Text丨One Observation Su Yi.
Enabled by digital technology, mobile Internet content consumption is rapidly moving towards structural upgrading.
In QuestMobile's latest Annual Report on Core Internet Trends in China (2023), there are two data that are particularly noteworthy:
First, in 2023, the scale of monthly active users of China's mobile Internet will exceed 122.4 billion, with an average monthly usage time of nearly 160 hours. Combined with the data of the past three years, the current growth of the scale of domestic mobile Internet users and the time spent online has actually stabilized, and the pressure of "stock competition" is promoting the development of various digital application content to "specialization, refinement, and specialization", thereby reshaping the Internet application content ecology.
Second, the monthly active users of smart home, smart wearable, smart car, smart accessories, and smart health reached 28.4 billion, 12.9 billion, 07 billion, 02.2 billion, 00.9 billion. Nowadays, digital content around home, life, sports, travel and other scenarios is accelerating the integration into the daily life of the public, and the connection between digital technology and social life has become more and more close.
Towards the end of the year, the annual lists launched by major institutions and brands all show the upgrading trend of content consumption in 2023 from different aspects. Among them, the 2023 annual lists released by Huawei**, Reading, Theme, **Game Center, Weather, App Market, Skyline, and Petal Maps rely on the huge scale of Huawei users, aggregate more dimensional perspectives, and show the current characteristics and future trend of China's digital content consumption in a more three-dimensional way.
Looking at Huawei's 2023 annual list of native apps, it is not difficult to capture the three major trends in digital app content consumption.
User preferences have become an even more important driver of digital content.
Thanks to the more in-depth application of big data technology to the audio-visual industry, audio-visual content has a clearer, more quantitative and more efficient "reference coordinate system" from the creation, production to promotion and dissemination stage. With the support of user data with strong certainty, user preference has become an important source of driving force for digital content creation, and user preference is naturally the most important selection indicator in content lists such as Huawei and Huawei.
Focusing on the core element of "hits", Huawei** selected 10 wonderful annual works according to the four categories of films, dramas, variety, and comics. With the blessing of AIMAX's high-standard audio and picture technology, the micro-expressions, service details, action scenes and surround sound effects of the characters in films such as "Disappearing Her", "Megalodon 2: The Abyss" and "In the Octagon Cage" have been fully demonstrated, allowing users to enjoy a cinema-level blockbuster audio-visual experience in multiple scenes and terminals at any time.
According to the popularity of songs, Huawei** lists the annual hot new songs, artists of the year, spatial audio hits of the year, member hits of the year, hi-classical hit playlists, and hi-res ultra-high sound quality hits**. As the first platform to support the Audio Vivid audio codec standard, Huawei has continued to make efforts in the field of spatial audio, not only realizing spatial audio "on the bus" this year, but also increasing its music library by as much as 300% in the past six months, providing users with a rich and diverse immersive listening experience.
Content consumption is at a critical stage of leaping from quantitative to qualitative change.
In the past decade, the market size of China's digital content industry has expanded rapidly, from 2157 in 2013800 million to 14,009 in 2021600 million, with a compound annual growth rate of nearly 25%. The blossoming of digital content has horizontally met the diverse preferences of different users, accelerated the vertical upgrading of digital content consumption demand, and promoted digital content to enter a stage of high-quality development.
In order to meet the needs of readers for high-quality reading, HUAWEI Reading has added three new lists: Best Books of the Year, Popular Books of the Year, and Recommended Books of the Year, and the professional review team has carefully selected high-quality works such as "Those Things in the Ming Dynasty", "There is a Store in the Clouds", "Me and the Temple of Earth", and "Looking for Milan Kundera" on the basis of various book rankings.
With the maturity of game development and production technology, game content creation has reached a new level, and users' expectations have gradually shifted from "quantitative change" to "qualitative change". Based on this insight into demand trends, HUAWEI Game Center has carefully selected three lists: "Editor's Recommended Games", "Most Popular Games", and "Best Fast Games" based on the dimensions of content popularity, content quality, and professional editorial recommendations, so that high-quality games such as the historical strategy game "Three Kingdoms: War Chess Edition" and the sci-fi survival game "Planet: Restart" can be known to more players.
