In 2021, the Internet industry experienced a great test of endurance.

This year, policy regulation swept through many industries, and the Internet industry was in the eye of the storm. From the huge fine of anti-monopoly exceeding 20 billion yuan to the imperative of "tearing down the wall" between platforms, data compliance has risen to the strategic height of national security, one new policy after another, allowing the Internet industry to bid farewell to barbaric expansion.

Life inside the big Internet companies is also difficult. In the third quarter of 2021, Internet companies have suffered from sluggish revenue growth and declining net profit growth, and have laid off staff for the winter and lived frugally.

The changes in the internal and external environment make it clear that the era of Internet consumption is drifting away, and the Internet industry is at a major inflection point of transformation. There are only two ways for players to seize new opportunities and go to new battlefields to dig gold, or let technological innovation become the underlying driving force of development.

There are many key words in the coming 2021, such as antitrust year, interconnection year, data security year, carbon neutralization year, meta-universe year. When it is about to start in 2022, Deep Combustion has counted ten key words from three aspects: macro environment, long-term theme, and deterministic opportunity. they are antitrust, interconnection, data security, embracing change, carbon neutralization, hard technology, meta-universe, industrial Internet, going out to sea, and helping farmers, in order to show the future trend of the Internet industry.

Macro environment

1. Antitrust: capital is no longer omnipotent

The year 2021 is known as the "anti-monopoly year".

Especially in the field of the Internet, the sword falls frequently. In the first half of the year, BABA was fined 18.228 billion yuan for carrying out the monopoly act of "choosing one of the two", which is the largest anti-monopoly fine ever issued in China. In the second half of the year, Meituan was fined 3.442 billion yuan for the same reason. These two big factories alone were fined more than 20 billion yuan for monopolistic behavior.

Over the past two decades, Internet giants have infiltrated into various industries and expanded frantically with a set of "money-burning, merger and monopoly" methods, aggravating unfair income distribution and social instability. Therefore, "strengthening antitrust and preventing disorderly expansion of capital" was listed as one of the eight priority tasks in 2021 at last year's Central Economic Conference. According to statistics, since 2021, the State Administration of Market Supervision has issued hundreds of cases of anti-monopoly penalties, of which more than 70% involve Internet companies. And for "choose one of the two", "big data kill familiar" and other acts of anti-monopoly rules are also issued.

With tighter regulation, Internet giants began to take action. In December, Tencent issued about 460 million shares of JD.com to Tencent shareholders in the form of an interim dividend, and the proportion of JD.com 's stake will be reduced from 17% to 2.3%, which is speculated to reduce the risk of its own antitrust supervision. Large companies such as Meituan, Pinduoduo and Zhihu Inc., which are owned by Tencent, may face the same situation.

The banner of antitrust in the Internet field has only just been raised this year.

On November 18, the State Anti-monopoly Bureau was officially listed, which is regarded as the embodiment of the further improvement of China's anti-monopoly system and mechanism. Moreover, "strengthening anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition" was emphasized again at the Central Economic work Conference in 2022. Which means, next,At the level of law enforcement, anti-monopoly will be spread out regularly and systematically to break down the original market barriers.

2. Interconnection: "tearing down the wall" is the general trend.

In the past, Internet companies grew stronger and stronger, gradually formed a closed loop of platform ecology, and the "city wall" of the traffic pool was built higher and higher. The most typical products were Tencent, Ali and byte products, represented by Wechat, Taobao and Douyin, respectively, blocking link access to each other. For example, Wechat can not directly access links from Taobao Douyin, Taobao shopping can not use WeChat Pay Douyin is aimed at products from third-party sources and does not support shopping carts in the studio.

With the gradual disappearance of the Internet traffic dividend, in the stock period, the competition of Internet enterprises is still focused on how to deepen the barriers of the traffic pool, and fell into cruel and vicious competition.

Interconnection is not only one of the anti-monopoly measures, but alsoIn order to reduce transaction costs, promote innovation and entrepreneurship, and promote the long-term healthy development between the platforms.

