OFweek smart home network intelligence smart speaker of the hot war has been burned from abroad, on July 5, Alibaba Group will release its latest artificial intelligence speaker products in Beijing, formally announced its entry into this area, and before Tencent vice president Liu Chiping also public Said that Tencent's smart speaker products "ear" will be released around August. In addition to the Jingdong “Yao†that had previously entered the market, the smart speaker, this seemingly not new product, once again set off a new wave of competition in the smart home sector.
War flames burned from international to domestic
When it comes to smart speakers, you have to say Amazon. From its official release in November 2014 to more than two years now, the Amazon Echo Smart Speaker has become one of the hottest smart home products on the market since its inception. People can use Echo to control their home appliances and purchase through voice. Commodity, inquiry and consultation.
According to survey data from research firm eMarketer, in the United States, about 36 million users use voice-operated speakers every month, and this number is still expanding. Since the Amazon Echo was released more than two years ago, sales have exceeded $1 billion.
The huge market has attracted the entry of giants.
At the Google I/O conference held on May 17 last year, Google released Google Home and directed Amazon Echo.
On May 9th this year, just one day after Amazon released the Echo Show with a touch screen, Microsoft released the Invoke Smart Speaker jointly built with Harman Kardon at Build Conference. It has built in Cortana, an artificial intelligence assistant developed by Microsoft for many years.
Immediately afterwards, Google updated Google Home and Google Assistant on Google I/O on May 17th. After the new version of Google Home is upgraded through deep learning and other technologies, it now requires only two microphones (Amazon Echo needs seven (microphone arrays) enable accurate positioning of the surrounding speakers; in addition, Google Assistant announced that it has covered more than 100 million devices.
On June 5th, Apple also announced the launch of HomePod, a home smart speaker, which was priced at US$349, although Apple’s senior vice president, Phil, emphasized HomePod’s “music cell†in his speech, but also pointed out its intelligent speech interaction (Siri) function, and HomeKit may play a central role in smart home services. At this point, the competition of international giants around smart speakers (actually voice interactive devices) has been fully launched.
Compared with domestic, the action is much smaller. Although Jingdong, Baidu, Tencent, Xiaomi, Cheetah, and other Internet companies are all deploying smart speakers or similar voice interactions, both products and strategies are still in a very “primary†stage. .
Let's take a look at Jingdong, which has the earliest layout and the largest sales volume. In 2015, Jingdong United University of Science and Technology set up Linglong Technology, and at the annual conference, it launched the “Hey†smart speaker. At the recent CES, LingLung Technology has launched two new products: å®å’šTOP and å®å’š2 generation smart speakers.
According to the publicly reported material, as compared with the previous product, the Top has cut out a large number of pronunciation units to compress the volume as much as possible. The reason is that Linglong Technology hopes to see it as a home helper, not a speaker. Currently, users can use it to remotely control smart TVs, query information embedded in the assistant, and obtain services.
Lenovo also released its own smart speakers. At the Lenovo Innovation & Technology Conference in May this year, Lenovo announced that it will invest 10 billion yuan in the smart home sector to build affordable products for the common people and showcased a “talking†smart speaker on the scene, both in terms of appearance and function. Both tried to live with the local Echo.
More companies are still in the layout and development stage. In February of this year, Baidu purchased a wholly-owned subsidiary, Raven Technology, to develop smart home control, and was directly responsible for the newly appointed Baidu President Lu Qi. In April, Tencent announced the launch of AI voice assistant “Tencent Jingle Bellâ€, which directly targets Amazon.com. Alexa; this same month, went out to ask to announce the withdrawal of the virtual personal assistant, and the intelligent speaker Tichome that will be unveiled in the second half of the year; just recently, the first product of the Orion’s Orion Star AI ecological chain, the Joint Himalayan cooperation The Xiaoya AI speakers released have also been announced, and as far as the author knows, this speaker was introduced a few months later than the pre-release time.
In other words, although almost all players want to be able to become “local Echoâ€, up to now, there is still no mature product that can compete with Amazon Echo.
The market research organization StrategyAnalytics pointed out that in 2016, global shipments of smart speakers will reach 5.9 million units, which will increase 10 times in 2022 and the market value will reach US$5.5 billion. Gartner predicts that by 2018, 30% of human-computer interactions will be completed through natural language. Perhaps next year will be the decisive year for the development of smart speakers.
What are the hands of the Big Three?
If the history of the development of Amazon Echo in the beginning of the release is re-discovered, technology, scenario applications, and user data are the main barriers to its development.
First of all, at the beginning of the Echo release, Amazon did not overemphasize the so-called "smart speaker" concept, but only when it was a product of a speaker upgrade. Amazon executives including Bezos included this far-end speech recognition. The functional amps only took a very cautious expectation: they just hoped that the new experience provided by Echo would make users more willing to shop on the Amazon e-commerce site.
