Three forces fight the Chinese TV industry

Long and long ago, the upstairs downstairs and downstairs, the light telephone was a well-to-do dream for the Chinese. The well-to-do life of the Chinese did not include televisions and cars, although they later entered the homes of the people.

According to the China Census Report, China has about 1.3 billion people and 450 million households and has more than 500 million television sets. According to the deployment of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, the province, city, district, county, and township level 4 radio and television stations are established. With the guiding spirit, with the implementation of the village-village-and-husband-to-door project, 1.3 billion people have successively taken a look at television and heard the party’s voice, with a coverage rate of nearly 98%.

In other words, 450 million households have TVs for every family. However, this 500 million TV sets receive TV programs through different technologies and means. There are three forces involved in this, namely the so-called broadcasting, telecommunication and the Internet. .

The largest and earliest forces were called Guangda Power Grid. Guangpu Power Grid was divided into three groups: ground wireless, live satellite and cable, terrestrial wireless coverage in rural areas, live broadcast stars in mountain areas, and cable in densely populated cities. They complement each other and together make up the wide grid, covering almost 450 million households.

Because ground wireless is an open broadcast, it cannot count its accurate users. The broadcast star has hundreds of millions of users, including regular pots and cottage pots, and about 230 million wired subscribers. It is currently the main force of TV program transmission. The main force, not all, oh, with the completion of the nationwide cable television digitization by the end of 2015, cable TVs will excavate the sleeping users and black households in the simulation age, and will reach the historical peak: 250 million households. It is very simple. All the installations can be installed. Rural and mountainous areas also can not afford cable TV cable.

Then it began to decline because with the development of communication technologies, emerging IPTV and OTT will further divert the cable TV users, and some users will start CORD-CUTTING, that is, stop cable TV and only use the Internet, especially the new generation of young people. People, step by step, regularly scheduled radio and television can not meet their irregular life, they prefer the Internet, want to see what.


Under the impact of the convergence of the three networks, cable TV users will fall to 70% of the original users, or 170 million households, and about 80 million users will be diverted by broadband and the Internet. Because the price of cable TV is cheaper than broadband, coupled with the charity attribute, broadband cannot replace cable television. There are also users in the home with both cable television and broadband. There are also many coexisting.

According to the data, 203 million fixed broadband subscribers have been developed. Has surpassed cable TV to become the first entertainment demand for middle- and high-income families. Here, a second force has formed. Telecom IPTV has bundled 37 million households with 160 million home broadband subscribers of China Unicom and Unicom, and Telecom and Unicom It is still vigorously developing. Although broadcast control platforms have CCTV's total platform and provincial television stations' secondary broadcast control to provide content, telecom operators still have a great deal of autonomy in the application and service platform beyond content, especially in wisdom. Family and Internet of Things.

IPTV will further develop. Among the 250 million broadband users, telecommunications and Unicom will account for 200 million. Why broadband will only have 250 million households, because the cable TV ceiling is also a broadband ceiling, public interest subsidized cable TV cable can not pull in the place, the commercial operation of the telecommunications fiber optic cable also can not pull in, the wide grid can rely on the ground wireless and The live broadcast star covers users outside the cable. What does Telecom and Unicom rely on?

According to the 37 law, among broadband users of China Unicom and China Unicom, 30% of IPTV subscribers can be bundled, ie 60 million subscribers, nearly double the 37 million subscribers now. The reason why IPTV develops rapidly is because the interactive high-definition of cable TV is not enough. The original analog or digital unidirectional cannot meet the interactive requirements of users, giving IPTV development space. Once the wired high-definition interaction is popularized, IPTV is weak.

Finally, the latest is Internet TV. The Internet is the most free and simple. There is a home network cable in the home. A smart TV (top box) can be bought back online, regardless of whether it is broadband, Unicom broadband, or mobile broadband. Dr. Peng's broadband, or radio and television cable broadband, unlike IPTV, can only use Telecom Unicom's private network.

Internet TV is a new force, but it will not be all of the TV industry, let alone the future of the TV industry. The premise of Internet TV is to have broadband, and up to 250 million people can install broadband, leaving 200 million households. How to do? You have to rely on radio and television broadcasting ground stars, and then as long as the price of broadband is more expensive than cable, it will not completely replace cable.

But statistics on the number of Internet TV terminal developments for 2011-2014:


Internet TV set-top box:

2011, 1.5 million;

2012, 5 million;

2013, 10 million;

2014, 20 million;

Accumulated 36.5 million


Smart TV:

2011, 500,000;

2012, 3 million;

2013, 9 million;

2014, 16 million,

Accumulated 28.5 million

This statistics does not calculate the 2015 shipments. Although it has not been recorded, the error rate will not exceed plus or minus 10%. Considering that its base is 200 million fixed wired broadband subscribers, the OTT penetration rate is 32.5%. Very high. Here is the shipment, without considering the activation rate and activity rate, the activation rate industry average is 30%, the activity rate is 10% of the active users, but this block is a great variable, once there is killer content or application, It is easy to detonate this 200 million-user capacity market.

Cars entering homes are not the same as family cars. Family cars cannot replace public transport. However, family cars and public transportation will improve travel conditions. The same applies to television, whether it is broadcast television, IPTV, or Internet TV. They are all part of family entertainment. After all the television and family life, now and in the future, besides TV and diverse cultural life are available for everyone to choose from, more people go out of the family and go to theaters, concert halls, bars, nightclubs. However, the Chinese television industry under the three forces’ fighting will also look better.