On September 13, in response to the problem of blocking link URLs, the relevant departments of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology put forward compliance standards for instant messaging software, requiring all platforms to be unblocked by September 17. However, after this day, the interconnection between the platforms is not as good as desired. Some netizens complained that Wechat was not open. For example, the one-click sharing function of Taobao shopping cart expired on Wechat on the second day of launch.

Liu Chiping, president of Tencent, said at the financial reporting meeting that the interoperability between the platforms was a "very complex issue". From a business point of view, take Tencent as an example, connectivity means that Tencent enterprises will lose the advantage of enjoying Wechat ecology alone. Only from the technical level, after the platform is opened, user experience and user privacy are issues that need to be considered.

But fundamentally speaking, "demolishing the wall" is the trend of the times. By November 29th, Wechat had begun to unbind its outer chain, and users found that they could directly open links such as Taobao and Douyin on Wechat.

According to an industry observer, with the promotion of relevant departments, the interconnection between Internet platforms has been completed from 0 to 1 in 2021, which means that more Internet companies will at least not set restrictions in new areas. and the old hurdles of the past will be gradually removed step by step.

3. Data security: acceleration development

DiDi Global Inc. submitted his prospectus in US stocks in June, and in July, DiDi Global Inc. Travel was removed from its shelves in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Cyber Security Law of the people's Republic of China because of serious violations of APP in the collection and use of personal information. After DiDi Global Inc., Yun Man, truck gang and KANZHUN LIMITED were also launched network security review, and the curtain of data security review in 2021 was opened.

Behind the DiDi Global Inc. incident, the application of data and technology related to Internet products involves not only individual rights and privacy, but also issues related to public security and even national security.. The year 2021 is called the first year of data security. Following the implementation of the data Security Law and the personal Information Protection Law, the relevant departments have also issued the measures for data exit Security Assessment (draft for soliciting opinions).

A practitioner in the field of data security told Shenjing that the focus of many large companies this year is to implement laws and regulations related to data security, and then the focus of Internet players will be on how to further avoid risks in data security and improve efficiency.

At the same time, the market for data security is rising rapidly. Among them, privacy computing has emerged as a new force, and has become the hottest track in the field of data security. According to statistics, the financing in the field of private computing has exceeded 5 billion yuan in 2021.

The 2021 data Security Industry Research report released by Cloud Computing and big data Research Institute of China Academy of Information and Communications shows that China's data security has reached a critical period of development, and the demand for data security will be increasing in the future. at the same time, the requirements for service and product capabilities are also getting higher and higher.

4. Embrace change: compliance is the main trend in the next few years

This year, high-density, strong regulation continues, so that all Internet practitioners can not be ignored.

From rectifying the chaos in the currency circle, the "double reduction" in the field of education and training, and the great shock in the real estate industry, to the regulatory storm to short videos, live e-commerce, and games, the Internet industry, which is facing antitrust, interconnection, and data security regulation, must seek change.

Behind the stricter supervision is that the original playing style of the Internet is no longer suitable for the requirements of the new era.The relevant departments are guiding the entire Internet enterprises to transform from the disorderly expansion and barbaric growth in the past to the new era of intensive cultivation, from the previous consumer Internet model to the Internet era dominated by science and technology.

During the third quarter of 2021, BABA and Tencent both saw a decline in revenue growth and net profit. In addition, many large companies are facing a similar situation. Internet companies have laid off staff "for the winter" and lived frugally.

Looking ahead to 2022, compliance is also the trend of the times and will continue in the coming years. The Internet is entering a new era, and enterprises need to build new growth engines. And the individuals in it should also be prepared to embrace change."the only thing that lasts forever is' change'", which will be extremely applicable.

Long-term theme

5. Carbon neutralization: a hot topic in the next decade

After China put forward the "double carbon" goal of "carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutralization by 2060" in 2020, "carbon neutralization" was included in the government work report for the first time in 2021 as a national strategy, and 2021 is also regarded as the "first year of carbon neutralization".

