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Is the telecom phone number better or the mobile phone number better?

The problem of mobile phone traffic charges has always been the focus of consumers’ complaints about the three major operators. Although the traffic charges have indeed decreased compared with the previous two years, with the advent of the mobile Internet era and the continuous popularization of 4G networks, the rate of traffic charges has indeed failed to keep up with the increase in consumer traffic demand, and consumers’ feelings about speeding up and lowering prices are not obvious.

In the face of constant complaints from consumers, since last year, China Unicom and China Telecom have continuously launched Internet packages, attracting many consumers with the advantages of large traffic and low price. For example, China Unicom’s Dawang Card and China Telecom’s Big Fish Card are well received by consumers, and China Unicom Telecom’s user scale has also improved to some extent, which has also caused certain diversion pressure on mobile.

Just this month, Unicom Telecom once again made concerted efforts. Both of them have fully supported the old users to freely transfer to the new package. Previously, only new users could handle the corresponding Internet package of Unicom Telecom, which was vomited by many consumers, while old users could freely transfer to the new package. It can be said that consumers’ goodwill towards Unicom Telecom has been improved again, and many consumers have joined the camp of Unicom Telecom recently.

(A) Analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of China Mobile

1. Advantages:

1) The customer base is large. China Mobile has the largest customer base, and the big net effect is obvious. According to statistics, in 2007, the total number of users of China Mobile was 407 million, accounting for 70% of the mobile market. What is even more frightening is that in the newly added market, China Mobile accounted for nearly 87% of the market.

2) Brand advantage. In terms of brand, China Mobile has made a good plan. At present, it has formed three national unified leading product brands, such as Global Connect, Shenzhouxing and M-Zone, covering high-end users, mobile users and potential middle and high-end users with great revenue potential respectively. In addition, there are a large number of temporary brands launched for regional markets. As far as corporate brands are concerned, according to the China 500 Most Valuable Brands Ranking published by the World Brand Lab in 2008, China Mobile once again topped the list of the most valuable brands with a brand value of 120.668 billion yuan, which increased by 10.614 billion yuan compared with the previous year.

3) Strong financial strength. In 2007, its annual operating income exceeded the combined income of China Telecom, China Netcom and China Unicom, and its net profit was as high as 87.1 billion yuan, while the combined net profit of the other three operators was only 45.097 billion yuan, only a little more than half of that of China Mobile. Strong financial strength is an important guarantee for it to lead other operators in network construction, marketing subsidies and customer care.

4) Network advantages. The number of base stations of China Mobile has reached 307,000, covering the most extensive area, while the sum of the base stations of China Telecom and China Unicom is less than half, and its characteristics of good network signal have been deeply rooted in people’s hearts.

5) Channel advantages. The future competition will be channel competition, and the channel advantages of China Mobile are very obvious. These channels include professional and self-control channels such as Communication 100, brand stores and experience stores, as well as run-in and agency points such as mobile phone stores and mobile phone repair points. Due to the variety and quantity of channels of China Mobile, the control and management of different channels are also different, and it has also formed a relatively scientific and perfect channel management mechanism in its long-term mobile business operation. These mechanisms have effectively mobilized the enthusiasm of various agents and helped them to form a long-term competitive advantage in the channel.

6) Promote advantages. In recent years, China Mobile’s investment in publicity can be said to be astronomical, which is suspected of "money is nowhere to spend". From the massive advertisements of CCTV to the sponsorship of various activities, the logo of China Mobile has spread all over people’s lives.

7) Others. Including IT support, information application, customer awareness and many other aspects.

2. Disadvantages:

1) The state stipulates that China Mobile can only rely on Tietong’s own funds to develop broadband services in the future, and this asymmetric control policy will inevitably play a role in curbing the development of China Mobile; In addition, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has piloted mobile phone users to transfer their numbers to the Internet in cities such as Shenzhen and Tianjin. China Mobile’s numbers can be transferred to China Telecom and China Unicom, but China Telecom and China Unicom’s numbers are prohibited from being transferred to China. The scope of asymmetric control policy of this kind of mobile phone may be broadened, which is undoubtedly an expectation for China Telecom and China Unicom.

2) After the merger, Tietong only operates independently as its wholly-owned subsidiary, and has a loose relationship with Tietong. The 70,000 employees of Tietong also make the personnel changes of the new mobile in the future full of challenges, and the administrative integration is poor.

