Eight months after being acquired, Pico is running with its back against the beat of bytes.
recently, a number of sources said that Pico would raise its VR equipment shipment target to 1.8 million units this year
A tree that embraces is born at the slightest. During the high-speed growth period of the industry, VR manufacturers are scrambling to “burn money” and low-cost marketing, looking forward to their successful card position on the eve of the “exponential explosion” of the virtual reality industry, and now every million nodes are particularly important.
For byte beat, relying on Pico to cut into the VR track may help it create a new growth pillar in the next three to five years.
pico raises the annual sales target
Pico’s performance has been low-key and rapid since it was acquired eight months ago.
recently, a number of media and sources revealed that due to the marketing effect far exceeding expectations, byte beat will raise the sales target of its company Pico’s VR products in 2022 to 1.8 million units, compared with the original target of about 1 million units
This is a meaningful node. “The growth of new intelligent hardware devices is exponential, which is of great significance to every major pass in the early stage.” An insider said that with the further development of the whole content ecology, the industry will enter a period of rapid development in the future.
the wave of yuan universe made the VR industry usher in a new era last year, and the global total shipment exceeded the 10 million mark for the first time. Among them, oculus under meta has a share of 78%, followed by domestic DPVR with a share of 5.1%, and Pico ranks third with a share of 4.5%
According to Tianfeng Securities Co.Ltd(601162) latest research report, Pico’s global shipment volume in the first quarter of 2022 was about 170000 units, and its market share increased to about 6.18%.
Of course, in today’s extremely low permeability, the proportion does not make much sense. Manufacturers’ attention is focused on increment, and the low price strategy has become everyone’s consensus.
The reporter learned from Pico online shopping mall that the price of the most popular Neo 3 series products in Pico is between 25003300 yuan, and the product has six degrees of freedom (6DOF). In contrast, oculus Quest 2, the world’s largest shipment, has an official price of $300 (about 2010 yuan), which is roughly the same as that of similar Pico products.
(relevant products on oculus website)
Before that, the price of the same type of products has been about 5000 yuan.
“Having six degrees of freedom means that it is the most high-end type of VR equipment at present. Such products are generally used in games, so they will come with two sensing handles, and the price will be higher than that of pure head display.” According to the aforementioned insiders, oculus has a very meager profit at the price of 2000 yuan.
a new “money burning” War
Under the leadership of Zuckerberg, VR manufacturers invariably choose to “burn money” to expand the scale of VR users, and Pico is no exception.
On the online channel, relying on its platform matrix, Pico has carried out 24-hour uninterrupted advertising.
(Pico related advertising)
During the Spring Festival in 2022, with the blessing of various stars, “2022 treasure New Year” and other words rushed to Tiktok hot search, and Pico neo3 landed in the live room of head anchor lijiaqi and LuoYongHao. On Tiktok, the topic and promotion of Pico neo3 VR all-in-one machine can be seen everywhere, and the related topics such as “playing VR and choosing Pico” have been played hundreds of millions of times.
(Pico related products are exposed in the variety show “ace to ace” of Zhejiang satellite TV)
Offline, Pico has also accelerated the deployment of offline experience stores and self-service machines in large shopping malls and shopping centers since last year. Moreover, under the background of “strategic contraction” organized by Internet companies, Pico related departments are one of the few departments that “expand enrollment against the trend”.
Pico plans to “make friends without making money” for the overwhelming promotion.
As early as the release of Pico Neo 3, Pico launched an activity of “sticking to punch in and return cash in 180 days”. This means that after consumers buy the product at the original price, as long as they activate the device and go online for 180 consecutive days (meeting the requirements of daily operation time), half of the purchase money can be returned at the expiration. This means that it only takes more than 1000 yuan to win a VR all-in-one machine.
In addition, Pico also launched a series of marketing strategies such as 12-month interest free payment and free trial within 30 days, all of which are aimed at expanding the penetration rate as soon as possible.
This is not the pico family’s strategy. In order to promote its VR brand “adventure”, iqiyi, which has few cruel words, had directly launched the adventure dream and enjoyed more than 30 mainstream VR games such as “0 yuan for free”.
According to the data, in the fourth quarter of 2021, adventure omni-channel sales increased by 475.9% year-on-year. Last year, iqiyi’s global shipments were about 23000 units, with a market share of about 0.84%.
content: game? Video
However, the time to burn money is obviously not yet here. Content is the real battle field for major manufacturers.
The cost of VR content production is high. Oculus officially announced that only as part of the acquisition plan, meta announced in 2019 that it would spend at least $1 billion to acquire VR development studio, and oculus gave developers millions of dollars for the support of single works.
Obviously, several major players in China have been determined to spend a lot of money, but which content field do they invest in? Now, at least byte hopping may be more inclined to cut in from video.
“Foreign experience is a breakthrough from the game. At present, an internal positive cycle has been formed, but this road may not work in China.” A person in charge of VR hardware equipment manufacturer pointed out that from the perspective of the development of the game industry, the stage of the development of China’s game market from PC end to host game has been replaced by mobile game, which makes most Chinese people have no habit of playing host game.
The short, flat and fast video is more in line with the positioning and endowment advantages of byte beating.
The reporter noted that some media reports said that recently, byte beat has transferred a large number of senior members of the content team to Pico project, including Ren Lifeng, the person in charge of watermelon video, songbinghua, the person in charge of Tiktok variety, and wuzuomin, the director of Tiktok entertainment.
At the same time, on several large recruitment websites, byte beating has also increased the recruitment demand for Pico platform content and development engineers. Some users who have purchased Pico said that they can “brush Tiktok” on Pico devices at present, but there is no good interaction for the time being.
This will be a long-term ecological construction. The reporter noted that since this year, we have made a number of foreign investments, among which there are not a few content related projects.
