Facing the red sea of ​​smart speakers, Huawei finally couldn't sit still.
In the past two years, BATJ, Xiaomi and many small and medium-sized entrepreneurial companies have entered the smart speaker war. After many internal discussions, Huawei constantly denies and restarts, and finally will launch smart speakers within this year (expected in October). An employee of Huawei Research Institute confirmed this to the Blue Whale TMT reporter.
Samsung is the only one of the late smart speakers to join the game, except for Huawei. Not long ago, on August 10, 2018, at the Samsung Note 9 conference, Samsung launched a smart speaker Galaxy Home. Galaxy Home has built-in six speakers, a subwoofer, and eight far-field microphones for detecting voice input. It has functions such as playing music, recognizing sounds in the far field, and controlling smart home appliances.
However, because the Galaxy Home's exterior color is "extraordinarily black" and the bottom is equipped with a triangular bracket, it looks like an "old-fashioned hand-cranked popcorn machine" horizontally, which has been ridiculed by many domestic and foreign netizens. Although the appearance is not outstanding, the debut is not "beautiful", fortunately, it can be regarded as catching up with the "last train" of high-end smart speakers. Unfortunately, Samsung has not announced the Galaxy Home price and time to market, and it may have to wait until the Samsung Developer Conference in November.
Different from the “easy way†and “easy way†of making smart speakers by Internet companies such as Amazon, Google, etc., hardware manufacturers always get involved in smart speakers with all kinds of troubles and twists and turns. As early as 2014, Apple started the smart speaker project. After many hesitations, delays, ticket skips, and resumption of the project, Amazon's Echo seized the opportunity.
In the same way, the deep-seated reason behind Huawei’s internal hesitation is that, as Shao Yang, the person in charge of Huawei’s consumer business strategy, said, smart speakers are indeed an outlet, but it is necessary to figure out whose outlet it is. .
Giant enclosures each have their own abacus and limitationsIn November 2014, Amazon launched Echo, a product that embeds intelligent voice interaction technology into traditional speakers, which immediately aroused a strong response from the market. In May 2016, at the Google I/O Development Conference, Google followed closely and officially launched Google Home, which is the benchmark Echo. Apple first introduced the Siri "voice interface" concept in 2011, and got up early and rushed to the evening episode. It was not until the 2017 Apple Developers Conference that information about the smart speaker Home Pod was announced, and it was postponed until the beginning of this year, and it was limited to six places including the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.
For a time, smart speakers became a "new continent" for the giants to conquer the city and grab the beach. Both Amazon and Google are envisioning a future to support the ecological construction of enterprises. In the absence of mobile phone-related hardware products, smart speakers will become the best traffic portal for smart homes and the next best hardware product.
Toni Reid, the vice president of Amazon Echo, once thought about the positioning of smart speakers, "Imagine you have an always-on and friendly digital voice assistant. You can turn off the lights, and you can read it from your shopping list. Order. I can talk to you about anything interesting from the World Cup to Japanese anime. When you are in a low mood, I can encourage you and cheer you up."
Such a beautiful vision is indeed supported by relevant data. According to data from market research company Canalys, more and more people will use voice recognition systems on a regular basis in the future. By 2019, nearly 100 million smart speakers will be sold globally, and by 2022, about 55% of American households will have them. A smart speaker. It is estimated that the global smart speaker market will reach approximately US$3 billion in 2018 and will increase to nearly US$12 billion in 2023.
The global smart speaker market is mainly concentrated on the "you chase me" between Amazon and Google. The global smart speaker research report for the first quarter of 2018 from Strategy Analytic shows that Amazon Echo shipped 4 million units, with a market share of 43.6. %, doubled from the same period last year. Google Google Home shipped 2.4 million units, with a market share of 26.5%, an increase of 709% over the same period. 700,000 units of Alibaba Tmall Genie (sold in China), with a market share of 7.6%, ranking third. Apple and Xiaomi ranked fourth and fifth with sales of 600,000 units (6%) and 200,000 units (2.4%).
The analysis company Canalys said that in the first quarter of 2018, the sales volume of Amazon Echo 2.5 million units was lower than the quarterly sales volume of Google Google Home 3.1 million units. Google's sales performance beat Amazon for the first time and became the market's first. Apple is limited by its late launch time and high price (US$349), and its market share is temporarily small. However, since the Home Pod was launched, it quickly occupied 4.1% of the U.S. market share within three months, and many analysts gave it "impressive" reviews.
It is obvious that the smart speaker market is divided into two camps due to the nature of the field in which the entry companies are located and the corresponding product attributes and ideas. One is Internet companies represented by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, and the Other is hardware companies represented by Apple.