Carbon neutralization, in essence, is to make carbon dioxide emissions "break even" and slow down global warming. After the "double carbon" goal was put forward, this year, Internet companies have accelerated to follow up on "carbon neutralization", formulate carbon neutralization goals and plans, and implement actions throughout the year.

In January, Tencent launched the carbon neutralization goal planning; in March, Ant Group promised to achieve carbon neutrality in operational emissions from this year and net zero emissions by 2030; by mid-June, Baidu, Inc. released a "carbon neutrality panorama". Announced to achieve the group's operational carbon neutralization target by 2030 At the end of the year, BABA also clearly put forward the three major goals of carbon neutralization, to halve the carbon emission intensity of its own operational carbon neutralization and upstream and downstream value chains by 2030, and to use 15 years to drive ecological carbon reduction of 1.5 billion tons with the power of the platform.

For these Internet technology companiesCarbon neutralization is not only part of corporate social responsibility, but also related to its own business model.

Against the backdrop of carbon neutralization, ESG investment is hot. This investment concept, which incorporates the performance of non-financial indicators in environmental protection (Environment), social responsibility (Social Responsibility) and corporate governance (Corporate Governance) into investment decisions, has attracted much attention in the primary and secondary markets.

Sequoia Capital, Hillhouse Capital and other top investment institutions have announced that ESG will be included in the investment decision. After carbon management SaaS disclosed round A financing, the founder reportedly received more than 1000 calls from investors a day. In the secondary market, the CSRC has listed ESG information as one of the main contents of communication between listed companies and investors.

A report released by BCG predicts that China needs a cumulative investment of 90 trillion-100 trillion yuan from 2020 to 2050 in order to achieve the goal of carbon neutralization. Nowadays, Internet companies have planned the goal of carbon neutralization on a 10-year cycle, and the keyword carbon neutralization will be a hot topic for at least the next decade.

6. Hard technology: ushering in the best times

"hard science and technology and scientific and technological entrepreneurship are the main theme of China's development in the next three decades and the only way for China to become strong. Mi Lei, the founding partner of China Science and Technology founder, who put forward the concept of hard science and technology, once mentioned that behind this conclusion, China is at an inflection point in the transition from model innovation to scientific and technological innovation. China's policy is transforming from investment-driven, factor-driven to innovation-driven.

Hard technology emphasizes keeping the core technology firmly in your own hands, and representative areas includeOptoelectronic chips, artificial intelligence, aerospace, biotechnology, information technology, new materials, new energy, intelligent manufacturing and so on.

Capital is already betting on hard technology. In the investment of Hillhouse Capital and Sequoia Capital in 2021, hard technology has become the largest investment direction. Shen Nanpeng, founder and managing partner of Sequoia Capital China, once told the media that investment in hard technology has exceeded 80% of Sequoia Capital China's investment portfolio, and that "a new era of technology-led entrepreneurship has arrived."

On the opening day of the Beijing Stock Exchange on November 15, 16 of the 78 listed companies were hard-tech companies.

Internet giants also put the layout of hard technology as an important position, internal self-research, foreign investment and acquisition, a two-pronged approach. In December, behind the sale of Tencent's stake in JD.com, there was also a change in investment logic. compared with consumer investment, Tencent paid more attention to the field of hard technology, including chip company Flint Technology, etc.; Ariane has Dama House and semiconductor company Pingtou Brother. Overseas investment includes Ziguang shares, Hengxuan Technology and so on. Meituan's strategy has changed from "Food+Platform" to "retail + technology", ploughing deep into the field of unmanned distribution, and strengthening investment in areas such as autopilot, robots, lidar and chips.

The hard technology industry is the power engine of the new round of industrial revolution, which has become the consensus of the industry. Talent and hot money are flocking to hard technology, a field that will affect an era.However, the threshold for the development of hard science and technology is high, the early investment is large, and the technology iteration cycle is long, so investors need to survive even more.

7. Meta-Universe: the Stars and Sea of the Future?

The concept of meta-universe, which is not even clearly defined, will spread all over the world in 2021.