After seeing the market performing well, Amazon raised Echo to the height of the company's strategic business, and at this time announced the opening of Alexa. In the process, even access to many third parties was personally handled by Amazon. Echo also entered the mass market from the niche circle of early users, which not only thanks to Alexa's voice recognition technology advantage, but also allows more third-party applications to bring rich applications and value to users. In this process, The continuous accumulation of user data makes Echo more and more useful.
However, the essence behind the debate in the smart speaker is the AI ​​dispute. The frequency of data and calling has a very important role in the "evolution" of an AI product. From this point of view, the Echo model is limited, although Echo products have sold tens of millions of units, and Amazon Alexa itself is becoming an open platform, but it is based on Amazon's own ecology.
At the recent Google I/O conference, Google Assistant announced that its coverage equipment has exceeded 100 million units. This figure will also increase dramatically with more hardware platforms. Even more noteworthy is that Google has begun to deeply apply its latest AI technology to Google Home. At the same time, Google Assistant, which also integrates voice and image processing capabilities, is constantly evolving and “feeding†data. This data comes not only from Google user platform data, but also from various mobile phones, air conditioners, and refrigerators that access Google Assistant. .
Latecomers Apple is the main "sound quality." Apple first emphasized that HomePod is a speaker with superior sound quality that can satisfy your musical pleasure. In fact, it is an intelligent voice assistant. In terms of pricing, Apple also distinguishes it from other products.
This actually gave domestic players who are collectively "replicating" smart speakers a wake-up call: Smart speakers should not only be smart, its basic "sound" function - the part of sound quality is also crucial.
Where are the gaps between domestic adventurers?
Echo and Alexa, the voice assistant behind it, let Amazon fly into the sky, and the idea of ​​smart speakers carrying interactive entrances to smart homes has been recognized. In particular, the four giants in the field, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft, have already gathered. Uniformly identified the correct direction of the road.
Under such circumstances, how can large and small domestic companies not flock and hope to become the "Chinese Echo and Home Pod", occupying a place in the next technological geography - the best entry point for artificial intelligence.
However, from the current market, there are only a few smart speaker products, there are still many areas that need improvement, such as the speaker sound quality is too general, the voice assistant is very strenuous and so on. However, the Chinese market, which was not taken into account by international giants such as Amazon and Apple, did leave room for domestic players.
To be honest, in fact, it is not necessarily a speaker, but rather the ecological chain behind the small speakers is more attractive to the giants to get together in this area. After all, voice assistant is one of the most frequently used applications in the field of smart home. Smart voice can be combined with TVs, stereos, air conditioners, curtains, lamps, toys and other home devices and smart home control hub systems to achieve an entrance control all functions through voice interaction. This is also the most convenient interactive way in the artificial intelligence era. one.
At the same time, the promotion of big data and artificial intelligence technologies, the reduction of key technologies and component costs, and the establishment of industry alliance standardization agreements have brought about a rapid increase in the scale of the smart home market. In the future, it may not necessarily be the form of a smart speaker. It may also be a mobile phone voice assistant, a smart TV, a smart air conditioner, or any other device. The ultimate essence is still the user, data, and services.
Compared with the big data support behind the smart speakers owned by Apple, Amazon, Google and even Microsoft, companies involved in the field of smart speakers in China are basically not in this area have a high voice. Using an easy-to-understand word in the industry to describe the differentiation of smart speaker products at home and abroad is: “Foreign giants have landed smart speakers products because they are considered the best entrance for many services and user data. Domestic companies selling speakers are selling speakers. There is no real service. Most of them are hot spots to be sold as new digital devices other than mobile phones."
Although this kind of comment may not be comprehensive, it is an indisputable fact that domestic companies do not have the status quo of cloud computing + big data service support. Even domestic giants such as Baidu who have exerted frantic intelligence in arranging artificial intelligence may not be able to use the ecological chain. There are basic operating conditions, and Ali and Tencent, Jingdong, etc. have taken a leading role in this area, more like finding a way to provide value-added and incremental services for their core business lines.
It is reported that in Alibaba’s upcoming smart speakers, users can make voice purchases on Taobao and Tmall by issuing corresponding instructions. The built-in voice assistant will display the natural language processing results of Alibaba's technical team for the first time. What is claimed in the public information is that the model's answer rate established by the smart speaker in text classification and intelligent question and answer is currently the highest level in the industry, and even slightly higher than that of Microsoft and IBM, but can it still be a Chinese language department? It's a little bit of expectation to achieve accurate recognition. Tencent executive director Liu Chiping also publicly stated that Tencent is developing a smart speaker “ear†or released around August, but Tencent’s cloud and speech recognition technology can provide transcendental technical support for this smart speaker. know.
