E-book fever: Apple's impact is the appearance of the content of the decision to die

Hanwang Technology released its first-quarter earnings report in 2011. The data showed that Hanwang Technology suffered a serious loss. Previously, Hanwang Technology had made a preview of the first quarter results. The forecast came out as a heavy bomb that caused an uproar in the domestic e-book market and the market sang the voice of an empty e-book. Most viewpoints hold that e-books belong to transitional products, and the popularity of "touch-screen" technology makes the e-book market further return to the "niche market"; there are even opinions that e-books will die!

Liu Yingjian, chairman of Hanwang Technology, pointed out that Hanwang Technology suffered a significant loss in the first quarter mainly because of the increased competition in the e-book market and the impact of related products such as tablet PCs. For the above pessimistic argument, Liu Yingjian stated that the Hanwang is changing its own profit model, and the new profit model has begun around the Hanwang Bookstore. “Hanwang’s painful period of technological transformation will soon pass.”

The gift market was greatly affected. In 2009 and 2010, there was a blowout market in the domestic e-book market. Hanwang Technology made great use of it and became a leader in the domestic e-book industry. The market share once exceeded 80%. The fieryness of Hanwang's e-books has also triggered a large number of companies to enter the e-book market. In major computer stores, there are e-book sales counters everywhere.

However, the e-book market has been stirred up and cannot hide the fact that e-books dominate the gift market. Mr. Zhang, a tablet computer dealer from Pacific Computer Stores, told Nandu that he had previously sold e-books. The sales of e-books will increase sharply during major festivals. The sales on normal days are not ideal, indicating that many e-books are used as gifts. The demand for active purchases by consumers is not strong.

After the launch of the iPad, the market continued to be hot, making the gift market for e-books a huge shock. In particular, the launch of the iPad 2 this year, Apple's sharp price cuts on the iPad 1, is to make e-books in the gift market greatly affected. Pan Jianfeng is the marketing director of a large-scale public relations company in Guangzhou. Every year on New Year's Day and before the Spring Festival, Pan Jianfeng will give some gifts to his clients. "E-books were still popular last year, and many people named them iPad last year."

According to Zhang Yuanfei, a consumer electronics consultancy, the iPad’s impact on e-books is nothing more than an appearance. “The e-book was originally a niche product that mainly met the needs of serious reading. Smartphones and tablet PCs are the main carriers of fast reading. However, the e-books were simmered in the past two years, and the niche products were just being mass-produced. Now it's just that its paintings were uncovered."

Difficult to reduce costs is the main reason for the loss of Hanwang According to the latest data from the Analysys think tank, China's tablet PC sales in the first quarter of 2011 reached 1.0367 million units. Among them, the Apple iPad accounted for 78.33% of the share, basically forming a monopoly. According to statistics from Zero2IPO Research Center, domestic e-books sold only 280,000 units in the first quarter, less than one-third of tablet PCs. Hanwang Technology sold 149,800 units in the first quarter with a market share of 53.03%. This set of data fully illustrates the impact of tablet computers on e-books.

Reporters also found in the major computer stores, the year before last year, the scene of prosperous e-book sales in computer stores has ceased to exist, tablet computers have been placed in a prominent position in the various digital files. A number of dealers reported to reporters that some time ago iPad1 reduced the price of 1,000 yuan, which led to an upsurge in tablet PC sales. E-books were once unattended. The price of e-books also dropped sharply during this time, and sales began to improve.

Liu Yingjian stated that after the price of e-books fell, the sales situation has been greatly improved, indicating that the public's rigid demand for reading is strong, and the impact of iPad is only temporary. One of the key factors that restricts the e-book market is cost control. In particular, the core piece of e-paper is basically monopolized by Yuantai Science and Technology, making it difficult to significantly reduce costs. Under the impact of the iPad, e-books had to be sacrificed at the expense of substantial price cuts, which was also the reason for the loss of Hanwang in the first quarter.

"Although the gift market has been squeezed, the mass consumer market is rising. The advantages of the iPad in multimedia can not completely replace the e-book's advantages in reading. As long as the cost problem is solved, the e-book market still has a lot of potential. Hanwang LCD screen suppliers will increase by two more this year and it is expected that the cost of LCD screens will drop by about 20% at the end of this year, said Yue Wenjing, director of Hanwang Technology Market.

The construction of content ends in life and death. Apple's impact on e-books is not only reflected in the domestic market. In the United States, in the face of Apple's pressure, Amazon has to repeatedly reduce the price of the K indle, and its new built-in advertising product, K indle, is priced at only 114 dollars. Since the price of Kingdle dropped again and again, the sales volume of the Kindle did not suffer much.

However, Amazon's core competitiveness in the e-reading industry chain is not hardware, but its content platform. Amazon started as an e-commerce company and has accumulated more than 10 years in the field of e-books and formed its own core competitiveness. Even if the price of Kendle further decreases, Amazon’s e-reading industry will also have high profits. This is where Amazon is not afraid of Apple's strength.

Liu Yingjian repeatedly said in an interview with reporters that in the near future, the price of Hanwang e-books is likely to drop very low, and even be free. The future business model of Hanwang Technology is to follow the example of Amazon. The profit does not depend on the terminal, but on the Hanwang Bookstore platform. “If Hanwang Book City has a promising future, Hanwang Technology will have a great future; if the Book City cannot be done, Hanwang Technology will have no future.” “Hanwang Technology will desperately expand its user base and make this book city a good place.” Because) The future is too important."

In fact, in the past more than two years, Hanwang Technology has been actively investing in creating content for bookstores. After the listing of Hanwang Technology, building Hanwang Book City became the No. 1 project of Hanwang Technology. It is reported that Hanwang Technology not only signed content resources with domestic publishers and publishers, but also established bookstores in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and introduced comic book resources such as Japan. The goal of Hanwang is to build Hanwang Book City into the largest download platform for the entire Chinese language newspapers and periodicals.