Giants are betting on smart speakers in the end bet what?

In 2017, except for sharing bicycles, another hot area is none other than smart speakers. It is worth noting that in the hurried battle of smart speakers, most of the competitors are platform giants. There are Amazons abroad, Google, and Ali. Baidu and so on.

From the perspective of product form and scene, smart speakers are like the upgraded version of the Bluetooth speaker of the year, but they can not help asking questions, giants have laid out, including Baidu and Ali, which rarely involve the hardware business, also entered the game. Where is the logic behind the road?

From a product function point of view, compared to traditional speakers, this round of smart speaker selling points mainly focused on voice human-computer interaction and content services, such as smart system-based music, audio books, and even e-commerce online shopping, and even trying to become intelligent The home control center connects household products, but in turn, whether it is music, audio books, local services, or online shopping, these forced migration scenarios and services are mostly sloppy services, and the concept of smart home entrance is also Having become the reason why giants have laid out smart speakers one after another seems most reasonable, but is the real logic really only here? Yiming Network does an analysis from all dimensions.

Will the smart home entrance take the old road of smart routing?

For now, why the giants are arguing for the layout of smart speakers, the most reasonable answer seems to be to seize the entrance of smart homes, but in view of the changes of the Internet and the Internet of Things, those who seem to have the entrance properties The final product is often regarded as a non-essential product.

After the outbreak of smart phones, the dispute over the mobile Internet portal has been fought for several years. There have been browser disputes and news client disputes. The unexpected result was the birth of Super App WeChat and Alipay. The initially determined mobile Internet market gradually faded out of people's view on the issue of entry.

After the mobile Internet, the concept of the Internet of Things became popular. Most of the people think that the second half of the Internet must be the Internet of Things, so the entry dispute is inevitable. Since 2015, smart routers have become giants like today’s smart speakers. The Internet of Things (IoT Portal) that the entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs rushed to layout was able to achieve acceleration, video ad filtering, smart speed limit, and only through a router, without having to make any settings on computers and mobile phones. Remote control of the mobile phone, even "scientific access to the Internet," and even the hardware properties, gave the router an iPhone tag.

At that time, Wang Chuyun, the founder of “Pole Routing”, defined it as the “home data transmission/exchange center”. Huang Dong of Husk Electronics defined it as the “family information center.” In the description of the scene, it was painted out. The beautiful scenes of the future world, such as the ability to automatically push TV dramas, do not need buffering, look at what is on the mobile phone, transfer to the router to return to home TV, automatic renewal, routers as hardware support for intelligent platforms and third-party intelligent application plug-ins as software systems Supported smart WiFi system. The idea of ​​sharing the same goal now seems to have just become a lied to oneself and others have not believed in a copy of what they believed. However, such a beautiful future disappeared after six months.

Two years after the Internet of Things (IoT) entry, smart speakers re-embed the entrance task. This time, they have new equipment, namely voice human-computer interaction, and the voice interactive technology has also shown perfection in the smart home scene. The fit is precisely the most critical technology for the Internet of Things entrance. However, outside of technology, most viewpoints give traffic entry attributes, and the concept of traffic entry itself is a pseudo concept because all of the entry vectors will eventually Become a huge traffic entrance.

In simple terms, voice human-computer interaction is the entry condition for smart homes and even entrances to the Internet of Things, and traffic entry is a property that can only be produced outside of the entrance. Currently, smart speakers only have the voice interaction of the Internet of Things. As soon as there is no industry standard for the Internet of Things, there are still huge variables in the future. With regard to the Internet of Things, what kind of carrier is the future? Virtual or physical is also full of variables. Smart speakers It is just a carrier's attempt. After all, apart from the voice human-machine interaction, we have not yet seen more change points in other scenarios. It is even conceivable that future smart homes may not require such an entrance. Implementing voice interaction is a property of each hardware product, such as opening the door to the refrigerator and booting to the TV.

In contrast, the Internet of Things industry is still in the initial stage of development. Each major appliance brand segregates and each has its own standard, while at the same time it is difficult to ensure that all households have the same brand and multiple standards. The protocol directly leads to the fragmentation of smart homes. The hardware cannot be interconnected and interoperable, which makes the intelligent control center more and more cumbersome. From this point of view alone, Yiming Network believes that smart speakers are far from the entrance, and after the actual standards are formed, the product form has already undergone a huge iteration.

The tuyere has been around every year, but most of this round began as runners.

Hundred Regiments Offensive, Vertical E-Commerce, Smartphones, Big Data, Taxi, P2P, O2O, VR/AR, Live Streaming, Shared Bicycles, Blockchain, The Uninterrupted Transition of Capital of Entrepreneur Followers over the Past Years The track, catching the air, and the influx of hot money have created a large number of large-scale speculators. In these typical capital outlets, whether it is speculation or pragmatism, there are great luck bonuses behind the winners, but in intelligence. The field of speakers is obviously a lot different.