With a powerful retail system behind Amazon, it is natural to expect Echo to become another important shopping portal in addition to website and mobile traffic. Google’s logic is that Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak proposed in 2016 that intelligent voice interaction will become the next important platform in the computing field, and voice control and artificial intelligence will realize the Internet and reality. Seamless interaction of the world. Google's advantages are also obvious. Google Calendar, Gmail, and Android mobile phones have hundreds of millions of user groups. Gmail and calendar functions can be linked with smart speakers, which Echo does not have. Of course, both of them use the "connection" function of smart speakers to "lock" consumers in the ecology they have built.
Apple uses the Home Pod as an accessory other than smartphones, and completes the layout of the accessory and the integration of Apple software in the form of music hardware. The music recognition service provider Shazam, which Apple acquired for US$400 million in December 2016, the upgraded AirPods this year, and the sound-quality over-ear headphones of the recording studio that will be launched in 2019 are all part of the construction of the Apple Music streaming music ecosystem. .
In terms of product planning, Echo is different from the closure of Home Pod, adopting open cooperation with streaming music service providers such as SpoTIfy, Pandora, iHeartRadio, Audible, and its own Amazon Music. With the help of the cloud computing capabilities of Amazon AWS, real-time data transmission is realized with the cloud. The API interface is open, and different manufacturers can develop. In contrast, Home Pod is only connected to mobile phones and relies heavily on the iPhone, which is more like an accessory for smartphones. The product focuses on the sound quality of the speakers, and "smart" comes next.
Different product ideas are also reflected in pricing. Amazon Echo currently has four product series, Echo, Echo Show, Echo Dot, and Echo Sport, with prices ranging from US$100 to US$40. The cheap Echo Dot is the best seller. Home Pod sets prices more from the perspective of hardware speaker products. The price of up to 349 US dollars is prohibitive, and it does not appear to be "close to the people" unless it is a small number of "enthusiasts" who pursue sound quality.
Therefore, for Amazon and Google, what is needed is to quickly popularize products at a lower cost and obtain traffic and data training. For Apple, it is important that each machine does not lose excessively.
There is no doubt that Internet companies have massive amounts of data and information on the consumer To C side, which can support the continuous "learning" of artificial intelligence and realize a virtuous circle of interaction. And smart hardware (mobile phone) manufacturers have a mobile ecosystem based on LBS+ real-time demand, which is a heavyweight entry point for Internet companies to “see but not reachâ€.
Amazon is obviously aware of this. On the one hand, it is cooperating with Microsoft Cortana to fill the gap in the data set. On the other hand, it is cooperating with mobile phone manufacturer HTC to integrate Alexa on the mobile side, and launch Alexa on the iOS APP application store to provide mobile-side active services.
The strange circle of "like leaves with different taste" in different quadrantsWhen the overseas giants are fighting and enjoying each other's boundaries. The smart speaker market in my country is also full of smoke. From the Big Four of BATJ to the various entrepreneurial companies at the fairy level, they have already realized that "the seven dragon balls can be summoned." With the addition of Huawei and Samsung, the market will become more lively in the future.
The difference is that the "price war" in the domestic smart speaker market has been extremely fierce. The Jingdong Dingdong mini 2 starts at RMB 79, the Tmall Genie X1 at RMB 499 is reduced to RMB 99 during Double Eleven, the Tmall Genie cube sugar is RMB 89, and the original price is RMB 249. The early adopter price is only RMB 89. The 169 yuan Xiaomi Xiaoai mini speaker... Except for the smart speaker with a screen, the normal price of the above products does not exceed 500 yuan.
The opposite example is, not long ago, Baidu's raven H smart speaker. Because the price is as high as 1699 yuan, the market positioning is not accurate. In the end, it ended sadly because the order was less than 10,000 units. The high price of smart speakers does not mean that the corresponding profit is also high. According to relevant data from IHS Markit, the $349 price of each Home Pod brings a profit of $133, accounting for about 38%. It is much lower than Amazon Echo's 66% and Google Home's 56%.
Amazon Echo, which also promotes the market with low holiday subsidies and member discounts, can achieve "high profits." Domestic smart speaker manufacturers are still hovering on the edge of the low-cost "bloodbath" market, and they have been unable to formally "enter" because of a comprehensive combination of reasons. Zhu Pinpin, the founder of Xiaoi Robot, once said that he would never touch the smart speaker industry, because smart speakers themselves are a loss-making business, and cultivating user habits is an extremely difficult process, and profits can only be achieved in the later stages of development.
"At present, the domestic smart speaker market players are mainly divided into three categories. One is the Internet giants, which build new entrances for users by burning money. The second is the To VC business model, which does not care about sales, focuses on product concepts, and the market is not clear. Its business model. Financing is obtained through peculiar and cool products. For example, Hangzhou's Rokid smart speakers. The third category is counterfeit smart speakers, which are concentrated in Shenzhen and have not been profitable." Zhu Pinpin told Blue Whale TMT The reporter said.
