Recently,A news about"Tencent withdraws from smart TV manufacturer Micro Whale Technology",Let Micro Whale TV return to the public eye。 The reporter noticed that this Internet TV, which was once as famous as LeTV and Storm, has recently undergone industrial and commercial changes, and Shenzhen Tencent Computer System Co., Ltd. has withdrawn from the ranks of shareholders. Before the exit, Tencent invested 190 million yuan and was the fourth largest shareholder.
It is understood that the number of employees of Micro Whale Technology once exceeded 700, but according to its 2022 corporate annual report, there are only 3 employees left in Micro Whale Technology, while two years ago, in 2020, Micro Whale Technology only had 4 people. According to the information disclosure, the currently disclosed employees of Microwhale include executive director Lu Jinrong and supervisor Yu Lingjie, and it is not known who the third employee is.
According to public information, Micro Whale Technology was founded in 2015 by Chinese Culture Holdings, Li Ruigang and Li Huaiyu. In the early days of its establishment, it cut in from the perspective of content, focusing on the model of Internet TV and content subsidy hardware, catching up with the upsurge of TV intelligent Internet, and doing it well for a while. In 2016, it attracted an investment of 2 billion yuan, including Chinese Culture Co., Ltd. (39% shareholding, the largest shareholder), Alibaba (China) Network Technology Co., Ltd. (31.5% shareholding, the second largest shareholder), Suzhou Industrial Park Purple Cat Information Consulting Co., Ltd. (20% shareholding, the third largest shareholder), Linzhi Tencent Technology Co., Ltd. (9.5% shareholding, the fourth largest shareholder).
But what is unexpected is that Micro Whale Technology has a good hand of cards, but it is played poorly. It is worth noting that,The advantage of Internet TV is low price,Micro Whale also opened up the market through low-cost sales of hardware at the beginning+Content subsidy model。 However, in 2017, the TV market declined rapidly, and Microwhale Technology was affected by market fluctuations. In order to save themselves, they began to cancel price subsidies and no longer participate in price wars.
The following year, in 2018, Microwhale Technology announced its reorganization, re-entered the field of intelligent hardware, and launched intelligent projection products.
However, the situation has not improved, and since 2018, a series of suppliers have broken the news that Microwhale Technology has been in arrears for a long time. Although Micro Whale quickly denied this statement at that time, saying that it was still within the repayment time and there was no arrears. However, the rumor, coupled with the cessation of the development and production of TV products, has also affected consumer confidence in it.
Since Tencent's withdrawal, there are currently only three shareholders left in Micro Whale (Shanghai Micro Particle Technology Co., Ltd., Chinese Culture Co., Ltd., and Suzhou Industrial Park Purple Cat Information Consulting Co., Ltd.), but the reporter noticed that the remaining shareholders are all Chinese Culture Group, such as Lu Jinrong, executive director of Micro Whale, who is also the executive director of Shanghai Micro Particle Technology Co., Ltd. and Suzhou Industrial Park Purple Cat Information Consulting Co., Ltd. This may mean that Li Ruigang is still the actual controller of Microwhale Technology.
It is worth mentioning that in 2023, Microwhale also invested abroad - in May 2023, Microwhale subscribed and contributed 22.65 million yuan to invest in Shanghai Shiyun Network Technology Co., Ltd., which is now the fourth largest shareholder of the latter, and Besitong and Lenovo are also shareholders of Shanghai Shiyun Network Technology Co., Ltd. The most well-known video of the cloud network was TV cat video (cloud audio-visual MoreTV), which is a live TV software. However, with the deployment of the State Administration of Radio and Television last year to govern the TV "nesting doll" charges, the official Weibo has stopped updating.
Source: Southern Metropolis Daily