The Experience and Strategies of APUS Group in Overseas Market

1. Three trends in overseas internet industry

(1) 2014-2016 Traffic entry mode

In this stage, tools applications and internet platforms have developed rapidly. However, by 2016, the window was closing and content operation has been becoming increasingly popular. As the pioneer of traffic entry mode, APUS has acquired a large number of users in overseas market.

And as is known, traffic to internet industry is what national tax revenue to a country. Hence most internet companies have dedicated themselves to acquiring traffic. And it is understandable that in current days, Google and Baidu have such high market values with their search engines. The reason is merely that they are the traffic entry for internet users. When one controls traffic entry, he can allocate the traffic, just like administrator of national highway can charge drivers for toll fees. This is the most primary and advanced traffic entry mode.

(2) 2017-2019 Content operation mode

Essentially, content operation mode is similar with media mode. With enormous audience size and information accesses, companies are willing to advertise in television shows. It is easy to understand that content operation mode is to give audiences access to information and then advertisements to get income. Sohu, Sina, Netease in the past decade, Toutiao, Youtube, Youku, Tudao at present, and the lightweight games at early stage have all benefited from this business mode.

Now, a large number of Chinese internet companies have been considering exploring overseas market with news, video, live streaming, game, music, and other contents services. However, localization and adaption can be major issues and hinders for them. Henceforth, I prefer export capital, technique, philosophy, and have cooperation with local partners.

APUS has built its ecosystem and industry chain. Through capital cooperation, APUS has found local cooperative partners and export products, techniques, users, traffic so they can mushroom rapidly. Meanwhile, APUS is willing to share its platform with Chinese enterprises and explore overseas markets, export games, videos, etc. together.

(3) 2019-2020 Business operation mode

Essentially, all e-commerce and internet finance are parts of business operation mode as they both provide services while customers pay for it. One day, e-commerce and internet finance will rise up overseas, however, the fact is that it is still early to launch investments now. Because a large number of overseas users, especially those from emerging markets, have not possessed smartphones and hence no access to internet. Consequently, I predict that the rise of business operation mode will start from 2019.

In internet industry, these three modes have covered all businesses operations of all companies.

2. APUS Ecosystem

Based on traffic entry platform, APUS ecosystem has provided interfaces for content and business operation. In this ecosystem, the upstream manufacturers and carriers are not most competitive because of the lack of brand superiority. Meanwhile, the user system is in midstream. APUS User System and APUS series products has acquired more than 1 billion users worldwide. Last but not least, the downstream local content service providers will provide games, e-commerce, videos, news, internet finance and other services.

With the enormous traffic, APUS has released monetization platform in order to transfer traffic to income. And APUS will reasonably allocate income with upstream, midstream, and downstream cooperative partners to keep APUS Ecosystem stable.

3. Nebula Platform: the self-built big data platform

The function of big data platform is to store data, transfer it to valuable statistics, get user image , and achieve contextual analysis. APUS is especially good at contextual analysis because APUS essentially is a user system. We can get accurate statistics of app install, uninstall, usage, frequency, and other statistics like news and usage needs. With the help of user image and contextual analysis, APUS can precisely predict users’ needs and push recommendation.

4. APUS investment philosophies and arrangement

Air force: product, marketing, PR

Navy: APUS investment and ecosystem

Army: local branch and localization

Allies: global and local cooperative partners including Facebook, Google, InMobi

As upstream traffic entry platform, APUS has developed music, game, news, video, e-commerce, O2O and other content services via investment and cooperation. And henceforth optimize APUS ecosystem and APUS product chain, help cooperative partners explore overseas market and achieve mutual-benefit.