Most of the smart speakers launched on the market, including millet, and the upcoming Apple smart speakers, are the market response to catch up with the trend of smart home. Just the Internet streaming media playback plus voice control and traditional speakers combined, many products experience is not ideal, the function is also limited, so far intelligent control and voice control technology change is not mature enough, the impact of smart speakers and smart home is not the creativity and the idea is not good enough, but the technology is not mature enough and the standard of each supplier is not unified.
Today, the release of Apple's HomePod speaker means that the smart speaker battle has been fought between the Silicon Valley giants.
Google launched Google Home a long time ago, Microsoft has announced a partnership with Harman Kardon to integrate the Cortana smart assistant into smart speakers, and Facebook announced last year that it was acquiring immersive sound company TwoBigEar. now Apple has joined the fray.
So many giants can not sit still, from the current Amazon Echo speaker voice assistant Alexa its intelligent performance has Google Assistant, Cortana and Siri left behind.
Data shows that Amazon's Echo sales are about to exceed 10 million units. That is to say, the smart speaker has currently been verified by Amazon, it may be an extremely important entrance to the smart home.
Despite the fact that it is an extremely important entrance to the future smart home. But why is currently in the country, the smart speaker industry is slow to make much noise?
Speakers are too niche a hardware category: giants are not particularly interested
Of course, there are a lot of domestic smart speaker manufacturers, but at present the general state of lukewarm.
Currently in the domestic smart speaker manufacturers, most are hardware manufacturers + Internet giant investment model. Among them, including Dingtone intelligent speaker series is Jingdong and KDDI cooperation, strollers series of intelligent cloud speakers is cooperation with Ali Intelligence, Sonos home smart speaker is cooperation with Tencent e-commerce.
This is very different from the foreign is the Internet giant dominated model, in the domestic giant, the speaker is a too niche hardware category, also means that the domestic Internet giants are not particularly attention to this field.
The overall literacy of users in the music market is not high: the majority of users do not like smart speakers
On the one hand, the reason lies in the fact that the market for smart speaker users is not up. The overall musical literacy and musical art accumulation of domestic users is not high.
In the country, it can be clearly felt that a trend is that there is less and less good music, and there are fewer and fewer music listeners with the pursuit of music. One of the flip sides of this is the constant popularity of square dance music and various sacred songs. Some music critics in the industry have said that the music is too hot, indicating that Chinese people are too uninterested in listening to music, and that the widespread dissemination of all kinds of vulgar and cheap art can't be said to be the responsibility of the artists, but that the lack of artistic precipitation and discernment of the audience group is the root of the problem.
If the overall quality of the domestic music audience is not too high, it may be difficult to ignite the market for such products as smart speakers.
In the country, even if the music has a certain hobby and interest in the audience, most of them are listening to songs with cell phones. In foreign countries, the music market is very large, the proportion of users who love music and the pursuit of music groups is relatively higher. In the domestic smart speaker products are not hot, one of the reasons should be with the user group for the smart speaker this product attribute is not cold has an important relationship.
Middle class families in the west and middle class have different lifestyles, cultures and levels of economic development
As a new way of human-computer interaction in the era of the Internet of Things, the smart speaker with voice interaction at its core is actually more representative of the family as a unit and the middle class as a way of life, and in the current situation, the sales of Amazon's echo will soon break through 10 million. echo is a family-based unit. The 10 million families covered by the crowd in 30 million to 4,000 American families, has reached one-tenth of the total population of the United States, Echo is rapidly from the early users of the niche circle into the family-based units of the mass market.
The reason why it is a middle-class lifestyle lies in the music culture and market environment it represents behind it. A data organization shows that this year, more than 35 million Americans communicate with these smart speakers at least 1 time a month, this number is 1 times more than in 2016. Behind the scenes, there are reasons for the market environment, home culture and the level of economic development.
Smart home life necessarily requires a certain level of economic support.
Taking Echo as an example, its mode is voice-activated mode, focusing on long-distance voice control, in the booking of fast food, hailing service, alarm clock and timing, weather forecast, traffic condition query and other control of smart home equipments, voice service Alexa allows you to walk around the room at any position to speak, Echo can hear and then perform the corresponding tasks, such as turning on the lights, turn on the TV and so on.
There are nearly 30 smart hardware products controlled by echo. This model determines that users who buy echo smart speaker products to use this portal to control these homes, which means that the potential users of the product to a certain taste of life and home and the economic level of the family's life will not be low.
In China, the family as a unit and have a certain taste for life and economic level of the middle class has not become the mainstream, and even if there is, the current general did not cultivate this way of life.
The gap between AI voice interaction capability, hardware and software
On the other hand, judging from the model of the Silicon Valley giants, the smart speaker relies on three core competencies: AI-driven intelligent voice interaction, content services, and rich third-party applications.
The core is AI capability.
In foreign giants, AI voice assistant is basically standard. Amazon Echo's voice service assistant is Alexa, and Microsoft has announced cooperation with Harman Kardon to integrate the Cortana intelligent assistant into the smart speaker. The current Apple HomePod speaker, also relies on Siri to voice control. Google Home behind the Google Assistant.
But in the domestic smart speaker market, there is not yet a good AI intelligent voice assistant products can be mounted on the smart speaker to realize the combination of hardware and software, and have a relatively good voice
No matter whether it's an AI intelligent voice assistant product
Both Amazon's ECho and Apple's Siri can be further tuned to allow the voice assistant to access more third-party services. But the domestic Internet giants do smart speakers due to the lack of AI voice assistant in this ring, which makes it difficult to expand third-party voice service capabilities by constantly optimizing voice interaction. For example, Dingtone smart speaker of Jingdong Intelligence, equipped with the voice technology of KU Xunfei, which leads to the integration of hardware and software at the level of the future platform ecological control level is missing a core ability.
It can be known that in the current smart speaker war, the major giants to push is also the respective AI intelligent voice assistant. Because of the existence of AI, the current smart speaker has also exceeded the scope of the definition of the speaker, and at the level of voice device technology, including noise cancellation, speech recognition, and semantic recognition. And relying on the voice control of audio products, the integration of intelligent voice technology of intelligent recognition and interaction links of deep learning, based on deep learning in voice recognition and semantic understanding continues to evolve.
And lies in the level of development on the AI intelligent voice assistant, the country is temporarily in a backward state. And for smart home such products, the core is dependent on voice voice control, behind the intelligent recognition capabilities of artificial intelligence and deep learning capabilities.
Domestic KU Xunfei, Spectrum and other companies are manufacturers with voice recognition capabilities, but at present, the domestic smart speaker manufacturers do not have the advantage of artificial intelligence platform can form a platform aggregation and the ability to combine hardware and software.
In foreign countries, Google Assistant united more than 70 smart home manufacturers *** with the cooperation including washing machines, refrigerators and other products, and Amazon is actually based on voice-controlled software Alexa has built an open platform based on voice products, earlier the global consumer electronics show (CES) show organizers Consumer Technology Association (CTA) Chief economist Shawn DuBravac had said, "There are now about 1,500 products equipped with Amazon's Alexa voice assistant."
Smart speakers rely on technology to drive business model innovation, domestic focus on resource integration and sales model innovation
Domestic manufacturers are more focused on content resource integration, sales channels and other "business model" innovation, rather than creating a business model through technological breakthroughs.
Domestic hardware manufacturers are good at cost-effective play, often stretched to the limit in R & D investment. Internet players at the beginning of the big players and want to become the controller of the smart home ecosystem, hardware and software hasty integration of the patchwork is difficult to have a good integrated experience.
Currently, the Internet giants currently smart speaker products as a trial and error type of investment projects, and did not mention the height of the strategic products to give enough attention, so the platform investment + hardware manufacturers production model out of the product is very difficult to emerge as a hit.
In the country, almost all smart home products are dependent on the phone to operate and control, the name is ecological connection, but from the experience, many smart home products not only appear to be chicken ribs and redundant, the phone is reduced to a home remote control, which for the user, but a burden, and outside the cell phone, if you want to manipulate through voice interaction, the current point of view, the domestic manufacturers are still The company's newest product is a new product, which will be launched in the next few months.
Currently domestic capital for artificial intelligence entrepreneurship and project attention is high, but artificial intelligence technology must be landed in the actual scene and products. From the future trend, Apple, Amazon, Google and other giants vigorously promote their own smart speakers and even the ecological layout of home products will bring dividends to the domestic hardware industry chain and software developers.
For domestic Internet giants, smart speakers this wind mouth, it is time to consider chasing.