In the first half of the year, the listing of Roblox, the first share of meta-universe, aroused the market's attention to this new thing. The sudden explosion of Yuan Universe in the second half of the year is inseparable from the oil poured on the global Internet giant Facebook Inc. Facebook Inc announced that he had changed his name to Meta to show his determination to enter the MetaVerse.

After that, the virtual human "Liu Yue Xi" caught fire, which attracted more than 5 million fans in just a few days. Tencent, BABA, and byte beat have all said that they are laying out the meta-universe, and even NetEase, Inc Yun music wants to create a music meta-universe.

Entrepreneurs have already poured in in the primary market. According to the enterprise investigation, there are nearly a thousand companies with meta-universe names alone, and the battle for people in related fields of meta-universe has begun first. Related digital people, VR/AR, games, social areas of products, have attracted the attention of investors.

In the secondary market, meta-universe concept stocks are surging forward. Stocks soar as long as they touch meta-universe, with stubbornly high increases, and even alarm regulators to explain the relationship between the company and meta-universe.

Some institutions use knowledge payment programs to package metasmos as an opportunity to get rich overnight, claiming that "there is only one way to get rich in the future." they take advantage of the opportunity to make money by selling anxiety, and the 10-day training course earns 1.6 million yuan.

The heat of real estate speculation and geothermal speculation in Yuan Universe is no less than that of the real world. In the second half of the year, the highest single transaction record for global virtual land was broken one after another, rising from US $2.43 million and US $4.3 million to about US $5 million in less than a month. Even the domestic meta-universe social products, which are still under internal trial, their virtual real estate transactions in the secondary market are extremely hot.

Parallel to the real world, the meta-universe, which can communicate and entertain in three-dimensional space through "incarnation", is far from being truly realized, and there is still a long way to go at the technical level. In terms of VR/AR equipment, which is regarded as the entrance to meta-universe, the annual shipment is at the level of 10 million, which is still far from popularity.

But followers all thinkIn recent years, great opportunities will be missed if we ignore the development and evolution of meta-universe.

Deterministic opportunity

8. Industrial Internet: the trend of digital transformation is irreversible

Industrial Internet is not a new topic. As early as 2019, Ma Huateng, founder of Tencent, said that the first half of the Internet is consumer Internet, and the second half is industrial Internet. By 2021, in the national macro policy guidance, digital economy and digitalization have become key words mentioned many times in relevant policy documents.

The growth and innovation that can be brought about by the business model in the consumer Internet era is becoming increasingly embarrassed. In the next era, the Internet technology will be used to digitally reshape and transform each vertical industrial chain to integrate the Internet with the real economy. Accelerating the digital transformation of the industry, that is, the industrial Internet, is the direction of policy support.

Nowadays, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, 5G and other technologies are infiltrating into finance, health care, education and other industries, and the development of technology is also setting off a new round of industrial revolution.

Internet head companies are moving in this direction to the future. Since the "930th" reform in 2018, Tencent has made comprehensive efforts in the Internet industry, with a vertical layout in many fields, such as smart retail, smart health care, smart finance, intelligent education, and so on. Zhang Yong, chairman of the board of directors and CEO of BABA Group, mentioned that he hoped to become a better company that combines the consumer Internet with the industrial Internet, and Aliyun, which helps enterprises in their digital transformation, had revenue of more than 20 billion yuan in fiscal year 2020. In addition, Baidu, Inc., JD.com, byte and Meituan are all laying out the industrial Internet.

Zhang Jian, secretary general of the Industrial Internet working Committee of CITIC Union, mentioned in a public sharing that with the development of the industrial Internet in recent years, we can find that its service system is showing a spiral iterative upgrade. at the same time, its own services are carrying out integrated and integrated innovation. The development of industrial Internet platform, on the one hand, continues to enrich and expand all kinds of services, on the other hand, it continues to promote all kinds of services to carry out digital, networked and intelligent iterative upgrading.