3) disadvantages of fixed network. Its fixed-line disadvantages are not only manifested in small scope, weak network resources, low fiber arrival rate, but also in poor service level of location resources and low customer awareness.

4) Single product and poor integration. The biggest advantage of mobile is the single product, which is also its biggest disadvantage. Coupled with the influence of the national asymmetric control policy, it is difficult to integrate its mobile business with fixed-line business.

5) Terminal disadvantages. It mainly includes strong radiation, poor confidentiality and slow internet access.

(B) Analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of China Telecom

For China Telecom, which has a mature and powerful fixed network nationwide, but the financing pressure is great due to the huge purchase of C network, its advantages and disadvantages are mainly as follows:

1. Advantages:

1) advantages of fixed network. China Telecom has the largest fixed-line network and Chinese information network in the world, covering urban and rural areas in China and reaching all parts of the world, with obvious advantages in network resources, especially in the southern and northwestern regions, accounting for more than 80% of the fixed-line access in these regions.

2) Brand advantage. From the beginning of the word "China Telecom", to the launch of business brands such as "Business Pilot", "My E-Home" and "best tone", China Telecom has established its own brand system, and the brands of "best tone" and "My E-Home" are ahead of the peers in this field.

3) Broad fixed-line customer base. China Telecom has 210 million fixed-line users and nearly 40 million broadband users. In particular, it has gathered a large number of home users by using the "My E-Home" brand and established close relationships with government and enterprise customers by using "100 million" projects, which will become the key for China Telecom to gain a competitive advantage.

4) Integrate business operation experience. With its strong access network advantages, China Telecom can provide a variety of comprehensive information services such as telephone service, Internet access and application, data communication, video service, international, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan communication, etc. with e-government, security project and global eye services, which can meet the needs of international and domestic customers for various communication and information services.

5) Terminal advantages. Refers to the CDMA terminal with low radiation, high call quality, confidentiality and fast Internet access.

6) The organizational structure is relatively sound, the workforce is relatively stable, and the maintenance force is strong.

2. Disadvantages:

1) In recent two years, China Unicom has obviously slowed down the pace of CDMA network upgrade, and some network devices may be difficult to support emerging value-added services. At the same time, the publicity of CDMA is also in a stagnant position, and customers are constantly losing.

2) In the transition period of reorganization, Unicom Mobile will inevitably carve up the CDMA users of telecom in a predatory way, and how to preserve it will be called a very thorny issue of telecom.

3) Terminal disadvantages. Some internationally renowned telecom equipment vendors and terminal vendors withdrew from the CDMA market, resulting in reduced equipment options, high terminal unit price and few varieties. According to statistics, in 2007, there were more than 1000 GSM terminals, but less than 100 CDMA terminals were newly listed in the same period. In the past two years, the number of GSM terminals sold has exceeded 2,500 every year, but there are less than 200 CDMA terminals sold in the same period. If the gray terminals (such as shanzhai phones) in the market are taken into account, the gap between CDMA terminals and GSM terminals in model richness will undoubtedly be more obvious.

4) There are many businesses but not good ones. China Telecom has a full range of services, but except for some products such as Global Eye, most of its value-added applications, such as enterprise switchboard and enterprise mailbox, are not refined, leaving no image of a related business expert in the eyes of customers.

5) There are few types of CDMA value-added services and few supporting manufacturers, especially those suitable for China.

6) IT support and after-sales service of telecom itself. If the problems such as system error, process card list and untimely troubleshooting rate are not properly solved, the pace of full-service operation of China Telecom will be delayed.

In the 4G era, there are actually two standards in the world, FDD and TD. The former is supported by China Telecom and China Unicom, and the latter is used by China Mobile and a few countries. However, when it first entered the construction and popularization of 4G, the countries with 4G licenses gave TD. Although China Telecom and China Unicom also supported this standard, it was not what people wanted most, so how long has it been in the past year? Thanks to its strong user base and an ultra-wide signal network that can be upgraded to 4G standard at any time, China Mobile has become the operator with the largest number of 4G users in China and even in the world (because no country has such a large population, So, the signal is not popular. I don’t mention it in some places. As far as the whole country is concerned, China Mobile is the best choice. If you often go abroad or something, FDD standard telecommunications should be more suitable. In fact, China Mobile has a lot of activities, and the price/performance ratio is not bad. China Telecom did beat China Unicom badly in terms of price, which led to China Unicom now issuing many kinds of free flow cards with BAT and other big bosses.

