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Tmall Buy+:

VR Shopping Experience Brings

Overwhelming Digital Floods

Released by Huawei iLab,

November 2016

01 02

During the "Double-11" promotions in 2016, Tmall Buy+ and VR technology

enable you to "reach" Australia from your home in just 10 seconds to start a

journey of spending. To help you better understand the impacts of Buy+ VR

shopping on the network as well as the created opportunities, iLab provides in-

depth analysis of the shopping process, user experience, network traffic and

impact of Buy+ at the first time.

Huawei iLab finds that:

1. Required traffic is increased by more than 30 times: taking shopping in a

store as an example, mobile shopping consumes about 3–4 MB traffic, but

VR shopping consumes about 94–120 MB.

2. Current VR shopping experience still needs to be improved.

Coarse-grained experience: the Buy+ virtual shopping adopts 360°videos with 1920x960 or 3072x1536 resolution. The experience is far from

that of standard-definition (SD) videos.

Relatively low frame rate and obvious dizziness: Buy+ VR 360 videos

use a frame rate of 25 fps, causing an obvious dizziness feeling.

According to Whitepaper on the VR-Oriented Bearer Network

Requirement released by iLab, the frame rate is over 30 fps during the

entry-level VR stage, 60 fps during the advanced VR stage, and 120 fps

during the ultimate VR stage..

3. In the next 2–3 years, upgraded VR shopping experience will bring a

digital flood.

According to Whitepaper on the VR-Oriented Bearer Network

Requirement released by iLab, VR 360 videos with 7680x3840 resolution

can achieve the effects of SD videos, but require 100 Mbit/s access rate.

In average, an online shopping journey consumes 1.5 GB traffic, 16 times

the traffic required for a current Buy+ virtual shopping journey.

VR 360 videos with 11520x5760 resolution can achieve the effects of

high-definition (HD) videos, but require 418 Mbit/s access rate. Then one

online shopping journey consumes 6 GB traffic, 64 times the traffic

required for a current Buy+ virtual shopping journey.

The quarterly active users of Taobao reached 434 million. On the

"Double-11" day of 2015, the active users reached 100 million, the order

volume peaked at 140,000 per second, the concurrent online users

reached 45 million, and the network traffic was up to 4.5 Tbit/s. In the

future, if 4.5 million users (1% of the current quarterly active users of

Taobao) simultaneously adopt high-quality Buy+ virtual shopping, the

network traffic will exceed 100Tbit/s!

If social elements are added to shopping with friends, the interaction

between friends will put more pressure on networks in terms of traffic,

bandwidth and latency.

1. VR Buy+ Shopping Process

If the selling point is service for offline shops and convenience for online

shops, the selling point of VR shopping is fun. High-quality VR shopping

should have the following features:

Virtual for reality: you can visit well-known stores in a virtual world and

enjoy immersive shopping experience, in which offerings at your fingertips

may stimulate your spending desire and enhance your virtual shopping

experience.

3D offering display: 3D models can reproduce the reality of offerings

along with brief introductions and illustrations.

Innovative payment method: you can enjoy the convenient payment by

iris recognition.

Social interaction: you can not only enjoy real-time, face-to-face and

high-quality services from stores, but also go shopping with friends to

meet your social needs.

The virtual shopping environment provided by current Buy+ is relatively

simple, and the shopping process of Buy+ is similar to that of regular online

shopping. The very difference is that VR mode and panoramic mode can be

switched flexibly during the shopping process.

Shopping

Experience

elements

Shopping

environment

Scenario

Shopping

with

friends

Guided

selling

Brand

2D/3DSharing

Process

Payment

Customer

serviceReality

Real-time

Search

Offering

comment

Enter the homepage

Log in to Buy+

Choose a store

View the offering details

Search for offerings

Add to the shopping cart

Pay

End

Search and

browse

Upgrades in VR shopping experience will bring an overwhelming digital

flood, requiring improvements in both the capacity of clouds and pipes

and the VR 360 video projection and transmission technologies. For

details, see 8K VR 360 Video: a Vital Phase of Industry and

Technology Development released by iLab.

03 04

1.1 Log in to Buy+ Homepage

The process of entering the Buy+ homepage from Taobao app:

The client reports the terminal software and hardware information, and the

server returns the configuration information.

An introductory video plays to enter the homepage. The video can be

downloaded using the Hot Plug Detect (HPD) mode, the first two bytes of

which indicate the image configuration information.

