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Wen/Zhang Yao
Source/Zero state LT (ID: LingTai_LT)
The ceiling at the traffic and product level is still just a superficial business dilemma. What worries the byte most is that most of its products are content oriented, without infrastructure products like Alibaba and Tencent, which firmly hold payment, social networking and other strong user stickiness. In case of platform migration, byte skipping may lose the content advantage.
Pico 4 does not seem to ignite the market as byte beating intended.
On November 10, 2022, Sina Technology quoted Pico insiders as saying that Pico was not satisfied with the sales data of Pico 4 at the current stage. "If we want to achieve the sales target of 1 million head displays this year, it is a lot worse."
According to the data disclosed by Sandalwood Advisors, the market intelligence company, as of October 14, 2022, the online order volume of Pico 4 in the domestic market is only about 46000 units. At that time, only half a month after the release of Pico 4, the sales volume of Pico 4 was less than 50000 units on the basis of the still hot market, which also indicates that its subsequent market performance is difficult to be optimistic.
Since it was acquired by Byte Beat, Pico can be said to have placed all the wild hopes of the former Yuanuniverse, and its newly launched Pico 4 really ranks the first echelon of VR track in terms of technology. However, Pico's problem is that it has never been able to provide reasons for consumers to choose their own products.
01
The Metauniverse of Explosion
With fixed VR head display
Since the listing of "the first share of the Metauniverse" Robbox in early 2021 and the renaming of Facebook as "Meta" in October, the Metauniverse has also gradually become the wind outlet of the Internet in China. According to the data of China Commerce Industry Research Institute, it is estimated that the market size of China's Yuan Universe will reach 126.35 billion yuan in 2027, with a compound annual growth rate of 32.98% in the next five years.
The capital smelling dividends also moved. According to the Mid Year Investment and Financing Report of the 2022 Yuan Universe disclosed by the enterprise, in the first half of 2022, there were about 205 investment and financing events related to the global Yuan Universe, with a total investment and financing scale of more than $32.2 billion, up 320% and 230% year on year respectively. Among them, there were 40 investment and financing events related to the China Yuan Universe, with a total financing amount of 4.276 billion yuan.
In order to seize the dividend at the first time, major Internet companies have also begun to layout relevant businesses of the Metauniverse.
For example, at the NetEase Innovation Enterprise Conference held at the end of 2021, NetEase announced its next-generation Internet technology architecture for the "meta universe" for the first time. At the beginning of 2022, Giant Network said on the investor interaction platform that, "after preliminary research and demonstration, the company has determined the universe game as one of the long-term layout directions."
Among them, byte beating has shown great enthusiasm for the metauniverse. It not only successively launched Pixsound, Party Island, A-SOUL, and other products related to the metauniverse software, but also invested heavily in the metauniverse hardware.
Enterprise survey data shows that in August 2021, Byte Bounce invested 9 billion yuan to acquire the VR startup Pico, which is the largest acquisition in China's VR industry by then. It is worth noting that 36kr reported that Tencent also intended to acquire Pico, but gave up in the process of bidding with Byte. Subsequently, Tencent plans to acquire Blackshark Technology, a game phone company, and enter the VR track.
On the one hand, it shows that VR hardware has almost become the recognized "ticket" of the head Internet companies in the meta universe. On the other hand, it also shows the determination of byte beating to win the AR track quality standard. However, although capital and enterprises pursue the dream of the meta universe, consumers have always been indifferent to the carrier VR glasses of the meta universe.
IDC data shows that in 2021, global AR/VR equipment shipments will reach 11.23 million units, up 92.1% year on year, including 10.95 million VR equipment shipments. Although the growth rate of AR/VR equipment shipments is not bad, compared with hundreds of millions of shipments of PCs, smartphones and other devices, AR/VR equipment is still too small.
02
Pico can't open the market
Pico has spared no effort to attract consumers to buy their own products. For example, the starting price of Pico 4 is only 2499 yuan, which is almost equal to the price of entry-level smart phones. It is worth noting that the low price of Pico 4 is not the inevitable result of economies of scale, but comes from Pico's subsidies without cost.
WellsennXR said that the BOM cost of Pico 4 8GB+128G is about US $348.255, and the comprehensive hardware cost is about US $368.25. Calculated at the exchange rate of US $1 to 7 yuan, the after tax comprehensive cost of Pico 4 is about 2913 yuan. Sina Science and Technology quoted the quarterly news from a former senior technical expert of HTV VIVE, saying that "every time a Pico4 is sold, Pico may lose about 1000 yuan".
In order to attract the attention of consumers and cultivate user habits. In 2021, when Pico Neo 3 was launched, Pico also launched the "180 day clock in half price" activity at the same time. Users only need to use Pico Neo 3 to clock in every day for 180 consecutive days to get 50% of the purchase price, compared with 1000 more Pico Neo 3.
Taking advantage of Pico 4's popularity, Pico also tries to attract more consumers through popular content from the content dimension.
