King of Capital

"Mr. Xie, I have been working in the TV business for many years. Although I have not been directly responsible for LeTV Video, at least we often met together to discuss a lot of work. From this perspective, I am quite familiar with the video and film industry, and I am confident that I can control the content of my work well."

In his mind, Liang Jun only regarded the film and television business as a tool to attract traffic, but his words were nice enough, and he secretly planned to stay up late to watch a movie after get off work tonight.

Xie Jing Xing sat slumped in the large office chair with his eyes closed, making it hard to tell what he was thinking.

Click, the heel hits the space bar on the keyboard, the TV series trailer continues to play, the bright blue light circle on the top of the smart speaker flashes, and the sound of the ending song is heard.

"When will spring return to the cool and sunny ten miles away..."

The treble is sweet, the mid-range is accurate, and the bass is deep, but none of them are there. A smart speaker that costs three hundred yuan can only make noise, and you can't expect more. It matches the lyrics very well, but it's cool.

Xie Jing Xing listened to the ending song again, sat up straight, picked up the application document for purchasing the series, and signed it.

The producer of "Three Lives Three Worlds" is Jiaxing Media, whose major shareholder is Xiaoma Pentium. There is no need to say more about the above. From production to sales, this drama has achieved the first complete closed loop of the Xie system's pan-entertainment industry ecosystem.

Of course, according to the strategic direction that had been determined long ago, LeTV only purchased the distribution and broadcasting rights.

User usage scenarios determine the differentiation between mobile phones and TV terminals. iQiyi, Youku and Tencent Video need to broadcast exclusive dramas to ensure that they attract users to open their own software.

When users turn on their TVs, they are first LeTV users, and then viewers of the content in the built-in TV desktop system, iQiyi, Youku and Tencent Video. There is no competition between the two parties. Xie Jingxing told Xiao Ma Ge when he attended Brother Qiangdong’s wedding last year, and also told Mr. Ma later.

As for LeTV Video, the self-produced drama center has begun to show results. Xie Jingxing has long instructed that they can cooperate with peers in investment and production to jointly resist the industry bubble.

We already have some clues. The three video platforms of LeTV, iQiyi, Youku and Tencent Video, as well as leading film and television production companies such as Pony.com under the Xie Group and New Classics Media under the Tencent Group, are discussing issuing an autonomous statement.

The decision by iQiyi and Tencent to jointly spend 800 million yuan to purchase the online copyright of "Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace" is the product of this industry convention, but it is still not very reliable. When people see a good drama, they still spend money desperately to grab the exclusive rights. Satellite TV stations and traditional old things like Huayi also want to play tricks.

The day before yesterday, Xie Jingxing had a chat with He Li, the head of the government's public relations department, and planned to organize a meeting to bring together his colleagues and ask the leaders of relevant regulatory departments to listen to the voices of industry representatives.

It would be better to just issue a "salary cap order" and crack down on tax evasion and tax avoidance. We can't let a bad apple spoil the whole barrel.

Internet companies work so hard but all the money goes to people in the entertainment industry. Is there still any law?
Xie Jingxing knew Liang Jun's true attitude towards the film and television business, and to be fair, it made sense to a large extent. Even after ten years, when he looked through the financial reports of iQiyi, Youku and Tencent Video, the profit prospects were still in a dream, with endless bleeding and losses.

He initially invested in Panda TV in an attempt to enter the pan-entertainment sales terminal at a low cost, acquired Pony.com and supported Kujiji Studio, occupying the original content production field at the upstream of the industry chain. The same is true for investing in movie theaters and online ticketing. Anyway, he avoided the big pit of video platforms in a roundabout way.

However, ByteDance came up with Xigua Video, but it ended up in vain.

The acquisition of LeTV cost a total of tens of billions of yuan. Relying on high-quality assets such as television and film copyrights, it took three to five years to complete the restructuring, change its appearance, list in the United States, and sell the company to shareholders. The expected rate of return can at least double.

For Xie Jingxing, the original intention was a typical financial M&A operation of buying low and selling high. Whether it was the hardware terminal business or the film and television business, the essence could not escape from making the company's operating conditions look better so that it could be sold at a good price in the future.

So what's the point of Zhang Zhao, an old man who knows the way, retiring while the Liang army is in its prime and full of ambition?

From the perspective of financial mergers and acquisitions investment, there is no distinction between high and low. Xie Jingxing hopes that they will work hard. It doesn't matter whether they can really make a profit or not. He will make a fortune in the capital market.

But from the perspective of the company's own development, looking at the financial report of Mango TV, apart from iQiyi, Youku and Tencent Video, only the latter has been profitable for many years relying on the resources of its parent company Hunan Satellite TV, while LeTV is precisely centered on Internet TV.

Internet TV is also related to the smart home ecosystem, and the prospect of hard technology manufacturing is very exciting...

Xie Jingxing had to admit that Jia Yueting was an excellent jigsaw puzzle master. He gradually cleared away the ruins left behind, and under the ruins emerged a foundation that looked like it could be used to build a high-rise building.

Financial mergers and acquisitions are a guarantee, and perhaps LeTV can be run into a truly high-quality company - making more money.

"The film and television business is not something that can be achieved overnight. It takes three to five years to learn and practice slowly. I will give the stage to you and Lao Zhang."

Xie Jingxing finished processing several documents attentively, piled them up and pushed them to the other end of the desk. Liang Jun sat on the bench for a long time and couldn't help but sigh silently when he heard this.

