Logical Analysis of "Hundred Boxes War"

What is the power to drive smart speakers?

On the mobile phone to open Jingdong Mall to search for "smart speakers", less than 1 second jumped out of 750 pages of products; on Taobao, smart speakers are also dazzling, the price is less than 300 yuan, there are many prices above 1,000 yuan; On Jingdong crowdfunding, 125 projects related to speakers are being crowdfunded.

As a "new species" for human-computer interaction, smart speakers are starting to take off in 2017. Amazon, Google, Apple, JD, Ali, Tencent, Baidu, Xiaomi and other giants rushed in, and a veritable "hundred box battle" kicked off.

Market warmed by Echo

As an upgrade of WIFI speakers, smart speakers are more like a new tool for users to use the voice to access the Internet. People no longer need to draw a little on the screen of the mobile phone. As long as they “talk” to the speaker, they can “order” it to sing, tell stories, broadcast the weather or shop online. It is also a family assistant that helps you manage other smart devices, such as opening curtains and light bulbs, and setting the temperature of the refrigerator.

In November 2014, Amazon released the smart speaker Amazon Echo. In China, JD is one of the early companies entering the field of smart speakers. In 2015, Jingdong and Keda Xunfei jointly established Jingdong Linglong Technology and launched the 叮咚 speaker.

However, before the "fire", the smart speaker had a long period of tepid.

Under the tireless advertising bombing of Amazon, the turning point appeared in the second half of 2016. Amazon Echo's sales increased sharply during this period, and sales peaked in November and December, with sales accounting for 45% of annual sales in two months.

The Consumer Intelligence Research Partner (CIRP) recently released a new report saying that the Echo smart speaker has gained 76% of the US market share and has sold 15 million units in the US.

In 2017, foreign giants moved more frequently. Amazon released Echo series new Echo Look and Echo Show. Microsoft and Harman released smart speaker Invoke. Apple launched HomePod, which focuses on smart home and music experience. Google is expected to release smaller in October. The cheaper Google Home smart speaker, after the launch of the voice assistant Bixby, Samsung also came out with news about smart speakers.

The wind on the other side of the ocean has also warmed up the domestic smart speaker market.

In January of this year, Lenovo released a smart speaker at the Consumer Electronics Show. In June, Jingdong launched a new speaker, and the Himalayan released Xiaoya smart speaker. Tencent has a voice intelligent platform. In July, Ali released the Tmall Elf X1, and Xiaomi released the AI ​​speaker "Little Love Classmate". In September, Jingdong released the 叮咚2 generation products and joined hands with hundreds of Internet companies and equipment manufacturers to form an intelligent audio industry alliance.

Research firm Strategy Analytics predicts that global smart speaker sales will exceed 10 million units in 2017, and its output value will reach nearly 10 billion US dollars in the next 5 years. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology predicts that the global smart voice industry will reach US$11.24 billion in 2017, and the compound annual growth rate in the next five years can exceed 30%.

New entrance

"The market itself has not been completely ignited." Tang Yuezhong, chief scientist of Jingdong Linglong Technology, said in an interview with the Beijing Morning Post that there is a big difference between the Chinese and American markets. American consumers have the habit of using speakers. The American speaker market has also experienced a From the ordinary speaker, to the development stage of Bluetooth speakers, wifi speakers, smart speakers, the content of the supporting content is relatively mature. In contrast, China's consumer market has just entered the Bluetooth phase, and it has directly crossed the era of intelligence. Most users have not used the habit of using voice products.

Tang Yuezhong said that this means that China's smart speaker market cannot reach the order of the US market in the short term. However, this does not prevent more and more players from standing on the "track." "The smart speaker that seems to be less eye-catching is the entry-level product of smart home." Tang Yuezhong said.

In fact, with the development of Internet of Things technology and the maturity of the “net generation” consumers, smart home has become the mainstream development trend. It is estimated that by 2017, the size of the smart home market will exceed 140.4 billion yuan. According to Analysys Qianfan data, the number of active users in the smart home market has exceeded 46 million and continues to grow.