The dual attributes of "technology + humanities" in application content consumption have been accelerated and highlighted.
Emerging technologies such as the Internet, cloud computing, and AI have given birth to new forms of content and broadened the space for content innovation, but no matter how technological means evolve, they will eventually serve public life and cultural consumption.
HUAWEI AppGallery attaches great importance to the innovative breakthroughs of apps in the fields of artistic creation, smart life, work and study, and named Creative Painting, Dynamic Card Space, and WakeUp Curriculum Harmony OS App of the YearAt the same time, it will focus on the application of its own social value and technological innovation, and select the annual applications such as Kugou**, which helps public welfare undertakings with AI technology and product capabilities, Evernote, which achieves cross-field breakthroughs with self-developed large language models and advanced AI services, and Huaxia Fengwu, which empowers the industrialization of scenery, to encourage more applications to integrate and innovate the development of science and technology and humanities.
Huawei Weather reviewed the weather events in 2023 from eight dimensions, such as the most "small and fresh" cities of the year and the most "hot and cold" cities of the year, reflecting the professional weather functions, data analysis capabilities, and powerful product capabilities of Huawei Weather, which are transformed into real-time suggestions for a full range of life scenarios, providing an effective reference for users' daily life decisions.
At the same time, thanks to the continuous release of demand for business travel and outbound travel, the user activity of Huawei Skyline Pass and petal maps is also increasing. In the form of a list, HUAWEI Skyline has taken stock of the most popular destinations for outbound travel in 2023 and the new popular destinations for outbound travel, showing the annual outbound travel trends of Huawei userspetal maps carefully recommends the three common functions of destination search, route planning, and local services, as well as the new and easy-to-use functions of the year, such as surrounding recommendation, safe travel, and travel guide, to provide users with more popular functions for planning and reference when traveling abroad.
To meet the needs of personalized interaction and multi-device users, Huawei Theme has added an annual all-scenario theme list in addition to the annual theme and annual watch face, and selected high-quality themes such as "HarmonyOS 4 Super Fun", "Global Roaming", and "My Emperor - Meow Hand Flowers" for Huawei multi-device users, exploring the innovative possibilities of the collision of advanced technology and trendy design, and bringing a refreshing experience to users of different devices.
The construction and sustainable development of this high-quality content pool stems from Huawei's leading capabilities in three dimensions: development tools and technical support, terminal experience, and industry ecosystem, as well as the flywheel effect generated by the synergistic superposition of these three capabilities.
The first is to evolve the technology base and empower content creators.
On the one hand, by instrumentalizing its own software and hardware technology advantages, Huawei has transformed the "technical threshold" that restricts creators into "technical assistance", effectively empowering content creators and application developers, and continuously exploring new technology standards to optimize the content experience from the root.
For example, HUAWEI Game Center provides dedicated tools and service support for the HarmonyOS-based IDE and Creator game one-click migration script tools, creating a more user-friendly production environment for game developersHuawei Reading transforms AI capabilities into reading engines and AI high-quality book production tools, leveraging technology to reduce the cost of developing, adapting, and distributing digital content, improving the efficiency of high-quality book production, and making it possible for one person to produce a high-quality book a day.
In order to solve the pain points of inefficient and high-cost supply of 3D content in the industry, Huawei has developed a self-developed 2D-to-3D AL automatic computing framework to promote the efficient production of high-quality 3D contentIn order to comply with the trend of large-screen movie-watching, Huawei** also actively explores 8K super-resolution technology, breaking the shackles of traditional algorithms through AI technology solutions, and helping the industry break through the difficulties and difficulties in the production of ultra-high-definition content.
