Author 丨 Pastoral Song
Editor丨Nuts
Cover source丨Unsplash
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More than half a year after the official announcement of his return to the technology circle, Luo Yonghao seems to have shown the temperament of the "industry lamp", and the AR technology field he is engaged in has been cold since this year, and many large manufacturers have reported news of adjustments in related business areas.
Luo Yonghao has previously publicly responded to the topic of "the theory of the underworld", and Lao Luo said, "Some people on the Internet say what the industry is the underworld, I can't agree with this statement at all, it is more of a time coincidence." ”
Luo Yonghao has stepped into many entrepreneurial tracks such as mobile phones and electronic cigarettes, but unfortunately all of them have encountered the cold winter of the industry, and only improved after switching to the live broadcast track, and by bringing goods, Lao Luo not only paid off the debts he owed before, but also saved enough money to return to the technology circle.
But this time in the AR field of re-launch, Luo Yonghao seems to have encountered the spell again, many large companies began to turn the wind, making the future of this track begin to become less clear.
1
The metaverse is not fragrant
Entering 2023, the bubble bursting of the metaverse is becoming more and more obvious, and the two Internet giants who were previously determined to win the metaverse have successively reported the news of cutting related business lines.
At the beginning of January this year, Tencent's XR business was revealed to have ceased operations, and it was recently reported that Tencent has officially disbanded the XR team, and about 300 people in the team's 9 centers will receive a two-month buffer period to find internal vitality or external opportunities.
Judging from the relevant dynamics of Tencent's XR team last year, there should have been signs of business contraction, Tencent's acquisition of Black Shark mobile phone was stranded in October last year, and the next month, Shen Li, head of Tencent's XR business, also announced his departure.
Although Tencent responded that there was no talk of disbanding the XR team, it also admitted that it was changing the XR business development path and made relevant team adjustments.
Like Tencent, another large manufacturer, ByteDance, is also making business adjustments, and its virtual reality brand PICO recently carried out a new round of personnel optimization, affecting about 15% of employees.
Kuaishou's metaverse business also ran aground in February this year, and its metaverse head Ma Yingwu has announced his departure, Ma Yingwu posted in the circle of friends: "The merger or closure of projects is a very normal business decision-making logic of large companies, and it is very normal in the environment of cost reduction and efficiency increase." ”
Foreign meta-universe players are not doing well, the first is Meta, whose name has been changed, and after the stock price has shrunk, Meta's revenue in 2022 has also declined historically, and its net profit has plummeted by 31%.
Microsoft and Apple are also reassessing the business prospects of the metaverse, according to foreign media reports, Microsoft has disbanded the industrial metaverse application team that has only been established for four months in February this year. And Apple's headset device, which should have been released last year, has also been postponed again.
Just over a year ago, the metaverse was still a popular innovation outlet, but now, ChatGPT has become a new trend representative, and the former darling has become the flower of tomorrow.
2
The metaverse is still missing
Because of someone's entry, the industry is in a trough, which is of course a joke. Luo Yonghao, as a representative of the "wind chaser" in the industry, made a website in the early years, and later devoted himself to the mobile phone industry, and also got involved in e-cigarettes for a short time, although these entrepreneurial experiences ended in a less satisfactory way, but there were always bright moments.
Judging from the industry trough that Lao Luo has encountered in the past, some are due to policy reasons, and some are limited by the general environment, and this entrepreneurship in the meta-universe field seems to have risen too early, not yet waiting for the time to catch up.
Wang Liansheng, director of the China Electronics Industry Standardization Technology Association, said in a recent interview, "The high market expectations and hype in the early stage made the metaverse industry fire before it really landed. ”
Wang Liansheng also emphasized: "At present, the metaverse industry is still in the concept and prototype stage, and it is too early to commercialize on a large scale. ”
Large enterprises choose to strategically shrink the metaverse business at this stage, in fact, the logic is not difficult to understand, in the case of unclear commercialization prospects, there is no need to do more trial and error, because in terms of financial strength and traffic resources, it is possible to wait for the industry to be more mature before entering the harvest.
After Luo Yonghao announced his commitment to the AR field, he actually expressed his view that it is still a long time before the industry matures. In June 2022, Luo Yonghao said in an interview that companies that forcibly sell products now must sell one at a loss. The industry generally estimates that the conditions for commercialization will be basically mature in about five years.
What Luo Yonghao and his team are doing at this stage is to use a five-year window and thousands of people's annual engineering volume to create a consumer-grade product.
Looking at some products on the market at present, although ByteDance's PICO has passed the hardware level, it has not produced a content explosion, which makes the product cool but lacks the foundation to continue to retain customers, and finally becomes a "big toy of technology".
And Tencent abandoned the acquisition of Black Shark, Apple postponed the release of headset equipment, perhaps also saw the current immature side of the industry, rather than exploring in ignorance, it is better to let the bullets of friends fly for a while.
3
There is nothing new in the tech world
In recent years, a strange circle seems to have formed in the technology circle, and new products or concepts are born every year, leading major companies to bend their waist, but this rush of enthusiasm often comes and goes quickly, and before the user can return to his senses, the next so-called "outlet" has surged in.
At the beginning of 2021, the ClubHouse fire, driving a number of "sound concept stocks" skyrocketed, audio social networking swept the world, and many domestic companies announced that they would do the Chinese version of ClubHouse, but after only half a year, this "sound fever" quickly subsided, and the monthly downloads of the original product fell to hundreds of thousands.
In the second half of 2021, as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg changed the company's name to Meta, the concept of the metaverse became popular around the world, and many companies announced that they would make heavy bets in this area. But today, the current situation of the metaverse business of major companies has been as mentioned above, and both speculators and wind chasers are ready to leave the market.
Now the same plot is playing out on ChatGPT, and it seems that the previous batch of companies that stand up to catch up with the wind seem to be the previous ones, but whether the ending can escape the "curse" of the past, I am afraid it will not take long to see the real chapter.
Looking back at the previous industry experience, the reasons for the end of these myths are also similar, large companies wanted to end up in person at the beginning, and even put on an all-in posture, but after trying, they found that due to various internal and external reasons, they could not contribute increments in the short term, and may even drag down the main business, so they chose to retreat to the second line and seek other ways to participate.
The birth of these new technologies and new products often has a certain degree of advance, otherwise it will not cause such a large market expectation, but once this expectation is transformed into a long-term dormancy, it may not be what some companies want to see.
When Luo Yonghao announced that he would do AR, he set the early goal of leaving five years for the team, on the one hand, to polish the product, and on the other hand, to wait for the arrival of the industry dividend period.
The "industry lights" are already so sober, and those big factories that hope to achieve short-term growth through the meta-universe should also think about whether they were really in a hurry when they set goals on the meta-universe.
The spiral laboratory has been occupied