Topic: Exposing the separatist and sabotage activities of the Dalai clique.

Tibet-related advertisement

　　Tibet-related advertisements have aroused widespread concern.

　　On June 13th, the advertisement of Lancia Delta, the latest hatchback of Fiat’s Lancia brand (http://hk.youtube.com/watch? V=ONhSUr548_Q), began to play on Italian TV. Chairman of the International Campaign for Tibet, 59-year-old American actor Richard? Kiel starred as the leading actor in the commercial.

　　In this 30-second commercial, Richard? Kiel drove Delta from walk of fame’s own handprint, crossed Hollywood Hill and headed for Tibet, reaching Lhasa, the capital of Xizang Autonomous Region, China. At the foot of Potala Palace, Richard? Kiel parked Lancia Delta near a small village, and together with the lamas who greeted him, he printed handprints on the white snow.

　　At the end of the commercial, Delta’s advertising words flashed: The Power to be different.

　　Richard? Kiel’s Delta Tibet-related advertisement has aroused great concern since its release. In less than a week, the advertisement has been viewed more than 10,000 times on Youtube. Although the advertising content has no obvious meaning of "Tibet independence", it is because of Richard? Kiel’s consistent anti-China stance and advertisements are still criticized by many Chinese.

On the morning of May 23, Guo Youcai started broadcasting in the square of the National Flower Expo Park in Heze, Shandong, but this time Guo Youcai closed the reward function in the live broadcast room. On the afternoon of the same day, he released his first original song on his personal social platform.

Previously, Guo Youcai was successful on the Internet because of his cover of the old song "Promise" in the 1990s, and rose by tens of millions in a short time. Under the blessing of heat, Guo Youcai sang songs in the live video room and won the audience’s appreciation. While the fire broke out, Guo Youcai gradually faced a big controversy:Does live coverage of other people’s songs constitute infringement?

"Promise" lyricist response:
Commercial income should be distributed to creators.

According to Red Star News, on May 23, Ding Xiaowen, the lyricist of the song "Promise", said that he was grateful to Guo Youcai for making this song popular and getting attention again. Guo Youcai had a good name. "He is really talented."

However, Ding Xiaowen also said, "I think that all these songs should be used today, regardless of singing, performance or any use, in fact, they should be approved and authorized by the original creator."

Ding Xiaowen said that many online celebrity cover songs are generally not authorized in advance.However, she thinks that Guo Youcai’s behavior is a kind of commercial behavior, and the function of paying and rewarding should be opened, and the profits should be reasonably distributed to the songwriters."This is a matter of course, fairness and justice."

On the issue of copyright protection, Ding Xiaowen also said frankly that it must be done in accordance with the relevant norms. She also expects everyone’s copyright to be protected and hopes that the relevant copyright system can be more complete.

The original singer of Promise was Li Yijun, a female singer from Taiwan Province, China, which was released on January 1st, 1995 and included in the album Promise.

The reporter noticed that the Li Yijun Tik Tok spread the cantata and chorus versions of The Promise on May 16th and 18th, and many fans expressed their love with the posts, while a few fans bluntly said that they supported the copyright recovery. Li Yijun was suspected of responding to someone’s cover song in the video on 16th.She said: "Thank you for liking The Promise and watching many friends’ videos. Everyone sang so beautifully."

Does the live cover involve infringement?
Is it not infringement if you don’t accept the reward?

The reporter observed that Guo Youcai will broadcast live almost every day, often by fans ordering songs, and he will sing, and the rewards will continue in the live broadcast room. The original singer and songwriter are basically not indicated in the cover video and live broadcast, which also causes the dispute whether this behavior involves infringement.

In the eyes of some people, Guo Youcai’s live broadcast room is rewarded, which is a profitable cover and is suspected of infringement; Some people also wonder if so many anchors sing or score music during live broadcast, are they all infringing?

According to China News, Xia Hailong, a lawyer of Shanghai Shenlun Law Firm, said,Performing in the live broadcast room and accepting rewards is a commercial performance. Covering other people’s songs should obtain the permission of the right holder and pay the fee.If the infringement of the copyright of other people’s songs is held accountable, the copyright owner may ask the infringer to stop the infringement, that is, he may not continue to cover the right songs in the live broadcast.

Then, if you don’t accept rewards when you cover live, does it not involve infringement?