9. Going out to sea: digging for gold in a new battlefield

In December, BABA made the most important organizational restructuring in the past five years, when the To C (consumer-oriented) business and To B (enterprise-oriented) business architecture, which have been used for many years, were split and reorganized into two major sectors: domestic business and global business. The importance of BABA's overseas emerging business is obvious, and the growth rate of this part of business is much higher than that of the domestic market. Globalization has become one of BABA's three strategies juxtaposed with domestic demand and cloud computing.

As the domestic market war has been decided, mainstream Internet companies have already made up their mind to go out to sea. Nowadays, e-commerce, games, entertainment and social products, and content creation are several major areas that go out to sea.

In the field of e-commerce, cross-border e-commerce in China has shown explosive growth since the epidemic in 2020. SkyEye survey shows that there are more than 600000 cross-border e-commerce related enterprises in China in 2021. After Amazon.Com Inc's "blockade" continues to cause a stir in the cross-border e-commerce circle, TikTok has become another platform that sellers mainly focus on.

In games going out to sea, according to CCTV news, in recent years, domestic games have become an important source of growth for China's game industry. Data show that the actual sales revenue of China's independent R & D games overseas market reached US $18.013 billion in 2021, an increase of US $2.563 billion over 2020 and a year-on-year increase of 16.59%.

In the direction of entertainment and social networking, JOYY Inc Group, which focuses on live streaming, short videos and games with a variety of products such as Bigo Live, Likee and Hago, Chizi City, which owns social products such as MICO and Yumy and whose layout in the game field, and Yalla, which focuses on social networking and games in the Middle East market, have opened up the situation in overseas markets. The development of TikTok has attracted much attention. In September, the number of monthly active users has exceeded 1 billion. According to data, it has become the most visited Internet site in the world in 2021.

Going out to sea is often faced with risks such as disobedience of products and services and policy control, but it can not stop Internet companies from going out to sea to find increments. To this dayInternet players' sea positions from Southeast Asia and India to the Middle East, Africa and Latin America have now swept the world.

10. helping farmers: promoting the revitalization of the countryside

By the end of the year, Douyin "classmate Zhang" became an overnight hit. The number of fans increased by 17.6 million in less than three months, with an average increase of more than 200000 per day.

With Zhang's attention, the outside world has gradually realized that the focus of this rural short video led by a phenomenal online celebrity is inseparable from Douyin's flow support for new farmers. This is considered to be not only to find a new scene increment, to go deep into the hinterland of Kuaishou Technology, who was once an old counterpart, but also to grasp the main theme of rural revitalization.

There are plenty of people staring at the rural market. The e-commerce platform has already told the story of helping farmers. Pinduoduo started with agricultural products and has the genetic advantage of helping farmers; Alitot and JD.com Jingxi also regard the sale of fresh agricultural products as one of the key directions in 2021; and the contestants of community group buying have not let go of "helping farmers." Orange Heart Optimization and Ten Hui groups have put forward plans to help farmers this year. Not only that, Internet companies are also helping farmers from the perspective of digital upgrading.

The revitalization of the countryside should give priority to helping farmers. These Internet enterprises attach so much importance to helping farmers, can not be separated from the country's attention to rural revitalization. In 2021, the No. 1 document of the Central Committee formally proposed to comprehensively promote rural revitalization and speed up the modernization of agriculture and rural areas, highlighting the great importance attached by the CPC Central Committee to rural work in the new development stage.

What is the potential of the rural market? According to the data released by relevant departments, China's annual output and consumption of fruits and vegetables is as high as 700 million tons, accounting for about 40% of the world's total. The growth of retail sales of rural consumer goods in China has been faster than that in cities and towns for eight consecutive years.

On the one hand, there is policy support, on the other hand, the great potential of the rural market.. "helping farmers" means not only rural revitalization, but also new growth potential.

Yuan Shuai, deputy secretary general of the China Rural Revitalization and Construction Committee, said to Shenjing that the "agricultural dream" of Internet companies has long been revealed, and now they are competing to enter the bureau because the internal circulation of the economy under the influence of the global epidemic is the key. Only by invigorating the resources of "agriculture, rural areas and farmers" can we realize the excavation of the sinking market.