Smart home products need to have a unified portal to manage them, and the choice of portals is likely to affect the user's choice of other smart hardware. The real meaning of smart speakers lies in the smart home ecosystem behind them, as well as tens of thousands of user data in smart home scenarios. According to some data, when the brand was first launched, the most popular features were on-demand songs and broadcasts. Now people will use more chat and control applications such as smart home appliances. "This is a good trend." Tang Yuezhong said.

For the giants, what is happening is not only the contest between the speaker products, but the overall competition for the family scene. In this regard, some people in the industry said that the smart speaker's air outlet is in the smart home, just like the drip and the fast war is not in the taxi, the same in mobile payments.

Is it the "king of the future" or the "transitional product"?

Is the smart speaker the "king of the future" or the "transitional product"?

Wearables were once thought to be the next star product to have a broad market after smartphones. Today, the first movers are in a tough situation. Capital and market enthusiasm for a large number of smart products such as smart bracelets and watches are gradually retreating in the face of a dull market.

According to statistics, the monthly sales of domestic smart speakers are less than 20,000 units, and the annual sales volume is only one million units. Even with such large-scale investment by a large number of manufacturers, it is only a virtual fire.

Under the evaluation of many smart speaker products, the reporter found that consumers' high expectations for products can not be met. “It’s only available, it’s still far from good,” one consumer complained.

At present, the "big army" that enters the smart speaker market can be roughly divided into three major factions: Internet manufacturers, content IP vendors, and traditional speaker manufacturers. “Many companies underestimate the technical threshold of this product.” Tang Yuezhong said. Feng Xin, CEO of Storm Group, also said earlier that if he wants to occupy the market, he must be prepared to "burn 1.5 billion in three years."

However, in addition to following the hurdles, for many "players" who look to the future, the speakers are only one of the carriers of their artificial intelligence technology. The core is not the speakers, but the technology behind the speakers. The exploration of smart speakers is a "big training" that looks to the future.

"AI (Artificial Intelligence) is a very broad concept. Speech recognition and face recognition are just two small links that are easy to land. Smart speakers are a good entry point and can be understood as pioneers of AI products." Tang Yuezhong said. The evolutionary trend of smart speakers will be intelligent robots. For more and more market participants, he is also happy to see that "the market needs education and cultivation, and now it is not time to divide the cake."

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History of speaker evolution

Bluetooth Speaker

Around the 1990s, multimedia speakers ushered in a historic development opportunity, as a peripheral product of the computer with the advent of the PC era quickly spread.

Since then, with the popularity of wireless electronics, wireless speakers have become an indispensable device for many young people. Since most computer manufacturers and mobile phone manufacturers generally support Bluetooth, user demand does exist. After 2000, Bluetooth speakers quickly emerged along with the development of mobile Internet, and gradually became the mainstream of the speaker market.

WiFi speaker

Bluetooth solves the problem of portability and sound quality to a certain extent, but limited by the limitations of the Bluetooth technology itself, the transmission rate from the device end to the speaker end becomes a bottleneck for improving the sound quality. In this context, WiFi speakers have gradually gained market recognition with wider data transmission capability and wider transmission range. The WiFi speaker directly connects the speaker to the Internet. Unlike the Bluetooth device, it also needs to be “transferred” through the mobile phone or computer to fundamentally solve the problem of the speaker content source.

Smart speaker

Smart speakers are a combination of hardware and software. In addition to the traditional "listening" requirements, users also hope that the speaker has more interactive capabilities, such as voice and video recognition. Speakers are being given more and more functions. In addition to listening to music, getting information, and controlling home appliances, they are also connected to more third-party services, such as shopping, calling express, calling rental, calling housekeeping, and so on. Even in the future, users no longer need to hold a mobile phone, but directly talk to the smart speaker "I want to chat with WeChat friends", you can achieve the call.