Zhao Zhanling, a lawyer of Beijing Jiawei Law Firm and a special researcher at the Intellectual Property Research Center of China University of Political Science and Law, said that whether the reward function is opened or not, and whether the live broadcast can directly benefit from it, are not the criteria for judging whether it is a commercial act or an infringement.Even if there is no open reward function, traffic can often be realized, including enhancing commercial value, attracting goods or sponsorship, and finally obtaining commercial benefits.

"The use of other people’s music works in the live broadcast room is more likely to constitute commercial use, and it is easy to be identified as infringement without the permission of the right holder."Zhao Zhanling said that even if the right holder does not explicitly object to others using his works in the live broadcast room, it does not mean that it can be used, and it needs to be authorized by the right holder.

How complicated is the copyright of a song?

According to the Morning News, Lu Shiwei, a senior media person and music critic, said in an interview that the copyright classification of songs is very detailed at present.Words, songs, singing and adaptation have different copyright contracts, and the voice version recorded by a specific singer also has related rights.People who don’t know may think that the copyright of a song is somewhere, but it is often not.

Lawyer Deng Yu, a member of the Intellectual Property Committee of the Shanghai Lawyers Association and a senior partner of the Shanghai office of Zhonglun Wende Law Firm, said,Under the existing copyright law system, different rights subjects enjoy different types of rights.

Simply using the words and songs of a musical work requires authorization from the author of the words and songs or the organization or enterprise that owns the relevant copyright;

In order to adapt and cover songs, it is necessary to further obtain the right of performance, adaptation, information network communication and other works besides the authorization of lyrics and songs;

If you directly use the singing version of a specific singer, you need to get the authorization of the singer and the producer of the version of the phonogram.

Is it infringing to search for music use from the platform?

Search music directly from the music library of the live broadcast platform as live accompaniment or background music. Does this case also involve infringement?

Zhao Zhanling said that if the soundtrack is searched from the platform, the platform also constitutes infringement without the authorization of the obligee. "But if there is a related soundtrack in the platform, the high probability has been authorized."　

"At present, many large platforms do provide music works to platform users through centralized procurement. In this case, users can use them within the use scenarios, methods and deadlines agreed in the platform user agreement, and generally do not involve infringement issues." Xia Hailong said.

For video clips and producers, the soundtrack in the video also needs extra care. Lin Jian, a partner of Beijing Weiheng (Shanghai) Law Firm, introduced,At present, many editing software will purchase the copyright of some tracks in advance for the editors to use for free, but it will also involve some restrictions.For example, the video released by clipping is legal in Tik Tok, and if it is released on other platforms, it will constitute infringement. And some music on software, such as "QQ Music", will also stipulate the corresponding usage rights in the user agreement, and you can play or forward the sharing link. However, if the usage scenario specified in the agreement is exceeded, there will be a risk of infringement.

Lin Jian reminded that if ordinary users want to get free music resources, they can look for a special copyright-free music library to avoid the risk of infringement.

Is it infringement for AI singers to cover other people’s songs?

Previously, "AI Stefanie" had caused a heated discussion. It is understood that some people use Stefanie’s existing vocal samples to train their timbre, tone quality and pronunciation characteristics through AI, establish their voice model, and then use the generated timbre to cover other songs. The new songs produced by AI voice cloning technology are very similar to the singer himself in sound and style, which leads many netizens to believe them. Is this imitation infringing?

The scope of works protected by China’s Copyright Law includes written works, oral works, music, art works, etc., and sound is not included. Therefore, simply imitating the performer’s timbre, singing skills and other characteristics does not belong to the object protected by the Copyright Law.

However, only on a certain video platform, "AI Stefanie" has more than 1,000 cover works, among which cover singer Jay Chou’s "Hair as Snow" and other works have even won more than 2 million broadcasts. Many lawyers said that the virtual singer’s cover works show the specific song title and singer’s name, which is suspected of infringing the name right, personality right and copyright of the relevant singer. Even if some publishers mark the disclaimer of "only for entertainment and not for business" in the video, the huge traffic and economic benefits behind it are difficult to be clear, and there is no way to completely clarify the infringement issue.

Not all covers are infringing.

Is it impossible to cover other people’s songs in any place?

Zhao Zhanling introduced that Article 24 of the Copyright Law stipulates that "others can use their works without permission and without payment to the copyright owner", including users using the works of the copyright owner for the purposes of personal study, teaching research, reporting and introduction, under the premise of "indicating the author’s name and the name of the work, and without affecting the normal use of the work".