At the same time, relying on Huawei's more than 20 years of research and development precipitation in the field of audio **, Huawei** has created a new standard for AIMAX home movie viewing that can reach up to 4K image quality, HDR Vivid color, and Audio Vivid sound effects.
The second is to leverage Huawei's software, hardware, and service integration capabilities to create a content consumption experience that flows seamlessly across devices.
The HarmonyOS ecosystem has been completed at an accelerated pace, continuously strengthening Huawei's cross-device deployment capabilities. Based on this, while actively driving content production, Huawei is also making full use of its advantages in the integration of software, hardware and services, so that after the birth of massive high-quality content, it can flow seamlessly through fragmented terminal devices and mobile life scenarios, providing users with an immersive content consumption experience.
Take the ** service content that naturally has the advantage of "accompaniment" as an example. In the home scene, Huawei** users can listen to spatial audio works through smart screen smart speakers;When you're out and about, your phone connects seamlessly to the HUAWEI FreeBuds Pro 3 earbuds, and the stereo surround sound continues to flow into your earsAfter entering the Wenjie car space, the in-vehicle HUAWEI SOUND naturally takes over the spatial audio**, eliminating the cumbersome operations caused by cross-scenario, cross-system, and cross-device, realizing the efficient and free flow of high-quality services in multi-terminal collaboration scenarios, while improving user stickiness, activity, and loyalty, and thus feeding back the development of the platform.
The third is to open up and cooperate, activate business value, and build a sustainable content industry ecosystem.
Over the years, Huawei has adhered to an open and cooperative mindset and insisted on introducing high-quality content. Today, Huawei has a million-level Hi-Res music library and a 10-million-level lossless music library, and Huawei's **AIMAX Cinema has carried out in-depth cooperation with China Television Netju, Disney, Universal, Sony, Paramount, etc., and has introduced more than 1,800 domestic and foreign high-quality cinema blockbustersHuawei Reading continues to introduce high-quality works through aggregation, direct signing, and originality, bringing together millions of high-quality book resources in more than 40 categories and more than 1.8 million audio content, meeting users' one-stop content consumption needs.
The continuous prosperity of the content ecosystem has enabled Huawei**, Huawei**, and Huawei Game Center to develop into high-quality content aggregation platforms, providing creators with more business growth opportunities. For example, the PVOD model launched by Huawei** can provide creators with more diversified publicity and distribution opportunities, and broaden the market growth space for high-quality films.
With the synergy and mutual promotion of the three capabilities of "development support + all-scenario experience + industrial ecology", Huawei's native application products have quickly formed a flywheel effect of "quality improvement, user growth, and ecological prosperity", achieving continuous fusion from platform reputation, user scale, and commercial revenue, and driving towards a positive cycle of multi-party symbiosis and win-win development.
Currently, Huawei's device content and services cover more than 170 countries and regions around the world, with more than 700 million monthly active users worldwide. According to previously released data, Huawei alone has more than 2With 400 million monthly active users, Huawei's ** monthly active users have already reached 2100 million, and Huawei Reading, which focuses on creating a high-quality reading and listening experience, has also rapidly developed into a heavyweight app with more than 100 million users.
The large user base provides abundant and reliable data for the selection of Huawei's own APP annual lists, which not only makes these lists an important indicator of the development of the industry, reflecting the current trend of digital app content consumption, but also provides a valuable reference for many content creators.
One of the most important trends is that under the guidance of Huawei's value of "technology empowers art", the upgrading of content consumption driven by the innovative integration of "technology + humanities" is becoming more and more obvious.
The upcoming year 2024 marks the 30th anniversary of China's Internet. Looking back at this juncture, we can find that China's Internet content consumption is undergoing a transformation from "explosive growth" to "value growth", and more diversified, higher-quality, and more technologically warm Internet content is quietly infiltrating the daily life of the public.
From "quantitative change" to "qualitative change", this is an inevitable structural upgrade of mobile Internet content consumption, and it is also an important symbol of the maturity of the digital cultural industry.