There is no need to discuss whether smart speakers will have a market. Because, smart speakers have become a relatively mature concrete product of AI technology at this stage, and it is also an AI landing carrier for giants to get together.
However, when it comes to hardware, cost performance becomes an inevitable topic. As a result, we saw the 89 yuan Ali sugar cube, 79 yuan Jingdong Dingdong mini2 and the recent 89 yuan Xiaodu smart speaker. A series of smart speakers worth less than one hundred yuan have been listed one after another, which seems to indicate that in the domestic market, the smart speaker industry has officially entered the stage of price wars.
Regarding the price war, under the fierce competition, no one can get around this hurdle. From the perspective of smart speakers, All in AI's Baidu is probably the one with the most experience.
"Original" Raven is not favored
Although Baidu's development in the field of smart home is not fast, Baidu's pace in smart speakers is not slow. In February 2017, Baidu acquired Raven Technology for a price of tens of millions of US dollars (the specific amount has not been officially announced), which is an AI entrepreneurial team of more than 100 people led by Lu Cheng after the 90s. At the time, this move was also regarded by the outside world as Baidu all in AI's determination. Lu Cheng was also appointed as the head of Baidu's intelligent hardware department, reporting directly to the new Baidu COO Lu Qi.
Lu Qi, then President and COO of Baidu, once stated in an internal email: "The acquisition of Raven is of great significance for establishing the leading advantage of Baidu's intelligent interactive platform and building the core competitiveness of software and hardware integration." The main task is to create entry-level interactive hardware for Baidu's all in AI strategy. This hardware is a smart speaker.
Nine months after entering Baidu's banner, at the 2017 Baidu World Congress in November last year, Raven finally produced its first work-the raven H smart speaker. With its relatively individual design, raven H has also received a lot of attention from the outside world after its release, but its price of 1,699 yuan has turned many people away. After all, at that time, although the domestic smart speaker industry had not entered the level of less than one hundred yuan as it is today, the prices of most products were only a few hundred yuan, and there were few products that broke four-digit numbers.
This product positioning is directly related to the leader of the Raven team. According to the foreign media The Information, citing former employees of Baidu Raven, Baidu’s management had hoped that Raven could also make a relatively cheap one. , People-friendly entry-level products to open up the mass market, but it is said that Lu Cheng himself is an avid believer of Steve Jobs, so he is not interested in products that focus on cost-effectiveness.
He believes that only by investing high costs can there be enough room to take care of the details of a product. He hopes that raven H can become Baidu's Echo and Home Pod. It is reported that Lu Cheng has always wanted to develop a "defining product" like the iPhone to replace mobile phones. Therefore, the raven H smart speakers we later saw were indeed excellent enough in terms of design and materials. The Wall Street Journal also gave Raven H "Best of CES" such a very high evaluation.
However, for a new industry that has to face mass market products, it is obviously very difficult to get users to take out 1,700 yuan to try products under the premise that users are still not familiar with and trust them. In addition, from the feedback of some users who have purchased raven H smart speakers, it can be seen that although the overall design materials of the high-priced raven H smart speakers are good, they are not smart enough, and they are not comparable to other prices in terms of voice interaction. Compared with half of its competitors, there is no obvious advantage, and it is even inferior to some cheap competitors.
In the end, the highly anticipated raven H smart speaker was not recognized by consumers after it went on the market. According to a report by Tencent Technology, Baidu's initial goal for Raven H Baidu was to produce 50,000 to 100,000 units, but it was eventually cut to only 10,000 units. Such market performance is undoubtedly unqualified for an entry-level product that requires volume. On the other hand, its competitors have achieved good market performance with relatively low prices. During the Double Eleven last year, Ali announced that the sales of its Tmall Genie X1 exceeded one million units.
Affected by this, the Baidu Intelligent Hardware Division managed by Lu Cheng also changed to aven Studio, focusing on the exploration of cutting-edge product forms. The related marketing budget has also been halved from the originally promised 30 million yuan. The number of employees in the Raven team has been reduced from 80 to 10, and the rest are just doing some basic application maintenance.
The interactive system of smart speakers requires a large amount of data accumulation, and sales of less than 10,000 units make Raven H have a clear gap in the accumulation of user data and usage habits compared with friends, and there is not enough big data for it to learn. And training, this is also the main reason why raven H is not smart enough in the user's daily voice interaction.
In the final analysis, it is not that raven H's products are not good enough, but that its excessively high price makes it fall behind in this price war between giants before it even starts. Excessive prices and a system that is not smart enough to shut out users, which makes raven H fall into a vicious circle that can neither sell nor learn to grow.
Low-priced Xiaodu has become a new favorite
The domestic smart speaker market does not experience a considerable period of training as in foreign markets, but directly enters a stage of rapid development. However, such a sudden rise also adds more uncertainties to the entire market. Even those core giants can hardly accurately predict the next trend of the smart speaker market. Therefore, at present, more are still testing, and occupying more users’ living rooms and acquiring more user data and usage habits have become the most important part of the testing process.
Baidu also re-selected a low-price and people-friendly strategy after raven H basically declared its failure. It is reported that Baidu has shifted the focus of its work to the low-priced smart speakers launched by Xiaoyu, another startup company it holds. Previously, Baidu's "Xiaodujia" smart speakers with screens came from Xiaoyu's home. At the same time, Baidu is also trying to develop its own speakers. The Xiaodu smart speakers launched this time are products independently developed by Baidu.
According to the smart speaker industry report for the first quarter of 2018 released by the market research agency Strategy AnalyTIcs, Google Home shipments reached 2.4 million units in the first quarter, an increase of 709% year-on-year, accounting for 26.5% of the market share; Amazon Echo series smart Speaker shipments were 4 million units, an increase of 102% year-on-year, and currently occupy a market share of 43.6%. But at the same time, it should be noted that although the shipment of Echo series smart speakers has achieved year-on-year growth, its overall market share has fallen sharply, which was as high as 81.8% last year.
Such data shows that the market is expanding and more and more players are entering the market. Among these new players, Chinese players also occupy a very important position. According to data released by the research organization Canalys, in the first quarter of 2018, the shipments of Ali’s Tmall Genie and Xiaomi’s Xiaoai speakers exceeded 1 million and 600,000 units respectively, ranking third and fourth in the global market. Second to Google and Amazon.
The main reason for the sudden rise of the Chinese market is due to the maturity of the relevant industry chain and the strong intervention of giants, which lowers the threshold of experience for the entire smart speaker industry. After the experience cost is low, many users are still very willing to try new things at such a relatively low price.
Perhaps after seeing the success of its friends, Baidu has strengthened its determination to take the parity route. Because at this stage, Baidu does not need to rely on speakers for profit, what it needs is to let its own speakers enter the homes of more users, so that users are willing to use it. Because, in an industry like artificial intelligence that requires continuous deep learning, having more users means more data, and these data are the main content of its AI ecological learning.
[Conclusion]
For general users, it may be a good thing for manufacturers to constantly refresh the bottom line of smart speakers in order to grab more living rooms, but for the entire industry, especially small and medium-sized enterprises other than giants. When the giants achieve low prices of 79 and 89 in such a vertical field, many of them are sold below cost. Such a strategy is likely to directly kill a group of small companies.
In addition, although low prices can promote the expansion of the market, it also means that the overall quality and quality are reduced. A series of problems such as poor sound quality, insufficient intelligence, poor sound reception, etc. will appear as the cost is compressed. Such a user experience is likely to directly destroy their curiosity about smart speakers for those early adopters. So that when manufacturers introduce more complete, smarter but higher value speakers in the future, it is difficult for them to be willing to try again.
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