Faced with the popularity of the domestic smart speaker market concept, Qian Chen, the former CTO of Hammer Technology, also told the media that behind the contending of a hundred schools of thought, the concept of smart speakers may be played badly. Nuowei Consulting's research report shows that domestic smart speakers adopt a strategy of low price and rapid penetration in the market. Chen Xiaoliang, Chairman and CEO of Sound Intelligence Technology, told reporters that burning money to speed up the process of market awareness and rapid sales is of great benefit to cultivating users. But the way out of the product is definitely not to burn money, but ultimately to tap and satisfy the user experience.
Judging from consumer feedback, smart speakers have become increasingly cost-effective and have not brought users a good first experience. Poor human-computer interaction experience, mediocre sound quality, and limited use scenarios lay hidden dangers for the "chicken ribs" of smart speaker products. Obviously, the maturity of the domestic smart speaker industry chain and the cultivation of user habits still need a long way to go.
Among them, the pain points in the process of consumer use are embodied in the high difficulty of waking up, not waking up once or waking up by mistake. If the distance is a little farther, it may be difficult to wake up in bad weather. Poor semantic recognition, slow response, often unanswered questions and can only recognize standard Mandarin. Standby will be hot, the current sound is serious, and the sound quality of the speaker is normal. No built-in battery can only be connected to the power supply, short power cord is inconvenient. The mobile phone has poor connectivity, and the connection is unstable, and the connection is often dropped. The workmanship and materials are too rough, and a lot of audio needs to be paid. In short, "It's an alarm clock that can play songs."
Chinese speech recognition is technically different from English, and it is more difficult. In addition, there is a huge difference between the local dialects of Chinese, such as Cantonese and Hokkien, which invisibly creates obstacles in the "coordinates" of products. More importantly, what urgently needs to be changed in domestic smart speakers is the high degree of "homogenization" of products. Spitz CMO Long Mengzhu revealed to reporters that Huawei's smart speakers will use Spitz's full set of voice technology solutions, including speech recognition, speech synthesis, semantic understanding, natural language processing technology NLP, and voice dialogue.
The smart speaker industry chain provides voice technology manufacturers mainly including iFLYTEK, SPICE and Yunzhisheng. Jingdong Dingdong is supported by iFLYTEK’s voice technology, while Tmall Genie and Xiaomi Xiaoai speakers (first generation) are provided by Spych with a full set of voice interaction technology. Therefore, the user experience and use experience of various smart speakers are not very different in essence. In terms of the most basic and key technologies such as noise suppression and reverberation removal, Amazon's multi-microphone array and Google's dual-microphone array have the first mover and leading edge.
One of the embarrassing aspects of the domestic smart speaker market lies in the huge differences between Eastern and Western cultures. Listening to music is a very basic life requirement in Western countries, and it is a deep-rooted habit in some regions. The user's habit of paying for music is relatively mature. It belongs to the rigid demand market with a clear market capacity. Therefore, when traditional speakers or Bluetooth speakers are upgraded to smart speakers with AI functions, the market acceptance is relatively high.
"The differences between Eastern and Western cultures have created different technical orientations and technical testing and verification systems. For example, smart speakers abroad are mainly in the living room and kitchen, and the domestic scene is mainly in the living room and bedroom." Chen Xiaoliang said.
At the same time, Amazon's "voice shopping" ecology of liberating hands and detaching from mobile phones itself has the paradox of "monetization". According to relevant data from The InformaTIon, only about 2% of users in the United States use Echo for shopping. To make matters worse, 90% of 2% of users have used it only once. 20% of people use Echo to find products with discounted prices, but never buy them.
For the "ten-million-level" sales of Amazon, it still can't bring too much change to the market. The domestic "million-level" Alibaba and JD may not be able to get rid of it for a while. Smart speakers "predict the weather and set alarms." "Playing music" is a "weird circle" for the three major purposes. Even if smart speakers gain widespread popularity, considering domestic home application scenarios, their usage rate is likely to be much lower than that of TVs.
Extending the "coordinate system", looking at the overall smart speaker market, various bug incidents have emerged one after another. From mid-February to early March this year, Amazon Echo's Alexa voice-activated assistant lost control, terrifying users with weird and terrifying laughter. User Lauren Hall left a message, no one talked to it, no one in the room, Echo started laughing presumptuously at home. Almost at the same time, the connection to Amazon's AWS cloud data service was interrupted, resulting in a large number of users in the United States unable to interact with Echo normally.
