The performance of Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent has shown rapid growth, experts said

A few days ago, the three leading Internet companies Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu all announced their fourth quarter and full-year financial reports for 2014. The financial reports show , the three leading companies still maintain rapid growth, and emerging businesses such as O2O, mobile advertising, and Internet finance that the three giants have vigorously cultivated have just started, and there is huge room for growth in the future.

However, many entrepreneurs and investors have begun to issue some warnings: the Internet industry's judgment of "standing at the forefront" is more speculative, and more attention should be paid to the development of specific companies. Some experts say that the current three Internet giants have formed a closed structure, which will restrict the further growth space of "Internet +".

The Big Three:

Internet finance is still in the market investment period

Comparing the financial reports of the Big Three last year, it is not difficult to see that Alibaba has still become the Big Three by virtue of its e-commerce platform The most profitable company in the world, Tencent has the largest revenue scale and is still strong in the fields of games and social advertising. Baidu has increased its personnel and capital investment in the technology field and cannot be underestimated in the future competition for the commanding heights of technology.

The industry is paying more attention to the investment and ecological layout of the three giants. In 2014, the three giants spent a lot of money in different online and offline fields, intending to cover all aspects of the Internet. Among them, Alibaba and Tencent are focusing on increasing investment in various life service applications, and Baidu is paying more attention to artificial intelligence and deep learning. Baidu's R&D investment in 2014 was close to 7 billion yuan, and technology products including driverless cars and Baidu Eye are also being developed and launched one after another.

But as Baidu CEO Robin Li said, Baidu’s investment is still in its early stages. At present, the main businesses of the three BAT giants are still advertising, e-commerce and games, respectively. O2O is an important area for the next stage of the three giants' layout.

However, mobile e-commerce and Internet finance are still in the market investment period and have not yet reached harvest time. Taking Alibaba's financial report as an example, there is a phenomenon of "the faster the mobile growth, the slower the growth of Alibaba's revenue." One of the reasons is that the mobile phone screen is small and there are fewer advertising spaces; the other reason is that Alibaba management is consciously Control revenue growth and wait for the explosion of new growth areas such as mobile e-commerce and O2O.

Weaknesses:

The platforms of the three giants are not interoperable

Industry expert Xiang Ligang believes that the traditional Internet has already had weaknesses, even in the current mobile Internet era , with its current capabilities, it is impossible to transform traditional industries, and one day it may even be transformed itself. If the Internet is going to move towards the "Internet +" era, the first step is to transform itself.

At present, the three giants Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu have formed a pattern of mutual closure and blocking. Many entrepreneurial companies have called for the closed monopoly of the Internet to be broken.

For example, Xiang Ligang gave the example that none of the instant messaging services are interoperable, electronic payments are not interoperable, e-commerce companies block each other, and several large platforms block competitors. If this situation is not transformed, it will be brought to traditional industries. "Imagine an intelligent transportation system. The system in Beijing does not accept cars from Shanghai, and cards from Shanghai cannot be used in Hangzhou. The closed nature of today's Internet cannot adapt to the development of intelligent Internet in the future."

He further believes that, All big data now are isolated, independent points and islands, and cannot form effective integrated services. Only by forming universal communication and sharing capabilities can big data become more valuable.

This year’s CCTV “March 15” party exposed a large number of network security issues, which is also a major issue plaguing the development of the Internet. Xiang Ligang said that after e-commerce and payment services began to appear on the Internet, security became a huge threat. Over the years, we have constantly heard news about user information being leaked, and the security mechanisms and defense capabilities of some websites can be said to be extremely poor. Facing the era of smart Internet and joining many traditional industries, it is far from just some ordinary information, or even some user information. It is related to the security of users' funds, privacy, and the credibility of enterprises. This must be protected with new security mechanisms, especially when intelligent transportation, mobile medical care, and health management are added to the "Internet+" system, security is a bigger issue.

Warning:

The "trend theory" is too speculative

Spurred by the concept of "Internet +", A-share companies have frequently merged and acquired in recent times. A large number of companies such as Zhongguancun Online, Yulin Mufeng and others have "sold themselves" at high prices, and a large number of companies such as Dianping, Meituan, Mogujie, and Toutiao have received over 100 million US dollars in financing. On the other hand, the valuations of a large number of US and Hong Kong stock companies have dropped significantly. The market value of a number of companies such as Xunlei and NQ is not only significantly lower than these unlisted companies, but is even lower than the cash and equivalents they hold.

At a summit in Shenzhen a few days ago, the industry's judgment on "standing in the wind, pigs can fly" tended to be "too speculative", and more and more companies have realized that more You should pay attention to your own development. Robin Li, chairman and CEO of Baidu, said that "trend theory" is a method full of speculative thinking, and it is dangerous if everyone wants to find shortcuts.

Jack Ma, chairman of the board of directors of Alibaba Group, said that everyone should think more about how to control this risk.

Yan Yan, founding partner of SoftBank SAIF, said, where is the real outlet? Wang Yang, senior vice president of IBM and general manager of China Development Center, believes that industry Internet and enterprise Internet are the real hot spots. How to use the Internet to add a certain industry to completely subvert or take this industry to a higher level.