When the video ends, the background (a virtual room) of the homepage

appears.

The store logo dynamically refreshes, prompting you to tap it to enter the store.

The login is complete.

The menu of photo wall indicates that a new shopping journey is started.

The introductory video comes in two resolutions (1920x960 and 3072x1536),

which are automatically selected based on the terminal and network bandwidth.

Terminal

TypeVideo Resolution

Coding

Protocol

Image

Projection

Mode

Frame

Rate

Average

Video

Bit Rate

DurationVideo

Size

Average

Audio

Bit Rate

Audio

Channel

Terminal

1

Introductory

video1920*960

h264

Main@L4.

1

Sphere25

fps

4

Mbit/s8s

4

MB

317

kbit/s

L R 2

audio

channel

Terminal

1Homepage 1920*960

h264

High@L4Sphere

25

fps

4

Mbit/s60s

30.6

MB

317

kbit/s

L R 2

audio

channel

Terminal

2

Introductory

video3072*1536

h264

Main@L4.

1

Sphere25

fps

6

Mbit/s8s

5.58

MB

317

kbit/s

L R 2

audio

channel

Terminal

2Homepage 3072*1536

h264

Main@L5Sphere

25

fps

6

Mbit/s60s

27.7

MB

317

kbit/s

L R 2

audio

channel

1.2 Choose A Store

Tap a photo to enter another world through the space-time tunnel on

the net.

Then you may take a ride on a cruise ship, convertible, helicopter,

high-speed train, or an old small pickup truck. Thus, you are taken to the

store by the "transfer" video.

Tap to enter a store

VR mode

Traveling to Australia

VR mode

Start

shopping

It is interesting to ride a helicopter, at least for the first time, and it is even

cooler than sitting in business class.

The image of store picture is from panoramic videos through live-action

shooting. The video and audio of the store are loaded separately, meaning

that the sounds heard by users are from separate audio files. There is a

mute button on the video floating layer.

Different store scenarios adopt different video resolutions (1920x960 or

3072x1536), and generally video images of these scenarios are not clear. The

video bit rate is 4 Mbit/s or 6 Mbit/s. The video frame rate is 25 fps, easy to

cause an obvious dizziness feeling. According to Whitepaper on the

Shopping

Mall

Example

Video

DirectionResolution

Coding

Protocol

Image

Projection

Mode

Frame

Rate

Average

Video

Bit Rate

Duration

Video

File

Size

Average

Audio

Bit Rate

Audio

Channel

Shopping

mall 1

Inbound

direction1920*960

h264

Main@L

4.1

Sphere25

fps

4

Mbit/s23s 12.4 MB

317

kbit/s

L R 2

audio

channel

Outbound

Direction1920*960

h264

Main@L

4.1

Sphere25

fps

4

Mbit/s23s 12.2 MB

317

kbit/s

L R 2

audio

channel

Shopping

mall 2

Inbound

direction3072*1536

h264

Main@L

4.1

Sphere25

fps

6

Mbit/s15s 12.1 MB

317

kbit/s

L R 2

audio

channel

Outbound

Direction3072*1536

h264

Main@L

4.1

Sphere25

fps

6

Mbit/s15s 12.0 MB

317

kbit/s

L R 2

audio

channel

VR 360 Video Data

VR-Oriented Bearer Network Requirement released by iLab, the frame rate is

over 30 fps during the entry-level VR stage, 60 fps during the advanced VR

stage, and 120 fps during the ultimate VR stage.

Audio Encoding

Protocol

Average

Bit RateDuration Audio File Size

Audio

Channel

MPEG Audio

Layer 3192 kbit/s 28s 669 KB

L R 2 audio

channel

Audio Data

1.3 Select Offerings

After you enter a store, you can browse the offerings on different shelves by

"staring at" (VR mode) or hold the arrow button on the floor (Panoramic

mode). When you find a desirable offering, tap it and then the floating layer

of offering details is displayed, including the offering model, name, price,

import duties and store. You can view the offering from 360 degrees by

rotating the 3-D model. Then you tap Add to Shopping Cart to add the

selected item to your shopping cart.

05 06

Shampoo

Tap to check offering details

Hold the arrow to browse offerings

VR mode

VR mode

Start

shopping

07 08

iLab finds that the offering model with 360° rotation is made of 60 photos,

and the size of each photo is about 30–80 KB.

