Source: Sina Technology In 2023, 23-year-old Sam Altman (Sam Altman) spoke enthusiastically at the company's annual developer conference, praising the company's new app store for promoting his developed software (a friend positioning service called Loopt). "We think this is a new mobile era and we are excited to participate in it," Altman said. Today, 16 years later, Apple has invited this entrepreneur again - but the situation is different this time. Now the company needs his help, just as he needed Apple. Currently, the OpenAI startup run by Altman is at the forefront of the generative AI field. In order to catch up in this field, Apple has established a partnership with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into iPhone's operating system. Although the controversial Altman is unlikely to appear on stage at the press conference, this agreement will be the focus of next week's Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, indicating how much the power dynamics in Silicon Valley have changed in recent years. This agreement allows OpenAI to reach millions of Apple users, including those who may hesitate to use ChatGPT. For Apple, this collaboration brings the hottest technology of the artificial intelligence era - a chatbot with super powers that can be combined with its own services. Apple has been developing a series of artificial intelligence features, including features that run on its devices and other features that require cloud computing. Apple has also introduced artificial intelligence technology for the Siri digital assistant, but the company's self-developed chatbots have not yet met standards. Technology veteran Dag Kittlaus said that the collaboration with OpenAI is likely to be a "medium-term relationship" for Apple. Before Siri was acquired by Apple, he was co-founder and operator of Siri. "But one thing is certain, they will strive to cultivate their own capabilities in this regard. " On the morning of June 11th Beijing time, CEO Tim Cook will deliver a keynote speech at the Worldwide Developers Conference, which is considered the largest sales promotion of Apple in recent years. The company must convince consumers, developers and investors that Apple can thrive in the era of artificial intelligence. Due to the stagnation of Apple's existing businesses, five of its six quarters' revenue declined, and it faces greater pressure. In the field of artificial intelligence services, Apple once took the lead by releasing the Siri digital assistant in 2011, ahead of Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant entering the market. But the company quickly fell behind its competitors, and the first appearance of ChatGPT in 2022 caused earth-shaking changes. In November 2022, OpenAI's chatbot inspired consumer imagination and prompted tech giants to compete to develop their own artificial intelligence services. Since then, Apple's main competitors have made progress. Gemini's chatbot is competing with ChatGPT for the dominant position in this emerging market. Microsoft is OpenAI's biggest supporter and has begun to integrate its AI-assisted Copilot into software. Amazon has also demonstrated an artificial intelligence-enhanced version of the Alexa voice assistant. In contrast, Apple has remained silent about its ambitions in artificial intelligence until now. Cook said last year that the company will act cautiously in new areas and will only add artificial intelligence technology on a "thoughtful basis." Recently, he believes that Apple will have an advantage in the field of artificial intelligence because the company can seamlessly integrate hardware, software and services together. Behind the scenes, Apple employees have been working hard to fulfill this promise. Before and after the release of ChatGPT, a small team in Apple's artificial intelligence and software engineering departments began using a framework called Ajax to develop ChatGPT's competitors. Apple software chief Craig Federighi urged managers to add as many artificial intelligence features as possible to the latest version of the iPhone and iPad operating system (internally referred to as "Crystal"). The service department led by Eddie Cue began to build the infrastructure of new data centers to support online artificial intelligence services. Employees also began researching how to apply artificial intelligence to Apple Music and the company's productivity applications.
Author: Zhou Wenmeng

However, behind the prosperity, $WEIMOB INC (02013.HK)$ As the "first stock of XINJINGJI Saas" deeply integrated into the WeChat ecosystem, WEIMOB INC has only achieved profitability once since its IPO in 2019, and has since incurred continuous losses for four and a half years, with a cumulative loss exceeding 5.1 billion yuan, and has yet to turn a profit.

In order to reverse the huge losses, in January of this year, WEIMOB INC started optimizing its internal assets - planning to divest 50% of its subsidiary's equity, as well as cutting low-profit non-core businesses and reducing staff to achieve cost reduction and efficiency improvement. However, the measures have had minimal effect; in the first half of this year, WEIMOB INC's revenue was 0.867 billion yuan, down 28.3% year-on-year; during the period, the loss exceeded 0.5 billion yuan, further widening compared to the same period last year.

