From last year's "Black Five" Amazon Echo price cuts began, the global smart speaker set off a wave of price cuts. May 9, 199 yuan price of Ali new smart speaker sugar reported 89 yuan starting price discount, May 10 On the day, the price of the JD.com mini2 starting at 299 was only 79 yuan. Prior to March, Xiaomi's mini speaker mini was launched to hit the market at a price of 169 yuan. During the rice season, the price was adjusted to 99 yuan.
It is not difficult to find that when smart speakers do not produce revolutionary improvements in functionality, manufacturers begin to use low prices to expand the market.
Tian Zhihong, an analyst at Jibang Tuobei Industrial Research Institute, analyzed with a 21st Century Business Herald reporter that at present, there are more than 10 brands for consumers to choose from in China, but the popularity of smart homes in China is not high, and smart speakers can be connected. There are not many products. In order to let their ecosystem into smart homes, brands want to enter the market through low prices. He also said that although brands want to put their ecosystem into the smart home market, most The manufacturer's ecosystem is not complete, some lack hardware support, and some lack software application support. Therefore, the use of low-cost products to attract consumers first, consumers' expectations for the product will not be too high, to a certain extent, This industry is an overdraft.
Box of melee
According to the data of the third-party organization Ovum, there are more than 30 different brands of smart speakers equipped with Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, or both, most of which come from mature audio brands.
The smart speaker market in China has also gathered players from all walks of life. Specifically, it can be divided into four camps: Software platform vendors, including Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, Jingdong, Cheetah, etc.; smart hardware manufacturers, typical of Xiaomi. Large-scale home appliance manufacturers, with Haier as the typical; others have Rokid, go out to ask, Himalayan and other entrepreneurial enterprises.
Although there are many players, they are quite a distance from the explosives. Currently, these products basically use Amazon Echo as the object of simulation, and combine their own content advantages. However, the core of Echo is built with Alexa. The basic platform of hardware and software ecology is very difficult to imitate. In addition, Echo's most commonly used scenes in the United States include the source of information on the bedside and kitchen control. However, at home, both scenarios are not in line with national conditions. Connectable home smart devices are not rich enough to form just need.
While domestic players are struggling with content barriers, technical capabilities, the number of connected devices, and the influence of developers, the competition based on smart speakers has also reached the next stage - robbed control of the global voice interactive market, including Develop industry standards, the layout of massive patents, the opening of audio data sets and the establishment of various industrial ecological alliances.
Song Yufeng, founder and CEO of Xiaoyu, made the judgment that the smart speaker industry in 2018 is bound to have a fierce battle. In March of this year, Xiao Yu and Baidu jointly released a small-screen intelligent speaker with a price of 599 yuan, and the small fish at home The product 'Split Fish' is priced at 1000-3000 yuan stalls.
An industry source pointed out to 21st Century Business Herald reporter that the reason why manufacturers of smart speakers are heavily subsidized and take a quick step is to gather more data and understand user needs, so that the product can quickly iterate. When the sales volume is large enough, smart speakers Products can attract enough developers to build their own hardware and software integration platform. Ali is so, Amazon was also the first time.
Slowing down
Jibang data shows that in 2017, global smart speaker shipments totaled 27.6 million units. It is estimated that 52 million units will be shipped in 2018, with a growth rate of 88.4%, but the subsequent growth rate will gradually slow down.
Tian Zhihong analyzed that there are two reasons for the declining growth rate. One is that the high growth rate in 2017 has brought up the cardinal number; the other reason is that most household electrical appliances have built-in voice assistants, living rooms, kitchens, etc. in the future. Smart speakers are no longer needed in public spaces at home, and smart speakers will be fragmented into personal space, reducing demand.
According to the national retail monitoring data released by the market analysis agency GfK, China’s smart speaker market retail sales reached 1.65 million units in 2017. Among them, in November last year, Ali subsidized the Tmall Genie, breaking the million sales at 99 yuan, pushing up The total market.
For domestic manufacturers, the strategy of pursuing a price-led education market is effective in the short term, but the sales generated by this strategy will not be able to drive the future development of the industry. Instead, it will overdraw user expectations. From the current point of view, consumers Universal feedback smart speaker far field recognition difference, high error wake-up rate, continuous dialogue function is unstable, semantic understanding ability is poor and sound quality is not good, so many people gave up after the fresh period passed.
Tian Zhihong also stated that from the recent listing of the 叮咚Mini 2, it could be found that even if the product’s initial purchase price reached 79 yuan, it did not appear to be a hard-to-find situation. This means that the demand brought by the manufacturer’s price reduction is There are limits. He pointed out that there are three main factors that need to increase the volume of smart speaker shipments. Prices, artificial intelligence and ecosystems, prices in the Chinese market are already low enough. Next, various brand manufacturers are in artificial intelligence. The development of the voice assistant and the eco-sphere field has determined who can win in this wave of competition.
However, Rován de Renesse, head of consumer technology research at Ovum, previously expressed another point of view. He believes that the success of smart speakers is short-lived. Sales of smart speakers in the US and UK markets are expected to decline from 2020, and the Chinese market will From the beginning of 2021.
He compared the imminent market situation of smart speakers to the situation that iPad sales began to decline after four years of launch at the end of 2014. Smart speakers also follow the same development path and are becoming cheaper. Amazon Echo Dot and Google Home Mini Last year's sale on the US Black Friday was less than $30. The combination of low prices and popularity meant that consumer demand was soon met, and many of them had no plans to change equipment for a long time.
Ovum even predicts that Amazon and Google may stop manufacturing smart speakers by 2020. Voice AI will continue to play an important role in smart homes, but besides the speakers, there will be many other forms.