A question posted by Ma Huateng on Zhihu revealed his anxiety.
Recently, Ma Huateng said in an open letter to global partners that the current Internet is deeply integrated with all walks of life from the outside to the inside. This is the best choice for the current development of the Internet and traditional industries. "We need to pay more and more attention to the externalities that may arise from the entire Internet ecosystem, and to study the risks and hidden dangers that may be brought about by the Internet of Everything, and we are increasingly aware of the heavy responsibilities we shoulder."
< p>The future development trend of the Internet industry is something that Ma Huateng has been paying attention to. Xiao Ma also posted a question on Zhihu: "At which stage of Internet development is the entire human race? In the next ten years, what is the general direction of Internet upgrades?" This attracted many netizens to watch.Perhaps it is because of this sense of crisis that Ma Huateng can lead Tencent to continue to move forward and stay ahead in the Internet wave. Today's Tencent empire has grown from the original social software QQ to an Internet ecological enterprise.
What is Ma Huateng worried about?
The Internet is a rapidly changing industry and competition is fierce. Over the past 12 years, my most profound experience is that Tencent has never been able to sit back and relax for a day. We are walking on thin ice every day, always worried that some omission will give us a fatal blow at any time, and always worried that users will abandon us. —— Ma Huateng
In today's Chinese Internet industry, Tencent has a near-monopoly platform, huge popularity, and continuous cash flow. Ordinary small problems do not pose a threat to Tencent. So, what else is Xiao Ma worried about?
Ma Huateng once said, "Everyone in the Internet industry will have a huge sense of crisis - the rapid changes in products and user needs here, and the deep reliance on R&D technical capabilities are unprecedented. There is no luck here, there is no eternal first, and there is no right or wrong. As long as users are no longer interested, you will be eliminated. This is the cruelty of the Internet industry."
From Ma Huateng's above remarks. , we can see the importance of technology to technology giants - "The reason why I have the status I have today is because I have a strategic vision, or in other words, I got lucky and caught the mainstream trend of technology development. ”
Take Microsoft for example. If it hadn’t been for the great empty-handed white wolf that won IBM’s operating system outsourcing contract with nothing, it might not be where it is today.
In an era, mainstream technology applications can bring 80% of commercial profits, while other scrap technologies can only obtain the remaining 20%. This is the 80/20 rule in the technical field. But technology is not static. New technologies are constantly growing. Among thousands of technologies, one will grow into a towering tree and become extremely profitable, replacing the original technology platform and becoming a new mainstream trend.
So today, giants such as Google, Facebook, Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu have begun to make acquisitions, spending tens of billions of dollars to buy emerging technologies. What is the purpose? It's a bet.
Because there are too many lessons that are vivid in my mind. The better ones like Microsoft, Intel, and IBM still have a living, but the sad fate is like Nokia, Motorola, Lucent, 3com, Kodak, BlackBerry, and AOL. , he was so miserable that he had to be mourned. Therefore, until the next mainstream technology trend becomes clear, these technology giants will have to be on tenterhooks every night:
Technology is constantly upgrading, which direction will be the mainstream trend in the future? No one knows.
Historically, a company can become a big company if it bets once and it can become a great company. If it bets twice, it can become a great company. There is only one person who can bet three times. It's IBM. From tabulators, to mainframes, to personal computers, IBM can simply be called the "magic operator."
As of now, in China, only Tencent and Alibaba have made two bets. Alibaba bet on Taobao and Alipay, and Tencent bet on QQ and WeChat.
In the era of mobile Internet, Tencent can breathe a sigh of relief, but when the next mainstream technology trend arrives, will it still have such good luck? Xiao Ma is anxious about this matter every day.
Tencent’s layout in recent years
In order to dispel this insecurity, Ma Huateng led Tencent to start from two aspects. He once said:
First, if you don’t understand what users like, then you should find someone who can and let them go to the front and let them have more contact with young users and understand their needs;< /p>
Second, invest in some such companies and products.
Nowadays, while Tencent is developing new products, it is also investing in different fields and exploring a "diversified technology group" model. Its tentacles are spread across China and the world in social networking, e-commerce, Entertainment, travel, culture, corporate services and other industries:
WeChat and QQ are used for social networking, WeChat is also used for payment, Didi Taxi and Mobike invested by Tencent are used for travel, and JD.com invested by Tencent is used for shopping. , use Tencent Video to watch movies, QQ Music to listen to music, China Literature to read novels, Meituan and Dianping, which it has invested in, to eat, and even play Honor of Kings while standing in line... invested by Tencent The field has penetrated into our "food, clothing, housing and transportation".
