Smartphones first appeared in the Chinese market in 2007 and became popular in 2009. Due to its faster operating system, faster information transmission, more friendly man-machine communication, a variety of factors make smart phones like a monster, quickly occupy the market. With the popularity of smart phones, the traditional 2G network technology has gradually been replaced by faster and more powerful 3G network technology.
2G communication technology is just like a baby, who is just learning language. Besides simple text transmission, there are not many ways to express emotions. And 3G communications technology is like a teenager who, despite his high aspirations, is unable to cope with the market’s growing demand for data.
Finally, in 2013, 4G communication technology emerged with its powerful data transmission function under the huge traffic demand. With its fast information transmission speed, high quality information retention rate and strong superiority, it has been rapidly integrated into the smart phones of tens of millions of users.
With the popularity of 4G and the increase of people’s demand for traffic, people are enjoying the convenience brought by 4G communication technology, but they are also bearing high traffic costs. For example, some people often see their high data charges in the phone bill at the end of the month. The data charges often reach up to hundreds of yuan, which makes people hesitate to choose 4G network data.
Data show that in 2016, the communication charges of mobile companies alone have reached 623.4 billion yuan, among which mobile wireless Internet revenue accounts for as much as 46%. The profit brought by traffic business is surprisingly high.
Although operators have launched a variety of traffic rest assured package and other fee packages, such as traffic rest assured package 10 YUAN 100M, free time flow package and so on to try to solve people’s demand for traffic, but after all, it is too little to solve people’s increasing demand for traffic has become a difficult problem in front of enterprises. If operators do not find a way to reduce the cost of using data, many people will be locked out of high data charges, effectively rejecting customers.
The market is like a big cake, if the cake has a stone, then mobile exclusive eight bucket.
For Unicom, mobile was the giant of the communication industry before the emergence of Tencent Wangka. Statistics in 2017 showed that the number of mobile users was as high as 900 million, nearly one-sixth of the earth’s total population, while Unicom’s user group was only 200 million during the same period. The huge number of users generates huge profits, and the huge profits make mobile even bigger, which can give users bigger benefits, such as a broadband connection if they spend 68 yuan a month.
As the number of mobile users is so large, the influence caused by it will also be in a virtuous circle. The more the number of mobile users, the greater the advertising effect, the greater the advertising effect, and the more likely the number of users will increase. All this virtuous cycle has made mobile companies bigger and bigger. Faced with such brutal competitive pressure, if there is no big breakthrough in products, Unicom and Telecom may fall without a fight.
At this juncture, Unicom chose to cooperate with the more powerful giant Tencent.
On July 12, 2017, China Unicom and Tencent jointly launched the Tencent King Card package. With its low monthly rent and cost-effective package with unlimited data, it quickly drew a piece on this big cake. For Unicom, before the emergence of Tencent Wangka, mobile is the giant of the communication industry, in order to deal with the coming Tencent Wangka, then mobile also launched a dedicated traffic card to counter, traffic card this industry war also began.
Flow card emerged at the historic moment, occupy the market
On July 14, 2017, with the release of Tencent Wangka on App Bao, a revolutionary storm on the cost of traffic has come.
The monthly rent of Tencent King card is 19 yuan, and users can enjoy the unlimited use of Tencent’s application data. In addition, the call time is 0.1 yuan/minute, which is free of charge nationwide, and the traffic generated outside the application is 1 yuan /500M nationwide. For example, king of Glory in the game field, QQ and wechat in the communication field, Tencent Video in the video field.
In the field of exclusive application free traffic, Tencent Wangcard pioneered, and due to the original large base of Tencent users, Tencent Wangcard reaped 500W users in the first month of its birth, and then the number of users is soaring, with a monthly increase of 10 million new users. As of April 2018, the number of users of Tencent King Card has passed 100 million, and the rapid growth of the number of users also proves the correctness of the exclusive flow card route.
Tencent has successfully used the King card to connect its apps, bundling previously unrelated software in various fields together to create a stronger appeal. And the flow card with good effect in a short time has become a strong proof that it is in the middle of the market.
Tencent attracted more traffic, while Unicom grabbed the market.
Through this battle, Unicom increased nearly 100 million new users, and Tencent is the use of traffic to bind all their products, both sides take what they need, a need for the market, a need for traffic, both sides hit it off.
Tencent Wangka not only meets the huge market demand, but also proves that enterprises can cooperate and one plus one can be greater than two. But the seemingly omnipotent Tencent king card is not so perfect.
Recently some netizens feedback said, Unicom Tencent main push 19 yuan monthly rent card in fact hidden trick, such as the flow of the application will be deducted a yuan daily rental fee, Tencent application flow free but advertising unavoidable flow, that is to say, as long as the video advertising will be deducted money.
