The Product Story of SunTube

When I joined an IPTV service provider, our main product was the set-top TV box that streamed live Chinese TV channels to Chinese communities in North America and Europe, and we are authorized by Chinese TV stations for those live channels. However, on the one hand, limited by copyright issues, we could not provide VOD (Video On Demand) services for Chinese contents, which became more and more popular on the market. On the other hand, our revenue depended solely on the sales of the hardware (a TV box with two-year subscription), which could not cover our expenses and help us move forward. And even worse, our bandwidth costs were getting higher and higher, and users began to experience stuttering, delay and glitching during peak hours.

We were encountering growth bottlenecks in terms of both user numbers and revenue.

In order to break through the bottlenecks, we conducted some market surveys among our existing users to find real and more demands. Before the survey, I assmumed some features and demands as the questionnaires according to my experiences.

The survey report proved some of our assumptions. Most users requested VOD contents, which allowed them to binge-watch their favorite dramas and variety shows more easily. Over two third of users would like to watch live channels and videos on more terminals (especially mobile terminals) besides TV sets in the living room. In addition, more than half of users hoped to see English contents, although half of our users are middle-aged and elderly.

In order to diversify our revenue sources, we assumed some features like watching ad with subscrition discount, paid premium contents and discount information of local businesses (commercials), which were accepted by more than one third of users.

Based on the survey results, We decided to upgrade the system in terms of four aspects: contents, platforms, basic business models and ad system.

However, Roman was not built in one day. So are the products.

First we should upgrade the system to include more contents, especially VOD contents, and push them to our existing users. This would help us do some hypothesis tests to get the response from users.

Second we would diversify the view terminals and then business models, base on which we were be able to develop advertising platform to increase revenue sources.

There were massive video resources on the Internet that we could use as VOD services legally. And they would not occupy our own bandwidth.

First, we could use resources from some commercial-based free video service providers via open API, like YouTube, Hulu, Crackle, and etc. Especially on YouTube, there are lots of popular Chinese dramas and variety shows. A part-time editor could get daily database maintenance done. Second, in TV version, we could pre-load some 3rd party apps that provide various video services, both in Chinese and in English.

Together with our existing live TV channels, these VOD resources and 3rd party apps could make our product a one-stop video platform.

In the past, our TV services solely relied on our own TV boxes. This limited our capability to increase the number of users.

Our new product would be a cross-platform software for various operating systems, including Android TV, Apple TV, Android phone & tablet, and iOS. The users could download our app from these platforms, watch free contents and try premium contents for free. We also planned to develop an ad platform that could integrate services of local businesses. Therefore，our revenue sources would be diversified, including subscription fee, advertisement fee and sales of TV box.

Concision was the basic principle of designing the SunTube. Here is the prototype of TV box version of SunTube.

The users could access the favorite contents and recently played contents from home screen. In the mean time, we could put recommended contents and advertisements here. In addition to the built-in video list, users can also watch more massive videos via 3rd party apps, and even install their favorite apps, like games.

The Info screen integrated the information of local businesses. The users could get special discounts and learn abou them through videos.