However, he also pointed out that the use of music works copyrighted by others in most live broadcasts or short videos does not belong to the fair use situation stipulated in Article 24 of the Copyright Law.

(References: China News Network, Red Star News, Upstream News, Hubei Daily, Morning News, People’s Daily)

Topic Host | Reporter Lin Runqi

　　Despite the aura of "AIGC" and "big model", Mobvoi’s valuation has stagnated in five years, and its listing has suffered a break, once falling by more than 20%.

　　Before IPO, Mobvoi raised a total of 233 million yuan, with the highest valuation of 757 million yuan. Volkswagen China, which contributed the most, lost nearly 90% when it withdrew in 2021. Sequoia China, the earliest investor, can be described as one of the biggest winners. It used only $3.465 million, that is, it gained a profit of $29.855 million and a stock right worth $74.55 million, with a book income of nearly 30 times.

　　It is noteworthy that after the launch of the self-developed model "Sequential Monkey", the annual compound growth rate of AIGC business income in Mobvoi from 2021 to 2023 exceeded 300%, and the number of paying users increased from 63,000 to 410,000. However, considering the high training cost of the big model, it is worth paying attention to whether Mobvoi, which will spend only 155 million yuan on R&D in 2023, can maintain its technological superiority.

　　Source: New Fortune Magazine (ID: xcf Plus)

　　Author: Zhang Tianlun

　　On April 24th, Mobvoi (02438.HK), known as "the first AIGC share", was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. As the first profitable AI-Generated Content company listed in Hong Kong at China Grand Model Raceway, its business situation and secondary market performance attract people’s attention.

　　However, after the opening of the day, Mobvoi suffered a break, and its share price once fell by more than 20%. In the afternoon, it rebounded strongly and finally closed down by 3.16%.

　　Since its listing, Mobvoi’s share price has dropped by 2.11% compared with the issue price, and its market value has dropped to HK$ 5.548 billion, which has also cast a shadow over its subsequent trend.

　　01

　　Behind the "AIGC First Share": Volkswagen’s investment in China exploded by 90%

　　Before the IPO, Mobvoi completed a total of seven rounds of financing, with a total financing amount of US$ 233 million, and its valuation rose from US$ 5.01 million in the A round in 2013 to US$ 757 million in the D-2 round (Table 1). In other words, Mobvoi’s current market value of HK$ 5.548 billion still has a gap of nearly 6% compared with its valuation five years ago.

　　

　　Although its share price is discounted compared with the primary market, according to the statistics of New Wealth, the only injured investor in the round of financing is Volkswagen (China) Investment Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Volkswagen China").

　　Volkswagen China is the largest investor in Mobvoi. In 2017, it purchased 289 million preferred shares of Mobvoi through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Volkswagen Finance Luxemburg S.A for US$ 140 million. In September 2019, it once again participated in the D-2 round of financing with US$ 15 million, and got 31 million D-2 preferred shares.

　　However, Volkswagen China, which invested heavily in the project, soon chose to quit. In December 2021, Mobvoi repurchased all the shares held by Volkswagen China at a price of $17 million. Based on this calculation, the loss of Volkswagen China’s investment this time is close to 90%.

　　Assuming that Volkswagen China has held shares so far, its investment loss will be reduced to 8.9% based on the issue price of HK$ 3.8 per share in Mobvoi, which is about 124 million USD.

　　Among other investment institutions, Sequoia China, Zhenge Fund, SIG Haina Asia, Goer, etc., which were funded in the early stage, all earned a lot of income.

　　After the listing of Mobvoi, the largest external shareholder is SIG Heiner Asia, holding 16.03%, while Sequoia China, Goer and Zhenge Fund hold 10.92%, 10.03% and 3.07% respectively.

　　Sequoia China, who was the first to participate in Mobvoi’s A-round and A-1-round financing, is one of the biggest winners. In the A round of financing, Sequoia China acquired 161,675,300 shares of Mobvoi at a price of US$ 1.358 million, and the cost per share was only US$ 0.0084. In the A-1 round, Sequoia China once again got 53,889,600 shares at a price of 2,107,000 US dollars, with a cost of 0.039 US dollars per share.

　　It is worth mentioning that in 2018, Sequoia China transferred 61.88 million shares acquired in Series A to two investors, namely GWC Robotics Investment Limited and So Artemis Limited, at a price of US$ 20.25 million and US$ 10.125 million respectively, and made a profit of US$ 29.855 million. The value of the remaining 153.68 million shares listed in Mobvoi is as high as $74.55 million. Based on this calculation, Sequoia China only spent $3.465 million, that is, it gained a profit of $29.855 million and a stock right worth $74.55 million, with a book income of nearly 30 times.