Before this, foreign giants could not present the technical support for Chinese phonetic semantics perfectly, leaving a huge market gap in China, which gave domestic manufacturers the best opportunity. However, judging from the information judging by all parties at present, even domestic companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, and JD.com will most likely provide products for their products and work scenarios, and whether they can take their own ecological links. Going to a broader public service is a question.
While Alibaba, Tencent, and Jingdong have all taken this step cautiously, other speculators like the wearables sector who are hoping to get a slice of the hot spot, have no technical, software, data, or service support. Hardware and brand-named "one-and-for-all, one-and-one" games are definitely not suitable for this new field. Although smart speakers are already on their factory's assembly line, they can actually rest for a while, perhaps from a There is no need to be born at the beginning.
Where are the gaps between domestic adventurers?
Echo and Alexa, the voice assistant behind it, let Amazon fly into the sky, and the idea of ​​smart speakers carrying interactive entrances to smart homes has been recognized. In particular, the four giants in the field, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft, have already gathered. Uniformly identified the correct direction of the road.
Under such circumstances, how can large and small domestic companies not flock and hope to become "Chinese Echo and Home Pod", and occupy a place in the next technological enthusiasm - the best entry point for artificial intelligence.
However, from the current market, there are only a few smart speaker products, there are still many areas that need improvement, such as the speaker sound quality is too general, the voice assistant is very strenuous and so on. However, the Chinese market, which was not taken into account by international giants such as Amazon and Apple, did leave room for domestic players.
To be honest, in fact, it is not necessarily a speaker, but rather the ecological chain behind the small speakers is more attractive to the giants to get together in this area. After all, voice assistant is one of the most frequently used applications in the field of smart home. Smart voice can be combined with TVs, stereos, air conditioners, curtains, lamps, toys and other home devices and smart home control hub systems to achieve an entrance control all functions through voice interaction. This is also the most convenient interactive way in the artificial intelligence era. one.
At the same time, the promotion of big data and artificial intelligence technologies, the reduction of key technologies and component costs, and the establishment of industry alliance standardization agreements have brought about a rapid increase in the scale of the smart home market. In the future, it may not necessarily be the form of a smart speaker. It may also be a mobile phone voice assistant, a smart TV, a smart air conditioner, or any other device. The ultimate essence is still the user, data, and services.
Compared with the big data support behind the smart speakers owned by Apple, Amazon, Google and even Microsoft, companies involved in the field of smart speakers in China are basically not in this area have a high voice. Using an easy-to-understand word in the industry to describe the differentiation of smart speaker products at home and abroad is: “Foreign giants have landed smart speakers products because they are considered the best entrance for many services and user data. Domestic companies selling speakers are selling speakers. There is no real service. Most of them are hot spots to be sold as new digital devices other than mobile phones."
Although this kind of comment may not be comprehensive, it is an indisputable fact that domestic companies do not have the status quo of cloud computing + big data service support. Even domestic giants such as Baidu who have exerted frantic intelligence in arranging artificial intelligence may not be able to use the ecological chain. There are basic operating conditions, and Ali and Tencent, Jingdong, etc. have taken a leading role in this area, more like finding a way to provide value-added and incremental services for their core business lines.
It is reported that in Alibaba’s upcoming smart speakers, users can make voice purchases on Taobao and Tmall by issuing corresponding instructions. The built-in voice assistant will display the natural language processing results of Alibaba's technical team for the first time. What is claimed in the public information is that the model's answer rate established by the smart speaker in text classification and intelligent question and answer is currently the highest level in the industry, and even slightly higher than that of Microsoft and IBM, but can it still be a Chinese language department? It's a little bit of expectation to achieve accurate recognition. Tencent executive director Liu Chiping also publicly stated that Tencent is developing a smart speaker “ear†or released around August, but Tencent’s cloud and speech recognition technology can provide transcendental technical support for this smart speaker. know.
Before this, foreign giants could not present the technical support for Chinese phonetic semantics perfectly, leaving a huge market gap in China, which gave domestic manufacturers the best opportunity. However, judging from the information judging by all parties at present, even domestic companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, and JD.com will most likely provide products for their products and work scenarios, and whether they can take their own ecological links. Going to a broader public service is a question.
While Alibaba, Tencent, and Jingdong have all taken this step cautiously, other speculators like the wearables sector who are hoping to get a slice of the hot spot, have no technical, software, data, or service support. Hardware and brand-named "one-and-for-all, one-and-one" games are definitely not suitable for this new field. Although smart speakers are already on their factory's assembly line, they can actually rest for a while, perhaps from a There is no need to be born at the beginning.
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