Then, a private conversation between several women in Oregon, the United States, was secretly recorded by Echo, and randomly sent to the contacts in the address book to share. A couple in Portland also encountered a similar situation. The content of their conversation was sent as an attachment to a contact person in the address book without permission. Echo's Dot Kids children's series has caused many parents' concerns in terms of triggering adult content and extracting children's private data. In addition to the uncontrollable algorithms behind these events, it also lies in the imperfect operation of related IoT technologies.
Huawei HiLink PK Xiaomi's ecological chain, Huawei's ecological construction has a long way to goThe Internet of Things has promoted the development of artificial intelligence and is considered to be the third wave after the mobile Internet. Smart speakers are a very subdivided link of the Internet of Things and AI. Whether it’s Alibaba’s smart speaker shopping or Xiaomi’s smart home control, "Even though, the business model is still unclear and the technology is immature. At this stage, users don’t buy it and continue to burn money. Companies are seizing the entrance of the Internet of Things and are unwilling. Deviate and abandon the track of the Internet of Things." Zhu Pinpin said.
Aiming at the smart home IoT, which is the closest to consumers, Samsung launched the SmartThings control platform in 2012. In January 2014, Google acquired the smart home platform behind Nest and the leading industry standard organization Thread Group through the acquisition of Nest Labs. In the same year, Apple proposed Homekit, a smart home system, and Amazon launched the smart speaker Echo to build a smart home center. Domestically, as early as 2013, Xiaomi founder Lei Jun launched the "Xiaomi Ecological Chain" plan. In 2015, Alibaba launched Ali Xiaozhi, using APP as the entry point of the smart home ecological chain. Huawei acted a little late and officially released the HiLink smart home platform on December 12, 2015.
"Obviously, Internet companies will have more advantages in making artificial intelligence products, not only in their knowledge of technology, but also in the storage of content. Moreover, Internet companies value speed more, have a more open mindset, and are willing to develop together with partners. In contrast, traditional hardware companies are relatively slower and hesitant in these aspects." Chen Xiaoliang said.
Distinguished by the nature of the enterprise, leaving Internet companies aside, in terms of magnitude, the only company that can be compared with Huawei is Xiaomi. According to Xiaomi's prospectus, Xiaomi builds its own IoT and consumer product system through self-production and cooperation with ecological chain companies. Hardware products include self-produced smart TVs, laptops, routers, and AI speakers. The products produced in cooperation with the ecological chain include mobile power supplies, bracelets, air purifiers, water purifiers, sweeping robots, smart balance cars, smart door locks, bedside lamps, LED smart bulbs, Mijia IH pressure rice cookers, smart toilet lids , Smart socket, universal remote control, drone, AR/VR, etc. On August 14, Xiaomi deployed its air-conditioning products for the third time, launching Mijia Internet air-conditioners.
As of March 31, 2018, Xiaomi has established an ecosystem of more than 210 companies through investment and management, of which more than 90 companies focus on the research and development of smart hardware and consumer products. Under the extensive layout of ecological chain companies, Xiaomi has established the world's largest consumer IoT platform.
On the other hand, Huawei's HiLink hasn't moved much. It was not until the AWE Expo on March 8 this year that Huawei Shao Yang announced that it would develop smart homes and launch the "Ten Billion Plan", hoping to support HiLink sales of home appliances to 10 billion U.S. dollars within three years. By the Huawei Terminal Developers Conference on June 22, after Yu Chengdong released Huawei's full-scenario smart ecological strategy. It has become clear to the outside world that Huawei this time is the same as when the cloud computing "trend" struck, and it is a choice that has to be made due to the situation.
Similar to Xiaomi, the main entrance of Huawei HiLink is a mobile phone, and the auxiliary entrance is devices such as tablets, PCs, and speakers. The pan-IoT hardware is located on the last layer of the three-circle ecosystem. The difference is that Huawei has HiLink standard protocol and Lite OS under its own framework. Although the Xiaomi ecological chain has always been criticized, such as "doing everything, nothing can be done well", the ecological chain is too closed, squeezing the profits of startups downstream of the ecological chain. I have to admit that Xiaomi started earlier than Huawei and has a more complete ecological chain product layout.
Communications analyst Chen Zhigang told the Blue Whale TMT reporter that Xiaomi's closedness is more like Apple, and its investment management capabilities and IoT platform control capabilities have become mature. Eco-chain products do not require adaptation, strong execution capabilities, and high efficiency are Xiaomi's competitive advantages.
Huawei's "connection" is actually taking the route before Xiaomi's ecological chain. In the case of "difficult to adjust", Huawei needs to win over a large number of traditional home appliance manufacturers. Similar to Huawei's cloud computing business, how to balance the interests of partners, among many partners, how Huawei will position itself is unknown.
Therefore, at present, Huawei does not have the channel advantages and subsidy advantages that Internet companies have, and the smart home "big connection" strategy is in the sky, and the voice interaction technology is not enough.
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