　　Google, whose capital contribution is second only to that of Volkswagen China, invested $40 million and $1.87 million in the C and D-2 rounds of financing in Mobvoi respectively, with an average shareholding cost of $0.22 per share, which is still 120.5% higher than the IPO issue price.

　　As the founder of Mobvoi, Li Zhifei holds 376 million shares of the company through Mobvoi AGI Limited, a wholly-owned company, with a shareholding ratio of 25.2%. At present, the stock market value is about HK$ 1.4 billion.

　　Li Zhifei is a Ph.D. student in computer science at Johns Hopkins University in the United States. Before he founded Mobvoi, he worked as a research scientist at Google from May 2010 to August 2012, and was mainly responsible for the algorithm development of language translation models.

　　In 2012, voice search, a new interactive technology, became popular after Apple Siri came out as an iPhone 4S built-in application. Li Zhifei also left Google and returned to China to establish Mobvoi.

　　According to the prospectus, the services provided by Mobvoi focus on AIGC and voice interaction technology. According to the current business, it mainly includes three parts: AIGC solution, AI enterprise solution, intelligent equipment and accessories.

　　Among them, the revenue of AIGC solution business, with AI dubbing assistant "Magic Sound Workshop" and AI digital person "Wonderful Yuan" as its main products, has increased rapidly, from 07 million yuan to 118 million yuan in 2021-2023, with a compound annual growth rate of over 300%.

　　The revenue of AI enterprise solution business, which mainly focuses on automotive voice interaction solutions, increased from RMB 53 million in 2021 to RMB 226 million in 2022, and then decreased by 14.2% in 2023.

　　The revenue of smart devices and other hardware businesses, mainly selling smart watches with TicWatch, dropped from 338 million yuan in 2021 to 164 million yuan in 2023.

Figure 1: Income from various businesses in Mobvoi.

　　

Source: Public Prospectus

　　Since Mobvoi’s AIGC business has made rapid progress in recent years, why is its valuation stagnant? Why did Volkswagen China quit its shareholder ranks early?

　　02

　　Volkswagen China: From investing $140 million to clearing shares.

　　Since the establishment of Mobvoi, its business has gone through the process of continuous exploration, and its development is mainly divided into four stages.

　　The first stage is to try to develop voice search service software. In 2013, Mobvoi established the WeChat voice search service platform; In 2014, after Google launched Google Glass, Mobvoi launched "Mobvoi on Google Glass", a Chinese smart voice search application. However, with the failure of the Google Glass project, this application also stopped updating.

　　In 2014, Mobvoi entered the second stage of development, that is, from software to hardware business, and its smart equipment and other accessories business also started.

　　At that time, Mobvoi hoped to put voice search’s capabilities into products, and finally chose the smart hardware market-it first released Ticwear, the world’s first Chinese smart watch operating system, and then launched TicWatch in June 2015.

　　At the same time, Mobvoi has also reached a strategic cooperation with Google, which will build the Ask App Store in all smart watches equipped with Android Wear system sold in China. Also in 2015, Google shot, and Mobvoi completed the C round of financing, with a valuation of 273 million US dollars, becoming a hot start-up in the AI market.

　　TicWatch, as one of the few products with relatively perfect smart watch operating system in China at that time, was quickly favored by the market after its launch. In the "Double Eleven" sales list of JD.COM in 2015, TicWatch ranked third in the field of smart watches, second only to Apple’s i Watch and Motorola’s MOTO 360. Since 2016, Mobvoi has successively launched smart speakers, smart headphones and other products, and at the same time promoted the products to the sea.

　　At the strategic new product launch conference held in 2018, Mobvoi not only iterated on smart watches, smart headphones, smart audio and other products, but also released the first mass-produced AI voice chip module "Wen Xin" in China in the face of the enterprise market, and said that it would open 20 new offline smart experience stores nationwide. However, with Huawei, Xiaomi, Glory and other giants stepping up the smart hardware market, Mobvoi’s competitive advantage in products has been gradually erased or even overtaken.

　　It can be seen that during 2021-2023, the revenue of its smart devices and other accessories business dropped from 339 million yuan to 164 million yuan, accounting for 85% of the total revenue to 32.3%. In the same period, the number of its global distributors also dropped sharply from 101 to 39.

