that whether it was to stabilize the user's public relations measures, or WPS made up its mind to listen to the opinions of users, as long as WPS promised, I believe it will do it.
This article is originally published by @Berwin everyone is a product manager, and reproduction without permission is prohibited.
The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol