I. General overview: the history of the Echo and three-dimensional interpretation
The first Echo speaker was released in November 2014 Since then, Echo has been acting as a benchmark and leader in the industry.
Statistically, the Echo has been amazing.
At the sales level, the Echo shipped 2.5 million units annually in '15, which surged to 5.2 million in 2016. (Source: CIRP)
Skill level, Amazon Skill Platform reached 1,000 in June '16 and 15,000 in June '17 since opening to the public in June '15.(Source: Bi Intelligence)
Competitive level, Google announced to the public in May '16, shipped in November, and in Q4 quarter grabbing 10% of the overall smart speaker market, while Amazon remains the dominant player with 88%. (Source: Strategy Analytics)
Annual, macro-level data is often not specific enough. By grabbing the purchase reviews of two major websites, Amazon and Bestbuy, as reference indicators. We are able to break down the macro data to each month and deduce the global business journey as follows. (Q4 data to verify, Amazon and Google's total number of reviews share and share share of roughly in line)
3 years, the industry is in the wind, Amazon's strategy seems to be disorganized. But we draw on the silk, can press three-dimensional perspective, to re-look at this wonderful business war. Standing in a one-dimensional perspective, is the struggle of the Echo smart speaker; two-dimensional perspective, is Amazon built Echo +, multi-product line layout; three-dimensional perspective, Alexa as a carrier, multi-industry device comprehensive coverage.
One-dimensional perspective: the smart speaker's single point of breakthrough, Echo's three major wars
Speaker is the vanguard of Amazon's invasion of the voice device industry. From the end of 2014 to now. Amazon in the speaker category, has launched three big commercial battles. The first battle is the battle of invasion, from June 15 Echo officially on sale, to the end of 16, lasted a year and a half, Echo speakers will be the original networking speaker industry dominant sonos pick off on the ground. The second battle is the battle of Google Home out of the world. google home was released in october 2016, and officially went on sale on november 4, posing a threat to amazon that can't be underestimated. The third battle is the power of Google and Amazon counterattack. Google released a major update to Google home at the I/O conference in May 17, and sales increased significantly the following month; Amazon took July 15 Membership Day as the breaking point, and carried out an unprecedented low price counterattack.
Two-dimensional perspective: Echo's multi-product line layout
Amazon Echo's smart speaker market share reached a peak of 88% in 2016, and it was clearly untenable. The entry of Google, Apple and other giants will surely cut its share to varying degrees. Since Echo's single-line battlefield is bound to meet the erosion of the giants. Then we should utilize the synergy of Echo's multiple product lines to seek a higher dimension of competitiveness. In terms of the expansion of the Echo product line, the product evolution can basically follow two major routes.
One is along the route of acoustics, in order to be in the price and sound quality product matrix, the full range of coverage; the other is along the visual route, with Echo Look as a breakthrough, groping forward.
Three-dimensional perspective: Alexa's all-device war
From the end of 2014 to now, the smart speaker represented by Echo has been the focus of research and discussion. But when we are discussing it, what are we really discussing, is it the speaker category, is it the Echo series of smart devices? Neither. It's the Alexa voice platform behind it. Amazon's low-priced counterattack on Google Home in July was ostensibly a battle for share in the speaker category, with the deeper purpose of allowing Alexa-equipped devices to reach users' homes as early as possible. In this regard, Amazon's initiatives this year are particularly swift and aggressive.
Two, Echo speakers of the three battles: pick off Sonos, finally become the hegemony (2014.11-2016.12)
If you stand at the end of 2014, how will you push this one of the speakers to the public?14 years so far, the development of the Echo's journey is remarkable. Amazon has taken a three-step approach to promoting the Echo by anchoring, then bursting in and establishing roots.
1, first anchored: a speaker, talking speaker (2014.11-2015.5)
Amazon's initial publicity, focusing on Echo's voice function, voice-controlled music, encyclopedic questions, check the weather, set an alarm clock ......Echo's intelligence to the public at the time left a deep Impression, but people's basic understanding of it, but also the word written on Amazon's official website: Speaker.Echo is a speaker, a speaker that talks.
It's a speaker above everything else.-- Reviewed by leading tech site The Verge
On top of the speaker, people come to think of it as smart. The public tends to have a lot of concerns when it comes to something new like this. "It looks ugly," "What's the point of having it when you have siri," "Privacy is going to be compromised," "alexa, tell me when Amazon is going to When to win"......