　　It is not difficult to see that the weakening influence of Mobvoi in the smart device market is one of the reasons that restrict its valuation growth.

　　The protagonist in the third stage of Mobvoi’s development is Volkswagen China, an automobile giant that brings Mobvoi an opportunity to explore the B-end market.

　　Back in 2017, Volkswagen China not only invested US$ 140 million in Mobvoi, but also invested US$ 40 million each, holding 50% of the shares, and set up a joint venture company Mobvoi JV, with the goal of realizing the application of multiple AI technologies, including speech recognition, in several factories and models of Volkswagen in China. In layman’s terms, it relies on Mobvoi’s voice interaction technology to provide car voice assistant for Volkswagen China, as well as some additional functions such as personalized push, GPS and in-car entertainment information system.

　　In 2020, Volkswagen’s brand-new ID.4 series models adopt the voice interaction technology provided by Mobvoi, and users can realize various vehicle control functions such as conveniently regulating air conditioning temperature, answering phone calls, navigating and so on by waking up the word "Hello, Volkswagen".

　　As of July, 2021, the front-mounted vehicle voice interactive system platform led by Mobvoi has been used in Audi A4L, Passat, New Magotan and other main best-selling models. At that time, it is expected that the pre-loading capacity will reach 15 million in 2023.

　　"By the end of 2023, audi ag will launch a total of eight ID models in China, and Mobvoi is also committed to continuously lighting up the highlights of the entire ID family and other new Volkswagen models." Mobvoi wrote on WeChat WeChat official account.

　　But also in 2021, Volkswagen China and Mobvoi parted ways. It not only emptied all its shares in Mobvoi, but also bought 50% of Mobvoi JV held by Mobvoi for $15 million.

　　However, both parties signed a series of intellectual property agreements in December 2021 at the same time of equity delivery, and Mobvoi continued to provide the back-end technology of voice dialogue system.

　　According to Mobvoi’s prospectus, from 2021 to 2023, its intellectual property income from Volkswagen was 3.2 million yuan, 213 million yuan and 139 million yuan respectively, accounting for 0.8%, 42.6% and 27.4% of the total revenue. In 2022, its related intellectual property agreement came into effect for the first full year, and the related income accounted for 81% of its AI enterprise solution business income in that year, and it decreased to 62% in 2023. It can be seen that the high growth of its AI enterprise solution business income came from Volkswagen China.

　　It is not difficult to see that in order to cooperate with Mobvoi on-board voice dialogue system, the cost paid by Volkswagen China includes US$ 155 million investment, US$ 40 million registered capital for establishing a joint venture company Mobvoi JV, US$ 15 million acquisition of Mobvoi JV, and nearly RMB 360 million in intellectual property fees. This does not include the loss during the operation of Mobvoi JV. In 2021 alone, the loss of the joint venture company was as high as 37.13 million yuan.

　　In 2024, Mobvoi will completely lose this heavy customer. According to public information, in 2024, Volkswagen ID.7 chose to cooperate with Iflytek to upgrade its brand-new intelligent voice system.

　　According to the prospectus, Mobvoi is still actively expanding B-end customers. At present, it has reached technical cooperation agreements with a number of automobile companies, including testing the company’s large model and developing its applications, and developing intelligent cockpits equipped with voice assistants, smart housekeepers and voice recognition and generation technologies.

　　However, with the entry of giants such as Xiaomi, Huawei, Baidu and Iflytek, the competition of car voice track has already entered the Red Sea. At present, more than 2 million cars are pre-installed with Mobvoi Voice Assistant. By contrast, in 2022 alone, Iflytek’s smart car business added more than 7.1 million sets of pre-installed shipments, and the cumulative shipments exceeded 46.1 million sets.

　　In 2023, or affected by the decline in the revenue of AI enterprise solutions business, the cash flow generated by Mobvoi’s operating activities dropped from 72.44 million yuan in 2022 to 28.39 million yuan, which is another reason for further depressing market expectations besides the contraction of smart equipment business.

　　03

　　AIGC: What’s the color geometry, and what’s the shareholder’s income?

　　While the revenues of smart devices and AI enterprise solutions are declining, Mobvoi is also rapidly moving towards the fourth stage of enterprise development, that is, the AIGC track under the big model.