For example, in early November 2022, Pico, together with the China Giant Panda Protection and Research Center, launched the "world's first 3D panoramic VR live broadcast of giant pandas". Users can watch relevant content through Pico's VR products. Later, Pico became the official VR partner of the 2022 Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival, and co sponsored the new "Golden Rooster VR Film Festival".
But as mentioned at the beginning, Pico 4 has not swept the market. Sina Technology quoted insiders as saying that Pico4 had proposed a stock index of 2.5 million units to the supply chain, and then adjusted the target to 1.8 million units. In addition, it is estimated that Pico still has an inventory backlog of "about 400000-500000 head displays".
The reason may be that Pico 4 has not brought revolutionary experience to consumers in both hardware and software dimensions.
It is undeniable that Pico 4's hardware has been upgraded in an all-round way, and the pancake optical scheme has greatly reduced the size of the product; The pupillary distance adjustment becomes infinite adjustment, which can adapt to more people; Color perspective technology is adopted to further stitch up the "rift" between the virtual and the real world.
But unfortunately, the VR effect of Pico 4 is far from reaching the extreme silence of the VR device in the movie Player 1. There are also problems such as light loss, low refresh rate, and low PPI. Of course, this kind of hardware defect is not unique to Pico 4, but the problem of the entire VR supply chain.
Taking the screen as an example, according to Jobs' concept of retinal screen, if VR glasses want to eliminate pixels, then at least a single 6K resolution screen is required, and the number of pixels will be about eight times the current mainstream VR glasses. Even if there are such display panels at present, it is difficult for mobile processors to provide enough computing power for these panels to display content smoothly.
At the software level, the content of the VR platform is even worse. Taking games as an example, Qingting's statistics show that by the middle of 2022, the total number of Steam platform applications will be 125500, of which only 6820 will support VR, accounting for 5.43%.
The growth of any platform is inseparable from attracting users with high-quality content. One of the real "out of the loop" content in the VR industry is the Half Life: Alex, produced and released by Valve in March 2020, which has indeed brought millions of users to Steam VR. However, it is a pity that after Half Life: Alex, the VR market has been silent for many years, and no other "masterpiece" has been published.
In this regard, Ren Lifeng, vice president of Pico, said frankly, "According to my standards, Pico 4 is not rich enough, and there is still much room to work hard".
03
Byte beating cannot hide anxiety
In the background that the VR track can't see the end, the byte beating still "supports" Pico, which also reveals its own anxiety to some extent.
Although after years of operation, Byte Beat has created national level apps such as Tiao Tone, Today's Headlines, Watermelon Video, etc., with the mobile Internet traffic reaching its peak, the performance of Byte Beat is inevitably close to the ceiling.
The Securities Times once reported that since the second half of 2021, the domestic advertising revenue of byte beating has stopped growing, and the growth of Tiaoyin and DAU of today's headlines has also been sluggish.
This is largely due to the fact that China's Internet traffic has almost peaked. According to the Semi annual Report on China Mobile Internet in 2022 released by QuestMobile, by the middle of 2022, the number of monthly active users of China's mobile Internet will be 1.19 billion, with an increase of only 9.03 million in half a year.
More pessimistically, the byte beating, known as the APP factory, has not launched a heavyweight product for many years. At present, among the TOP5 APPs displayed on the official website of Byte Beating, the "youngest" KYOTI was also launched in August 2017.
The ceiling at the traffic and product level is still just a superficial business dilemma. What worries the byte most is that most of its products are content oriented, without infrastructure products like Alibaba and Tencent, which firmly hold payment, social networking and other strong user stickiness. In case of platform migration, byte skipping may lose the content advantage.
According to the historical experience of the transition from PC to smart phone era, the current technology industry may also have reached a new turning point. For example, Luo Yonghao has started to bet on the "next generation computing platform" in advance after he "retired" from the Internet. Considering that the ideal VR device has a strong sense of immersion, rich entertainment and other characteristics, it is likely to become a popular computing platform in the future.
As for why it entered the VR market, after Pico 4 was released, Yang Zhenyuan, Vice President of Byte Beating, said, "AR and VR represent the differentiated form of information interaction, which is closely related to the main business of Byte Beating - content creation platform in the long run. The content platform is for the creation, distribution and interaction of content, so if there are new media forms and changes in interaction forms, it is also related to the business of bytes. "
From this point of view, Pico's deeper significance to byte hopping is to become the "carrier" for the content of byte hopping to safely transition to the next era.
However, Pico is still difficult to take this responsibility. In September 2022, Ren Lifeng, vice president of Pico, said in an interview with Caile and other media, "At present, the annual output of traditional long videos in the Chinese market can reach 50000 hours, but the annual output of high-quality VR videos is less than 20 hours."
To our consolation, Pico has become the "leader" of China's VR track. IDC data shows that in the first half of 2022, China's VR market will have a total shipment of 558000 units, including 349000 Pico units, accounting for 62.54% of the market.
If Pico can maintain this market advantage in the future until the VR supply chain "blooms", it may become a "springboard" for byte hopping to the next era. But the question is, in the context of continuous pressure on the main business, will byte beating still be willing to return to blood transfusion for Pico?
(Statement: This article only represents the author's view, not Sina.com's position.)