In the difficult environment faced by the entire Saas industry, can a "gift-giving" feature tested in WeChat's gray-scale really completely reverse the market's confidence in WEIMOB INC's long-term development?

The stock price doubled in four days, clearly reflecting speculation around the concept.

A few days ago, the WeChat team announced that the Wechat Mini Program officially launched a gray test of the 'Gift Giving' feature, which will support 'Gift Giving' by default for products excluding jewelry and education training categories, with the product's original price not exceeding 0.01 million yuan.

As a result of this news, in the securities trading market, several stocks related to the Wechat Mini Program's 'Gift Giving' function have seen their stock prices soar. Among them, WEIMOB INC performed outstandingly, with its stock price increasing by over 50% the day after the WeChat team announced the gray test of the 'Gift Giving' function, ultimately closing with a rise of 35.76%.

Subsequently, the company's stock price continued to rise significantly for several days, and after rising on four trading days on the 19th, 20th, 23rd, and 24th, the company's stock price accumulated an increase of 115.2%, doubling the stock price and pushing the Market Cap over 10.9 billion Hong Kong dollars.

According to a relevant person from WEIMOB INC, 'As one of TENCENT's important ecological partners, the Weimob Mini Program is integrating with Wechat Mini Program, supporting merchants to participate in the Wechat e-commerce ecosystem; relevant products are currently being connected.'

Currently, industry insiders are generally 'cautiously optimistic' about this.

One prerequisite for the relationship between the Wechat 'Gift Giving' function and the rise in WEIMOB INC's stock price is whether the 'Gift Giving' function can provide sufficient commercial opportunities for Wechat, similar to the Wechat red envelope in 2014. If this holds true, then WEIMOB INC, which provides third-party services based on the Wechat ecosystem, can gain a large number of business opportunities, thereby fundamentally changing its corporate valuation and even profitability.

In communication with Sina Technology, senior internet technology industry analyst Tang Chen stated: 'Based on the Wechat ecosystem and traffic, if TENCENT is determined to reinvest in e-commerce with unlimited input, the Wechat gift feature would be a great leverage to connect the e-commerce Infrastructure within the Wechat ecosystem; however, replicating the momentum of Wechat red envelopes will be difficult. E-commerce and payment are completely different scenarios, and the resources required are not on the same level.'

In his view, the current landscape of the E-commerce Concept market has basically stabilized, and it would be difficult for Wechat Gift to achieve the same impact as Douyin's content E-commerce. However, looking at it from another angle, "if Wechat Gift is merely seen as a traffic tool to connect within the Wechat ecosystem for other purposes like marketing, advertising, or value-added services, it is worth being Bullish on."

In addition, Zhang Shuai, a guest consultant at the China Chain Store and Franchise Association and an expert in the Retail E-commerce Industry, pointed out that as early as 2018, many third-party mini-programs had developed the "gift-giving" feature, which had some consumer stimulation effect but was not as significant as expected. "After the official launch of this feature by Wechat, it has generally been the same, unless there are major promotional policies to drive it."

"The current environment is different, coupled with the fact that E-commerce business is heavily reliant on Operation; whether TENCENT is willing to invest in Operation remains a question." Under a series of issues, when insiders within Wechat were also reluctant to elaborate on the "gift-giving" feature, WEIMOB INC's obvious stock price rebound and valuation increase undoubtedly raised some suspicion of 'Concept speculation.'

Wang Bin, an investment director of a private equity securities fund and a partner at a private equity fund, frankly stated to Sina Technology: "In the short term, this situation is certainly Concept speculation, after all, WEIMOB INC is considered a relatively authentic Wechat E-commerce Concept and has dropped significantly in previous years." In the long term, the increase in WEIMOB INC's valuation depends on whether "Wechat E-commerce shows significant improvement."

A huge loss of 5.1 billion; it's hard to rely on Wechat's 'thigh.'