Since Amazon released Echo products in 2014, the small players who established this market began to accompany the destiny. From the comparison of major players, including Amazon, Google, Baidu and Ali have a lot in common, first of all platform-based companies, followed by these players most of the main business is mainly concentrated on the line, especially in the hardware business Less involved, in addition to Amazon's book business support, Google's development across the board, Ali and Baidu are almost blank on the hardware level, in addition to platform-based and online-based, these three have a common feature That is, all three are important players in the field of cloud computing.

Of course, such comparison results are not accidental, but they hold up the inevitable option of the smart speaker market. The logic behind this will be further analyzed in the third section. The reason why the small players in this field can't escape the fate of the runners from the beginning, apart from the three common points mentioned above, there are giants quickly cut into the locked up competition in this field, and The giant effect has also been shown in terms of market cultivation and rapid popularity.

According to the data, by the end of this year, the global smart speaker market sales will be close to even 30 million units, which is more than five times year-on-year sales growth. It is worth pondering that this market is led by Internet giants such as Amazon, Google and Alibaba. It is expected to account for more than 90% of market share this year.

For example, Xiaoya of the Himalayas, Lenovo, cool dog, go out to ask questions, jealousy of Jingdong and HKUST's news are inevitable to become runners, first of all, from the point of view of product form, the current situation can only become smart speaker sales and cultivate the market. The runners, because they only caught up with the speed of product production, but far behind the giants in the strategic logic, or for these small players, such a product line does not seem necessary, because after all, Is a money-making business, such as Ma Yun and Amazon can instantly in the promotional section into hundreds of millions of marketing fees, the more critical is that if only a simple tool hardware, or even just a high-end toys, Huaqiang North is undoubtedly a Strong competitors. Someone said, "In the one-kilometer radius of Shenzhen Nanshan District, there are more than 100 smart speaker manufacturers."

At least, Jingdong has already given lessons to the industry. In China, Jingdong and HKUST’s X-Fly were the first to be deployed, and Yiming Network cited and cited the interface report. According to a person in charge of Linglong Technology's voice solution service provider company, inside Jingdong, “ Liu Qiangdong attaches great importance to this matter." Jingdong invested 45 million yuan in Linglong Technology, which accounted for 45% of the shares. According to public statistics, the cumulative sales volume of Lou speaker and its cooperating products has exceeded one million units this year. But more than one smart speaker practitioner admitted to the top floor view that there is water in this figure. "It is possible that hundreds of thousands of units will not come." To know that Jingdong can control the first traffic entrance in the area of ​​home appliances 3C, then other small players can imagine.

What is the essence of smart speaker competition?

In discussing the essence of smart speaker competition, we must return to the previous question. What is the logic behind the commonalities of giants?

First of all, what platform-based companies want to do is undoubtedly a platform property. At present, it seems that the big players of smart speakers are drawing public opinion towards the entrance to seize smart homes. From this perspective, the real logic of giants lies in early layout and completion. For data harvesting, data entry is the key to future core competition for voice human-computer interaction and entrance to the Internet of Things. Large enough samples are needed to provide deep learning ground for voice interaction.

Secondly, through the collection of data through such a pilot product, and thus tapping into the deepening scene of smart homes, as mentioned above, these head players have a commonality in the cloud computing business, and the future Internet of things industry Must be based on big data and cloud computing, and another logic of its introduction of smart speakers is to test and simulate the basic layout and environment of the Internet of Things cloud computing field.

Especially in the era of the Internet of Things, cloud computing is undoubtedly an important support. In order to truly realize all things, in addition to voice human-computer interaction, it is more important that every object in the future may have its own identification mark, with the increasing number of devices. The data generated during the operation of the equipment grows geometrically, forming huge amounts of data. At the same time, these Xu Ju need to transfer to the back-end system for logic processing. Different levels of data and all types of industry data require powerful systems. Backing support can only be achieved through cloud computing.

So looking at both of them, the battle for smart speakers is in fact a struggle for the giants' Internet of Things, and the contention at the entrance to the Internet of Things is just a more ambitious goal. Most of the runners just made a look that was fun. Toys only.

In general, intelligent speakers are undoubtedly ushering in a new window, but for most players, their purpose is to occupy a pit at a key node, just to catch up with the hot investment behavior, and the so-called competition for Internet of Things entrance, intelligent Home control still does not jump out of the category of smart routers and smart cameras, but it just finds an excuse to convince himself of his blind layout.

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