Those kinds of diatribes weren't uncommon at the time. After all, the Echo's the first to eat. But Amazon's strategy was also very aggressive: the Echo was priced at $199, and Prime members who initially received an invitation could buy it for $99. $199 was the price of the mid-range to high-end bluetooth speaker, the Sonos play 1, which was the benchmark that the Echo was initially aiming for in the industry.
Based on the speaker itself, with the Sonos 1 as the benchmark, and with half-price preorders, Echo attracted a large number of tasters in the early days, lighting a fire under the stars.
If the sound quality is on par with my Sonos 1, then $99 would be a bargain.
Getting tasters at a low price is a great strategy. But the real difficulty ahead lies in selling it to early adopters at its original price of nearly $200. Amazon did three big things at the product level in the six months leading up to the official launch.
One is to access the mainstream music platform Pandora, before only play Amazon music music, other platforms music need to use Bluetooth to connect to the speaker to play, this feature is a great enhancement to the experience of music playback;
The second is the development of the home class of the skills, you can connect to Phillip hues and other smart appliances, which makes a lot of home control is greatly addicted. At the same time opened up the Alexa skills platform, set up a bonus to encourage developers to develop skills applications.
Third is the support of ifttt, through ifttt, Echo can be connected to google calendar, Evernote, to do list and other massive applications, in the personal life of the scene to shine.
In June 2015, Amazon also lowered the pricing of the Echo to $179, officially selling it across the U.S., kicking off a formal challenge to industry big brother Sonos!
2. Re-advancement: locking users, pushing to the masses (2015.6-2015.12)
Besides tech enthusiasts, who else would be early adopters?
When it comes to early adopters, most people think of tech hipsters, who like to experience tech products first, and who are opinion leaders who drive mass consumption. They are the opinion leaders who drive mass consumption. This group is certainly the early adopters of the Echo, but not all of them. Through the collection of Amazon development and purchase of ehco one month after the purchase of user reviews, we restore the following five major categories of seed users and a category of lost users.
By analyzing the purchase reviews of the initial users, we can draw the following four conclusions:
Technology hipsters, music enthusiasts, people with disabilities, and office professionals are the typical seed users of the initial Echo, and have a high opinion of the product. As the product is updated and commercialized, it eventually extrapolates to a wider range of average households.
Complaints about sound quality were relatively few. The general opinion is that the sound quality is not as good as bose or sonos, but it's not bad.
There weren't many skills in this period, but the basic voice control, ask, alarm, is still accepted by everyone's favorites.
The troll crowd is almost always complaining about the smart answers being stupid and not answering as well as siri, and this segment will gradually lose people in the future.
3, set up roots: three-way front, straight to the hegemony (2016.1-2016.12)
In the whole of 2015, Amazon a **** sold 2.5 million Echo devices. And that figure, in 2016, reached a staggering 5.2 million.
According to data released by Strategy Analytics, Amazon managed to overtake Sonos as the number one dominant player in the connected speaker market in 2016. Meanwhile, the overall industry shipments were boosted by Amazon Echo by 62% compared to 2015.
From its debut in 2015 to its dominance in 2016, what Amazon did. Achieved a 2x increase in Echo shipments?
The question, at its core, lies in two things: the rapid expansion of skills and the low price of the Dot drive.
In order to fully analyze this question, we divided the key factors into three parts: software layer, hardware layer, and business layer. By month, each is distributed as follows.
Including software skills, from 135 at the beginning of the year, soared to nearly 7,000 at the end of the year. It has brought continuous expectation and fulfillment to users in terms of smart home, music and video, and interactive entertainment.
On the hardware and commercial level, the first half of the year saw the release of the Dot Generation 1 (89$) and the portable Tap (129$). The Dot 1 was said to be sold out within 3 months. Google launched Google home in the second half of the year, and Amazon also scrambled to launch Dot 2 generation, more compact, lower price (49 $). Dot in the commercial kill is huge, it not only rely on the low price to cover the mass market, but also with high-end speakers and reached a settlement *** survival. Dot can be connected to high-quality Sonos Play, so that the Dot to accept the command, the Sonos play music. Sonos Play to play music.
The soaring growth of skills and Dot's low-priced push achieved Amazon's dominance of the connected speaker market in 2016.
From '14 to '16 for 2 years, Amazon and Sonos battled for supremacy and managed to win. But this market is not at peace. Constantly exploding voice device market, Google is also preparing. 16 years later Google Home came out of nowhere, in just one quarter of Q4, broke the game and grabbed 10% of the smart speaker market share. Google has seen the needs of the people, but also insight into the weakness of Amazon.