TV Box Wars

If it is not announced that the "5 minutes to sell 52,000 units" news, there may not be much insiders will pay attention to Huawei began selling TV boxes, as a big boss with a sales income of 220.2 billion yuan last year, but went for a few hundred for only a few hundred Yuan TV box, and the Internet "little brothers" to fight the same market, its meaning in the end is where?

Huawei's entry into the TV box circle almost no one expected that Huawei will sell TV boxes, many people said afterwards that what Huawei sells may be more interesting than selling TV boxes because TV boxes are not big projects.

As a result, Huawei's TV box has evaded telecommunications industry professionals. Its sales path is almost exclusively for consumers, and the evaluation of people in the circle is no longer relevant.

The appointment starts at 10:08 on October 17th and ends at 10:07 on the 21st. An appointment of 1.41 million people is reserved in JD.com and Vmall. Special sales are reserved at 10:08 on the 21st. The two major e-commerce channels are sold in 5 minutes. 52,000 units. On October 29th, the rare edition white Huawei secret box was released for sale.

Knowing Huawei's announcement of this sales, Huawei's TV box suddenly caught the attention of insiders. Many media people lamented that Huawei began selling boxes. Why?

In addition to Huawei's layout around the TV box, large mobile phone manufacturers have not seen the TV box so far. The so-called TV box is actually a set-top box. This market is more of an Internet company's interest. Therefore, the name of the box is also changed from a set-top box to a TV box. What is the difference between the two? No one can make it clear, but anyway, with the set-top box The name is not the same, it seems easy to distinguish the traditional market of set-top boxes, the purpose is to grab the users of set-top boxes and turn them into TV box users.

Just like in the second half of 2012, there was a big wave of smartphone makers. In 2013, a large number of brands broke into the network box market. Only recently in February, there were several new box products such as new millet box, box with Tongzhou, LeTV box, Baidu video stick, iQiyi box and so on, which would occupy the living room TV of hundreds of millions of Chinese families. The momentum.

There is no shortage of cottage manufacturers or cottage practices. Even some well-known Internet companies that launch TV boxes do not actually have any production lines or any R&D. Because they build a box based on the Android platform and pre-install some applications, there are basically no technical thresholds, if not license plates and markets. Such factors, cottage manufacturers are almost everyone can do the box.

Huawei's box is called "Huawei Secret Box." Why is this name a little suspense? It is unclear. Suspense is not only in this, before 2012, the TV box market, the annual shipments of about one million units, Huawei's mobile phone sales of tens of millions a year, why do TV boxes.

According to analysis in the industry, in fact, Huawei's thinking is the same as that of some Internet companies, that is, they compete for the huge Internet entrance of the living room.

It is generally believed that a TV box can project pictures and videos on mobile phones and tablet computers and share them on TV screens. In other words, the huge commercial value of the deep integration between the largest screen and the Internet that families of major brands smashed into the box market, not to mention the arrival of the smart living room era, the function of the box is not only to make television When connected to the Internet, it will also become the network hub of the entire family, and it will succeed in the future market such as the Internet of Things and home security. Its potential commercial value is full of infinite possibilities.

The difference is that because it is a communication technology company, Huawei attaches great importance to the matching of TV boxes and Huawei's other communication equipment and communication terminals. The future demand for smart homes is extensive. At present, Huawei has broadband equipment, broadband terminals, and security. With devices, mobile phones, internet cards, wireless cats, and TV boxes, Huawei's entire layout for smart homes is complete.

The combination of TV box and communication technology In fact, the current TV box brand is too much, the user has some aesthetic fatigue, what characteristics does Huawei cut into the TV box market?

According to Huawei insiders, adding more communication features is definitely a feature of Huawei. Huawei's box, for example, can be used as a WiFi hotspot. This is a unique feature that enables multi-screen interaction with 0 delays, playing with mobile phones and Pads on large TVs. In general, the boxes are multi-screen interactive through the wireless router in the same network. After the router switches processing, the multi-screen interaction of the general box will obviously delay and the experience is not good. Another example is energy saving. According to the calculation of 4 hours per day, power consumption is only about 0.5 degrees/month.

These results from Huawei's use of its own HiSilicon high-performance 4-core CPU chip. The current market has a lot of dazzling boxes for consumers. The mainstream price is basically between 200 and 600 yuan. Like the mobile phone and other products, the box market is naturally a money-and-discount item, such as the CPU used in low-priced boxes. Generally dual-core or even single-core, this CPU configuration may be enough for the user's current use of the box environment, but in high-definition video and large games and other experience, is naturally a quad-core CPU has more advantages.

The size of Huawei is also considered to be an important element of its TV box. Due to the high bit rate of high-definition movies, it takes a long time to emit a lot of heat, if the shell material and heat dissipation design is not very good, long To play and use the time, you need the box itself to have a good power control technology.

TV box content homogenization As for video program access sources, in addition to individual video content business vendors, in fact, all TV box companies are on the same starting line, there is no difference.

According to the "Operational Management Requirements for Holding Internet TV License Organizations" issued by the SARFT, these "boxes" are the biggest obstacles. Currently, there are only 7 platforms approved by SARFT (ie, 7 licensees), namely CNTV, BesTV, South Media, Huadian, CIBN of China International Broadcasting Corporation, Hunan Broadcasting, and CNBN of CNR. TV network station), each different box can only choose to connect more than seven radio and television approved legal content service platform. In other words, there are actually only two types of content that are allowed to play on the Internet set-top box. One is the content provided by the licensee, and the other is that the set-top box manufacturer owns copyrighted content.

From the smart TV box products that have been released, various boxes are cooperating with CNTV or Huadian, and it is clearly impossible to avoid homogenization in terms of content.