Offering Photo

Resolution

Coding Protocol Photo Size Photo

Number

600x600 PNG 30–80 KB 60

1.4 Payment and Shopping Completion

In VR mode, tap the shopping cart icon in the upper right corner to pay.

If you have enabled password-free payment for small amounts, tap Confirm

Payment. If you have disabled password-free payment or the total price

exceed the password-free payment limit, you need to stare at corresponding

numbers to enter the password and complete the payment.

This test is based on simple shopping scenarios: go to a store, select and

buy staff. The Buy+ shopping consumes about 94–120 MB traffic, while the

regular Taobao APP consumes about 3–4 MB traffic. Buy+ shopping

requires more than 30 times the traffic generated in mobile shopping through

Taobao app.

0

20000

40000

60000

80000

100000

1

11

21

31

41

51

61

71

81

91

101

111

121

131

141

151

161

171

181

191

201

211

221

231

241

Shopping

Mall 1

Shopping

Mall 2

Welcome

Scenario

Store

Selecting

Transfer

Video

Shopping

Scenario

Welcome

Scenario

Store

Selecting

Transfer

Video

Shopping

Scenario

kbit/sTraffic diagram of Buy+ shopping

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

8000

1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49 52 55 58

Traffic diagram in shopping

through the regular Taobao app

Tmall

Homepage

Women's Dress

Page

Flagship Shop

Page

Purchase

Page

Payment

Page

VR mode

Close

Panoramic mode

09 10

Source: Statista

Q2

'12

Q3

'12

Q4

'12

Q1

'13

Q4

'13

Q1

'15

Q1

'16

Q2

'16

Q2

'13

Q3

'13

Q1

'14

Q2

'14

Q3

'14

Q4

'14

Q2

'15

Q3

'15

Q4

'15

133 145 160172

185202

231255

279307

334350

367386

407423

434

500

400

300

200

100

0

Quarterly active users

Active T

aobao

onlin

e b

uyers

in

mill

ions

The proportion of mobile shopping in Q2 of 2016 reaches 75%.

Convenience is the essential reason for users to ditch computers for

smartphones. VR shopping will attract more users because it allows users

to have the same fun shopping online as in brick-and-mortar shops.

Q2

'12

Q3

'12

Q4

'12

Q1

'13

Q4

'13

Q1

'15

Q1

'16

Q2

'16

Q2

'13

Q3

'13

Q1

'14

Q2

'14

Q3

'14

Q4

'14

Q2

'15

Q3

'15

Q4

'15

4.6% 5.6%7.4% 10.7

%

12% 15%20%

27%

33%36%

42%

51%55%

62%

68%73% 75%

100%

80%

60%

40%

20%

0%

Mobile phone shopping proportion statistics

Pe

rce

nta

ge

of m

ob

ile G

MV

Source: Statista

VR glasses will gain popularity rapidly in the next two years. With the

explosive increase of VR users, the number of VR shopping users will

increase consequently.

VR user statistics and forecast

2014 2015 2016 2017 20180

50

100

150

200

Num

ber

of users

in m

illio

ns

0241

16

1 413

26

9

23

58

16

41

114

Early Majority/KT&T Early Adopters/Light Gamers

Innovators/Hardcore GamersSource: Statista

On the "Double-11" day of 2015, the concurrent online users peaked at 45

million, and the network traffic was up to 4.5 Tbit/s. In the next 2 to 3 years,

if 4.5 million users (1% of the peak concurrent users on the "Double 11" of

2015) simultaneously adopt high-quality Buy+ virtual shopping, the network

traffic will exceed 100 Tbit/s!

As mentioned in Whitepaper on the VR-Oriented Bearer Network

Requirement: if the broadband Internet access is like a stream with frequent

seasonal cutoff, the video (including HD and 4K/8K) is like the Eerqisi River

and VR is like the Yangtze River or Amazon River. Their demands of

different services for pipe bandwidth vary greatly from ten times to a

hundred times.”

Huawei iLab has always been dedicated to the VR research, and expects to

build a sound VR ecosystem with industry partners. We can jointly facilitate

the development of a mature VR experience evaluation standard and the

development of the VR industry, and finally build a better connected world.

2. The VR shopping popularity will facilitate the

rapid development of the VR industry, and network

digital flood is an inevitable trend.

Taobao has a large user base with a whopping number of 434 million of

quarterly active users. On the "Double-11" day of 2015, the active users

reached 100 million, and the order volume peaked at 140,000 per second.