As the "first stock in the new economy SaaS sector," WEIMOB INC's growth history is almost in sync with Wechat's commercialization.

In 2013, the popularity of Wechat Pay allowed Wechat to embark on the path of commercialization, further setting its sights on the E-commerce field. At that time, WEIMOB INC recognized the monetization ability of Wechat channel traffic and positioned itself in Saas services, providing integrated solutions for development, operation, and promotion based on Wechat for enterprises.

Four years later, when Wechat Mini Program was launched, WEIMOB INC once again shifted its corporate strategy to be "All in Mini Programs," becoming one of the first developers and service providers of mini programs, gradually completing its original accumulation.

By 2019, WEIMOB INC had gone through six rounds of financing, receiving investment from TENCENT during this period, with cumulative financing exceeding 3 billion yuan, and successfully listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, earning the reputation of being the 'first stock in the XINJINGJI Saas sector.'

However, a noteworthy phenomenon is that since WEIMOB INC went public in 2019, the company achieved a brief profit only in 2019, and subsequent annual Earnings Reports have shown losses. From 2020 to the first half of 2024, the company suffered losses of 1.157 billion yuan, 0.783 billion yuan, 1.829 billion yuan, 0.7583 billion yuan, and 0.5508 billion yuan respectively, with a cumulative loss of approximately 5.1 billion yuan over nearly four and a half years.

Under prolonged losses, WEIMOB INC seems to have felt the pressure. To improve its operational status, over the past year, WEIMOB INC has begun to reduce costs and increase efficiency while focusing on core business sectors to shrink its loss scale.

In May last year, WEIMOB INC divested its smart dining business and stopped including its revenue in financial statements, while also reducing investments in the micro mall business and other small micro businesses, decreasing the number of direct sales cities and lowering the proportion of low-profit customer groups.

As of January this year, to optimize its internal asset structure, WEIMOB INC planned to sell more than 50% of the equity of its subsidiary Shanghai WEIMOB Cultural Media Co., Ltd. for no less than 3.6 billion yuan; however, due to poor market feedback subsequently, WEIMOB INC terminated this plan.

Additionally, WEIMOB INC has also reduced its employee size for cost control. As of June 30, 2024, the number of employees at WEIMOB INC was 3,952, nearly 2,000 fewer than in the same period last year. Correspondingly, employee costs dropped from 47.4 million yuan to 27.1 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 43%.

However, all these adjustments have not completely reversed the ongoing losses of the company. As of June 30, 2024, WEIMOB INC incurred losses exceeding 0.5 billion yuan, further widening the loss compared to the same period in 2023.

Under the trend of interconnectedness, it has become even more difficult for WEIMOB INC.

在一定程度上，微盟等第三方电商服务SaaS平台的出现，主要受益于电商发展早期，各大互联网公司仍处于各自封闭孤立的状态，商品链接互不打通，通常只能以特殊标识码“口令”中转跳转。

近两年间，伴随着 $TENCENT (00700.HK)$ 、 $BABA-W (09988.HK)$ 等互联网大厂之间开始拆墙，大型平台之间互联互通进程提速，中小电商平台推进数字化对于SaaS会员体系的需求随之减弱，这直接导致了微盟等SaaS平台中小客户数量的锐减。

透过微盟2024年上半年财报，也可以看到客户减少的这一事实。2024年上半年，微盟两大核心业务中，订阅解决方案收入0.487 billion元，同比减少31.0%；付费用户数为0.0687 million家，上年同期这一数字为0.1001 million。商家解决方案收入为0.381 billion元，同比下降24.5%，付费商家数为0.0387 million家，上年同期为0.0405 million家。

经历长期的发展后，国内电商市场格局基本稳固，新的现象级玩家出现几率降低，属于微盟们的增量客户不断减少。另一方面，互联互通等进程加速直接导致中小电商平台付费意愿降低，微盟等平台的客源也随之降低。

For WEIMOB INC, the valuation increase brought by the Wechat Mini Program's gray test "gift giving" feature may only be temporary. Effectively preventing customer loss and thus generating revenue and profit growth is what will ultimately earn market recognition.

Editor/rice