5g era: Live streaming
We are halfway through 2019, and April 2018 has undoubtedly been the most difficult winter for live streaming. As the domestic game copyright examination and distribution stop, and games, entertainment, film and television and other virtual economy industries have become the focus of supervision. The livestreaming industry, of course, bears the brunt. On June 29, 2018, the Ministry of Culture shut down 12 online performance platforms, and investigated and punished 30 platforms for content violations, including Huya, YY and Miaopai. On August 20, 2018, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other six departments jointly issued a Notice on Strengthening the Management of Live streaming services, which directly required live streaming platforms to use real-name system, strengthen management of network anchors, establish a monitoring and censorship system for live streaming content, and take measures to deal with illegal and harmful content. In that year, it was “winter is coming”.
In 2016, nearly a thousand platforms sprang up in the air of mobile live broadcasting, which also created the “thousand broadcast war” with infinite scenery. At that time, the anchors with financing of hundreds of millions and salaries of tens of millions have become legends. Looking back today, I can’t help but marvel at how many platforms were swimming naked. In 2018, as the tide receded, the live broadcast market has been standardized and integrated with the strengthening of regulation, and the live broadcast industry has stepped into a stable growth stage from the past rapid growth. At this time, a worrying question is placed in front of us: how will the live broadcast industry develop?
According to “2018-2024 China Live Broadcast Industry Market Status Analysis and Investment Prospects Forecast Report”, The scale of China’s live broadcast market (PC+ mobile dual terminal) increased from 1 billion yuan in 2012 to 36.6 billion yuan in 2017, in line with the growth rate of up to 104.4%, and is expected to further increase to 110 billion yuan in 2022. With increasing purchasing power, upgrading of hardware and network infrastructure, increasing demand for better entertainment experiences, and increasing convenience and popularity of mobile payments, awareness of paying for quality content has steadily increased. The proportion of mobile paying users increased from 1.79% in 2012 to 3.52% in 2017. It is expected to increase to 3.95% by 2020.
The market is still developing, not “cool”. However, after the outbreak of the industry, the fundamentals have been large enough to enter a bottleneck period, and the originally scattered resources will also flow to the head platform. It is natural selection that a platform without qualifications falls down in the competition, just like a camel in the desert. Only with excellent quality can it continue to move forward. If the enterprise itself does not have the ability of “flow realization”, it is impossible to develop for a long time. Looking at the two main sources of funds for Chinese Internet entrepreneurs, one is “financing”, which burns investors’ money to enclosure land. If they fail to achieve the “monopoly position”, most of them will end up dead. The second is “flow”, which keeps money rolling by constantly pulling new deposits, stretching the market and increasing consumption. According to the 42nd Statistical report on China’s Internet Development, China has 802 million Internet users, with a penetration rate of 57.7%. The online entertainment market has a strong demand, and short video applications are rising rapidly, with 74.1% of netizens using short video applications to meet the fragmented entertainment needs. Combined usage of long and short videos is close to 90%, and their consumption mode is the cheapest in the battle for time, thus squeezing out many similar services, such as instant messaging and online games.
There is no denying that Douyin poses a threat to games and livestreaming, as well as to livestreaming companies: “How to keep users and revenue growing in the new era? Can we survive by relying solely on live broadcasting? Fundamentals encountered bottlenecks, how to broaden?” Wait a few tough questions. These head platforms also encounter solutions to these problems:
Momo bought Tantan for $600m this year to consolidate its social presence and tap into its experience with female users. At the same time, outside the live broadcast, Momo has a product, no longer a product to dominate the world. At the time, It was said that Mirage was also interested in Tantan, but it turned out that Mirage became a shareholder of BIGO for $272 million, focusing on the live streaming market in Southeast Asia. Tito Interactive also has its eye on the Southeast Asian market, replicating its game and live streaming mode. Tito has also spent nearly 300 million yuan to acquire a camera without any other, which not only expands its product line but also expands its users, especially female users, to explore the “appearance level economy”.
The liquidity ability of live broadcasting, jubilee, Tito and other listed companies have been verified. Douyin, which has huge traffic, will not let live broadcasts go on its way to cash in. At present, the internal test requires an account to meet the requirements of more than 5W fans, which is very high compared with other live streaming platforms. The same is true when Momo switched from LBS social networking to live streaming. No matter what way you get traffic, live streaming is the most efficient and best mode at present. Cash is the inevitable choice of the company, either to obtain the flow in cash first, or to change the current flow. The livestreaming industry, which relies on technology, has passed its peak at this stage. If it wants to start a new trend, it can be predicted that 5G technology will come. Ericsson reports that global 5G subscriptions will grow by 50 percent to 1.5 billion people by 2024, covering more than 40 percent of the world’s population. Major CARRIERS in the United States will begin offering 5G services this year or in 2019, the first commercial 5G subscriptions in Europe will come in 2019, and large-scale 5G network deployments worldwide are expected to begin in 2020.
In other words, the new generation of mobile 5G technology is expected to bring faster data transmission speeds and better fit multiple connected devices. There will be great breakthroughs in the definition, scene richness and interaction of live broadcast, which is bound to lead to the emergence of a large number of new business models. Internet companies have been investing heavily in research and development in recent years, focusing on artificial intelligence, big data and the Internet of things in preparation for 5G. Among these companies, apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook and other giants in the United States have the most abundant technological reserves.
What is exciting is that at 14:00 on November 27, 2018, China’s first 5G demonstration block was unveiled in Taikoo Li, Chengdu. The download peak was over 600Mbps, and it took almost less than one minute to download a Blu-ray movie. A single TV on site can play 32 4K videos smoothly at the same time with no lag or delay. If it were live, it would be a cinematic experience, like Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One.
Perhaps the live streaming of this song will depend on 5G to continue.