So in recent years, in what specific areas has Tencent made plans?
Mergermaket’s report shows that Tencent’s total M&A investment in the past five years was US$62.5 billion, of which US$21.3 billion was invested in 2016, or 140 billion yuan, equivalent to 97% of its total revenue that year. invest.
Data from VC Saas shows that the five industries in which Tencent invests the most are: culture and entertainment (87 billion), finance (30.2 billion), e-commerce (11.4 billion), automobile transportation, and life services.
Which areas are the future direction
A few days ago, Ma Huateng proposed Tencent’s “Poetry and Distance”-“Digital Ecology**” in an open letter to partners *The same body".
For Tencent, the economy and society are regarded as the ecology in which it operates, rather than just being limited to the traditional narrow Tencent ecology. It is not only the need to resolve the pressure of socialization, but also the source of the company’s growth momentum in the next stage:
“In the context of digitalization, more and more connections have begun to occur between the ecology of different industries and regions. They may no longer be restricted by the fragmentation caused by factors such as industry and geography, but can be closely intertwined to create a rich space for innovation in cross-border areas, thus forming a 'digital ecological unity'."
This means that today, giants not only have to be strong enough themselves, but also have to make the entire economy and society stronger, and then they get a share of the increased total social value. So, which fields will the giants be optimistic about in the future?
From a technical perspective, this year, Ma Huateng mentioned the word "cloud" many times. The hidden meaning behind it is to promote the digital economy. This is a new trend created by Tencent after "Internet +". It is also the direction Tencent can “connect” in looking for the next wave of technology.
If Tencent relies on the powerful social functions of WeChat to connect people and information, then how to complete the next step of people and services. There are about 740 million Internet users in China. How many companies in China are on the Internet and in the cloud?
Tencent wants to connect industries and enterprises, but this time, Tencent does not connect with a super application, but with underlying technology. The carrier responsible for this function is Tencent Cloud, as well as artificial intelligence teams such as Tencent Youtu and AI Lab.
From an industry perspective, in the past five years, Tencent and Alibaba have invested heavily in three industries: culture and entertainment, e-commerce, and finance.
Among them, culture and entertainment will be the most fiercely contested territory between Tencent and Alibaba in the next five years. The reason is simple. Digital content is at the intersection of the core businesses of Tencent and Alibaba. The traffic brought by Tencent's social business must develop monetization channels other than games; and Alibaba's trading platform has only a thin line from selling physical products to selling digital goods.
In the cultural field, wholly-owned subsidiaries of Tencent and Alibaba have also made rapid investments in recent years. Tencent invested in 10 animation companies in the first seven months of 2017; Alibaba’s investments in the film and television industry include Amblin, Bona, Enlight, Huayi and other film giants. The above mentioned are minority equity investments, not mergers and acquisitions (in fact, it is rumored that Tencent has tried to acquire Kuaikan Comics). Therefore, there is a high possibility that the next quasi-giant will appear in the above seven cultural and entertainment sub-sectors.
Judging from the current development situation, the three industries of animation, film and television, and sports will have emerging companies with rapid growth. They will receive huge funds and resource support from Tencent and Alibaba, and will eventually become A quasi-giant with highly dispersed shareholdings.
The most important thing is that because they are in the important field of digital content, these new quasi-giants may have a greater disruptive effect than existing companies such as Didi and Meituan. In fact, we can easily find that offline Internet companies such as Didi and Meituan do not actually appear in the main business chain of any company in BAT, nor do they pose a substantial threat to BAT’s business. Their high-speed Growth not only comes from the popularity of consumer Internet in specific fields, but more importantly, it is boosted by the capital and resources from BAT.
The new giants that are about to emerge may be different: they are at the important intersection of Tencent and Alibaba’s main businesses. If the giants allow them to disrupt (or even accelerate through capital injections) in the fields of cultural entertainment and digital content This process), they are likely to shake Tencent's business foundation from the depths.
If you don’t think long-term, you must worry about the short-term. It seems that he is working hard to find new development opportunities.