Therefore, the Tencent King card, which appears to rent at 19 yuan per month, actually starts at 49 yuan per month (assuming that you spend 30 days a month surfing the Internet every day), plus the consumption deducted from daily phone calls. The monthly rent starts at least 50 yuan.
Many users also said that although Tencent Wang Card has a powerful function of free traffic, their phone cards will not be updated for the time being. Some people have conservative opinions on China Unicom’s signal, so they keep a wait-and-see attitude, and this wait-and-see time just gives other operators time to respond.
Alert sleeping lion, mobile Internet king card counter
Tencent king card users just a few months of jump growth, also alerted mobile companies, its immediately launched a mobile Internet king card to counter.
Let’s take a look at the details of the mobile Internet card fee: the monthly rent is 18 yuan, and you can get 100 MB of national data directly. If you exceed 1 gb of data, you will deduct 1 yuan of data fee and have the right to use 1 GB of data on the day. If you exceed 1 gb of data, you will deduct another 1 yuan of data on the day. And the gift of caller ID display, free of charge, call minute 0.19 yuan/minute.
Compare the details of Tencent King card fees at the same time: monthly rent 19 yuan, the application flow is not limited, the flow generated outside the application is deducted one yuan has 800M use limit, and then beyond the deduction of one yuan superimposed 800M, and then beyond the day of unlimited flow and then deduct one yuan. Also give caller id, receive free of charge, talk minute 0.1 yuan/minute.
Although the mobile Internet King card is cheaper than king card, but the effect is not very good, the main reason is that the richness of the product linkage is still lack of some heat.
Let’s look at the apps associated with Tencent King Card: King of Glory, PubG mobile game, Tencent Video, QQ Music, Douyu TV, Panda TV, Huya TV, Kuaishou and so on. And mobile Internet king card is only youku video, watermelon video, PPTV, iQiyi, Tencent video free flow.
Thus, the limitations of mobile data cards may have something to do with the lack of an app empire partner like Tencent.
Today’s era stresses the common interests, and the kinds that a product can influence are limited after all. However, if a common interest is taken as the axis, then this axis can organically combine all products just like threading a needle and thread, and turn each jade into dazzling jewelry.
Win-win cooperation online and offline, mutual benefit is the mainstream of market development?
Finally to analyze, exclusive flow card in the future development of the possible direction, which has to start from the promotion of Tencent King card.
After March 2018, the online sales growth of Tencent Wangka has slowed down. At that time, there were only two ways to apply for a King card. The first way was to apply online, wait at home, and then go to the store to activate the card. The second way was to go to the corresponding store to activate the card.
Limited by single channel promotion, the range of users radiated by the product will be correspondingly limited. In order to gain a broader market, it is necessary to change the existing sales model.
In order to expand the market scale, Tencent Wangka put forward the project plan of building offline contact points to change the business model from O2O to C2C, and change the sales mode from a single O2O to a combined sales system. According to previous experience, there is a huge market under the C2C model. For example, Taobao rapidly occupies the market through the C2C business model.
In order to promote the C2C mode, Unicom launched the wangcard assistant lightning purchase function in wechat in early April this year, so that everyone can activate Tencent Wangcard as long as they have wechat. And mobile doesn’t seem to be making any moves to diversify its marketing channels.
A fence three piles, a hero three help, Unicom and Tencent jointly launched the Tencent King card is a very obvious signal of reciprocal cooperation, mobile industry’s timely response also reflects the development trend of traffic card without delay.
This shows that the success of an enterprise is inseparable from cooperation, and only mutual benefit and win-win can create a larger business empire. Alibaba, Tencent and Didi are all looking for mutual benefits. For example, Didi has made investment in Ofo, and Ali has reached new retail strategic cooperation with Runtai Group and Auchan Retail.
Under the trend of common interests, unicom and tencent, director of the complementary advantages from each two big companies, and with the king of tencent card promotion, application scope of the free flow will be more and more, for example, now well quickly, such as TV, panda betta TV broadcast platform, the future Meituan App, such as king may also be added to the card within the range of free flow.
Exclusive flow card is like a big magnet, is attracting more and more enterprises through its interests, successfully stirred the flow card this huge market, and choose to cooperate with the application of enterprises, is also equal to the flow market released a strong signal of win-win cooperation.
What on earth will mobile companies do next? Is the choice to go it alone to continue to reduce costs and unicom price war? Or by cooperating with more enterprises to produce more favorable and competitive products?
Let’s wait and see.
Article/Liu Kuang public account, ID: Liukuang110