Okay, the young commander in chief recognized the status of the film and television business. He had nothing to say and picked up the pen to sign, agreeing to several funding applications from the platform and the film industry.

"For this speaker, has the design idea been clarified? Is it smart or is it a speaker?" Xie Jingxing briefly mentioned it and then turned to talk about the product.

"We conducted market research and found that 23.7% of consumers said they are willing to try 'smart speakers' if the price is right. This is a good selling point." Liang Jun was prepared to give an explanation: "In addition, Lezhi+'s strategic concept is to create professional entertainment smart home devices, and we have high requirements for the quality of the speakers."

"You get nothing if you want it all. Cheap, smart, sound quality, none of them are reflected." Xie Jingxing automatically blocked the lies and hit the nail on the head.

Liang Jun insisted on his own point of view and argued: "In fact, we have tried to cooperate with professional speaker brands and use patents such as hifi to improve the sound quality. Consumers are not sensitive to these technologies and sound quality at the price of 300 yuan."

In 2014, Amazon launched the world’s first smart speaker, and domestic hard technology companies and even Internet giants were immediately excited, because they had something to copy again!

The first to respond was JD.com, which cooperated with iFlytek, a leading company in the field of intelligent voice, and launched the first domestically produced smart speaker 'Ding Dong' in August last year.

With first-hand sales channels and top-notch technology, and no competing products at all, its Bluetooth speakers and WIFI speakers are well-beaten, with sales higher than the second to tenth place combined.

Lezhi+ changed its name and adjusted its strategy to focus on building an entertainment smart home device ecosystem. Liang Jun first thought of making smart speakers. Due to the lack of smart voice technology support, the initial product design logic focused on sound quality.

It not only fits the company's professional philosophy, but also has mature traditional speaker technology, so you can use it right after you buy it. It took a lot of effort to coordinate, and basically all the necessary technologies to ensure the sound quality have been used. However, it is a bit dull in terms of intelligence, and can only provide simple interactions such as "Good morning, the weather is good today".

The price is 899 yuan, which is in full competition with Ding Dong speaker.

Xie Jingxing was quite satisfied with this version of the plan. As a result, Dingdong Speaker launched its second product in February this year, focusing on cost-effectiveness and priced at 199 yuan.

Liang Jun was inspired and decided to sacrifice some sound quality and lower the price in exchange for lowering the entry threshold, bringing more consumers into the potential audience group of the Lezhi+ entertainment smart home ecosystem, relying on the first-mover advantage to secure the market position, and then gradually establish brand characteristics.

So the second version priced at 299 yuan came into being, with a nice appearance and blue light, but mediocre performance.

It's a bit weird but it can't be called bad. With the gimmick of being the second smart speaker in China and marketing promotion, market research determines that it will have no problem selling 20 units, and the price in the range of 30 to 50 can be expected.

The blank blue ocean market is polluted first and then managed. Xiao Ai, Tmall Genie and Xiaodu are still in the womb. According to Liang Jun’s strategy...

Xie Jingxing suddenly felt that it made sense for this guy to leave Lenovo and get together with Jia Yueting. Last year, senior executives from LeTV and Xiaomi had a high-intensity online confrontation and he was one of them.

"First, don't worry about whether users care about sound quality, and give users the right to choose; second, let users know what technologies we use and why our speakers are better than others; finally, I want professional entertainment smart devices, professional."

Xie Jingxing spread his hands and emphasized: "We only want the smart home-entertainment segment!"

"It will be more valuable for you to negotiate the audio book copyrights of Himalaya and the music copyrights of Tencent and NetEase Cloud and embed them into the speakers than to try to make them cheaper." He made the decision without any doubt.

As for smart speakers, JD.com started the market and Huawei entered the market to finish it. The chaos among giants has led to no market share. There has been no breakthrough in the basic technology of voice artificial intelligence for a long time, and the products of various companies are highly homogenized. After all the competition, they have returned to the field of speaker quality.

If LeTV rushed in headfirst, why would Xie Jingxing need to formulate an entertainment smart home strategy and emphasize differentiated competition in niche areas?

Liang Jun was just thinking too much. He was path-dependent and thought that the success of the price butcher of TV products could be replicated in any field. However, no matter how useless Jia Yueting was, it took him nearly ten years to accumulate film and television content as a foundation.

Baidu, Xiaomi, and Alibaba, which one is not the king of volume?

“Take it back and redesign it.”

Xie Jingxing was relatively restrained in his words and didn't criticize him too much. After all, he had come up with a product model in just half a year. His abilities were up to par, but his mind was not clear.

Redesign, product model, finding supply chain, factory production, this whole process will basically take until the end of the year.

Liang Jun estimated the time node sullenly and reported: "Mr. Xie, this year our TV online channel sales ratio has dropped to 53%, and the offline channel sales ratio has increased rapidly. Looking at sales alone, our online sales growth, Xiaomi's, and Samsung's are gradually stabilizing."

"It can be confirmed that there is not much room for growth in the overall online market share. No matter how hard everyone tries, it is nothing more than a price war to grab users from each other, and there are still many places we have not entered offline."

He stood up and opened a map: "We have drawn a grid. Currently, there are 632 dealers across the country. If we cover the large blanks in third- and fourth-tier cities, offline channels are expected to support 60%-70% of sales."

"Offline store?" Xie Jingxing raised his eyebrows.

Liang Jun looked bitter and helpless, "Well, we plan to operate our own stores + traditional dealers model." (End of this chapter)