　　According to the prospectus, the main products of Mobvoi AIGC solution business can be divided into three categories: one is the AI dubbing assistant represented by "Magic Sound Workshop"; The second is the AI writing assistant represented by "wonderful writing" and "magic writing"; The third is the AI digital person represented by "Wonderful Yuan". At the same time, it can also provide a "DupDub" solution that integrates three types of capabilities.

　　Before making a big model, Mobvoi’s products such as "Magic Sound Workshop" and "Magic Writing Works" were mainly built with exclusive algorithm models. In 2023, it launched the self-developed large model "Sequence Monkey", which has the multi-modal generation ability and can understand and generate human-like text, audio, images and videos, thus qualitatively improving the AI capabilities of different products.

　　Mobvoi, for example, said that the rhythm and naturalness of the synthesized speech in Magic Sound Workshop have been greatly improved after using "Sequential Monkey". At the same time, its multi-modal generation ability also supports content creators to use innovative functions such as AI writing in short videos, which is convenient for editing and rewriting content in different styles (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Advantages of "Sequence Monkey"

　　

Source: Public Prospectus

　　As the fist product of the company’s AIGC solution business, "Magic Sound Workshop" is a platform that uses NLP algorithm to analyze written text and convert it into natural human voice to produce AI-generated content. The tools include software dubbing, cloud editing, copy extraction and human voice processing. It provides more than 1000 sound styles and diverse sound sample combinations from external suppliers, and supports 37 languages and 15 dialects. In the charging mode, "Magic Sound Workshop" combines two modes: subscription and in-software payment. The annual membership fee is 289 yuan, and the price range of sound source is 199-899 yuan/year.

　　In 2023, after joining the large-scale model capability of "Sequence Monkey", the income of AIGC solution business in Mobvoi increased from 39.857 million yuan in 2021 to 118 million yuan, and the gross profit margin increased from 88% to 92.2%, which became the biggest bright spot in the future development.

　　According to the prospectus, from 2021 to 2023, the number of paying users in Mobvoi increased from 63,000 to 410,000. And with the development of services such as Wonderland, its average income from each paying user increased from 104 yuan to 248 yuan, and correspondingly, the average customer acquisition cost of each paying user also increased from 31.8 yuan to 133.1 yuan (Figure 3).

Figure 3: The scale of paying users and the cost of obtaining customers in Mobvoi.

　　

Source: Public Prospectus

　　However, as we all know, AIGC is an exceptionally expensive track. Whether Mobvoi’s profit level can support the continuous improvement of its technology may be the most concerned issue for investors in the secondary market at present.

　　According to the Artificial Intelligence Index Report released by Li Feifei’s team, it is estimated that the GPT-4 of OpenAI will use 78 million dollars worth of computing resources for training, and the Gemini Ultra of Google will cost as much as 191 million dollars. Iflytek, as one of its biggest competitors in the field of voice interaction, will spend 3.481 billion yuan on research and development in 2023.

　　From 2021 to 2023, Mobvoi’s R&D expenditure was 92 million yuan, 119 million yuan and 155 million yuan respectively, which was obviously difficult to keep up with the giant’s burning progress.

　　Nowadays, under the general trend that the giants have increased their AIGC, it is worth paying attention to whether Mobvoi will face the rapid squeeze of technological advantages and market space as when giants such as Huawei and Xiaomi entered the smart hardware market in 2018. How to build long-term competitiveness in the AIGC track surrounded by giants is also a problem that more small and medium-sized AIGC enterprises need to face together.

　　In this listing, Mobvoi raised a net amount of HK$ 267 million, and its uses include: 44.3% to continuously improve modeling technology for model training, vertically optimize the underlying basic model by introducing technology and talents, and improve the existing program algorithm of the solution; 35.7% is used for solution development and marketing; 10% is used to seek strategic alliances, investments and acquisitions; 10% is used for working capital and general enterprise purposes.

　　From the financial point of view, from 2021 to 2023, Mobvoi’s total annual losses attributable to equity shareholders were 205 million yuan, 986 million yuan and 867 million yuan respectively. If the book value changes of redeemable preferred shares and common shares are excluded, their adjusted profits in 2022 and 2023 will be 108 million yuan and 17.53 million yuan respectively.

　　It can be seen that to stand out in the AIGC competition, increasing income is the most important thing in Mobvoi at present.

　　Any information and information mentioned in this article is only the expression of the author’s personal views or the statement of specific events, and does not constitute recommendation and investment advice. Investors should bear the risks and consequences of investing accordingly.