Image source: Visual China
Ape tutoring, which has been silent for nearly two years, has landed new actions in the field of intelligent hardware, and launched the Little Ape Learning and Training Machine on May 30, which is aimed at primary and secondary school students across the country, focusing on the integration of learning and training, and promoting learning with practice.
Although Ape Tutoring has also low-debugged a number of hardware products before, it is the first time that it has officially entered the smart hardware market with such a high profile. Ape Tutoring has also become the last company in the current market where K12 education and training giants chose intelligent hardware as the transformation path.
During the three years of the epidemic, schools, parents and students have been forced to accept online learning, and learning, practice, and exams on smart devices have also become a scene that has been accepted and valued.
When BBK, Xiwo, Shulang, these traditional veteran learning machine players are "fighting" in the market competition, homework gang, NetEase Youdao, Xueersi and other giants in the education and training industry have launched their own learning machine products and entered the war with the advantage of teaching resources.
A new battlefield focused on "closed"
With smartphones and smart tablets fully popularized, smart learning machines have opened up a new battlefield.
According to the "2022 China Education Intelligent Hardware Industry Report", the growth potential of the intelligent education hardware track is huge, and the market size is expected to exceed 100 billion yuan in 2024, with a compound annual growth rate of 26%.
In addition, the "2021-2026 Learning Machine Industry Venture Capital Situation and Investment and Financing Strategy Guidelines Report" released by the China Research Institute of Industry shows that China's learning machine market will grow steadily at an annual growth rate of 15% from 2021 to 2025, and is expected to reach 8.75 million units by 2025, doubling from 2020.
The reason why the learning machine is recognized by the market is mainly due to its "closed nature": the system installed in the learning machine cannot download other games and video apps, trying to create an immersive and distraction-free learning environment for students.
Although computers and tablets can essentially solve most of the learning needs, the learning machine emphasizes more parental control in terms of function, especially refusing the intervention of game products on the market, and has developed many functions related to learning and doing problems, so more parent groups are willing to pay for it.
In fact, education and training companies want to gain a larger market share in the education hardware track, and they face competitors far more than their own industries.
Since 2021, 452 new learning hardware-related enterprises have been added in mainland China. After combing the titanium media APP, it is found that there are three main genres in the current learning machine market:
The first category: traditional learning hardware companies, such as BBK, Yoshulang, etc. These established companies have a history of 20 years, have been deeply engaged offline for many years, and have obvious advantages in sales channels.
The second category: 3C, hardware consumer goods, such as Huawei, Lenovo, Xiaodu, etc.; The biggest feature of these companies is that the hardware supply chain is mature, so the feedback is particularly cost-effective on the market side.
The third category: emerging players in education technology, such as iFLYTEK, New Oriental, Good Future, Homework Gang, etc.
What is the competition in the learning machine market?
In the face of the endless similar products on the market, how to build barriers for products is a problem that every brand is thinking about. They are constantly developing differentiated concepts in an attempt to attract consumers.
Different from the content of education and training companies, hardware manufacturers usually prefer to emphasize parameters, especially the eye protection effect, the main anti-blue light function, pay attention to the color cast, brightness and other display parameters of electronic products, screen size, viewing angle and other display characteristics.
Education and training companies are more willing to start with educational resources and understanding of education.
For example, Ape Tutoring launched the above products, named after the "learning and training machine", focusing on the concept of "three-point learning, seven-point training", trying to open up a so-called new category to avoid the fierce competition and the already fierce learning tablet market. The practice scene of ape tutoring is based on the learning resources and learning data accumulated by its products such as ape question bank, little ape search questions, and little ape oral arithmetic that have been successfully launched on the market.
Wang Xiangdong, head of the ape tutoring tool business, believes that whether a smart hardware is high-quality and outstanding, reflected in the form, resources and concept of three aspects, in the case of hardware configuration has become perfect, parents first pay attention to its built-in learning resources, but its highest threshold is ultimately the understanding of education.
On April 25, a month before Ape Tutoring released hardware, Homework Gang held a new product launch conference for learning machines, announcing that it had become the first shipment volume in the education intelligent hardware industry.
This is the first time that the homework gang has announced market results since it transformed into educational hardware. HomeworkBang's hardware business began in 2016, after HomeworkBang's fault-solving printer was regarded as a successful case of the education company's hardware products.
Compared to the above companies, Homework Gang has a relatively wide range in the field of learning hardware. In 2021, Homework announced a comprehensive transformation of educational hardware. At present, homework hardware has gained 10 million users, and the product categories have covered learning pens, smart desks, learning watches, learning printers, electronic flashcards, wrong question printers, children's eye protection devices and other fields.
The new product of Homework Gang adopts the concept of "the first AI teacher one-to-one learning machine", and the built-in AI teacher of the system will open the one-to-one mode to guide students to develop a one-to-one learning plan based on AI big data. Homework believes that the core advantages of its learning machine are 660 million+ question bank, learning big data, professional teaching and research team, and AI technology.
At the beginning of this year, Good Future also launched its first learning machine in a low-key manner. The company said the move meant they were officially entering the field of learning machines.
Compared with ape tutoring, homework help and NetEase Youdao, Good Future Group's release of learning machines is very low-key. However, Good Future has maintained a very high degree of attention and follow-up speed for the hardware products that its peers are doing. Before the launch of the learning machine, Hao Future also launched hardware products such as a lecture machine featuring the self-learning function of taking photos, a monkey intelligent learning lamp that can be corrected for homework, and a practice book APP.
In the view of Yang Liao, head of intelligent content hardware under Good Future Group, there is no barrier to the hardware itself, and the real barrier is the accumulation of teaching content. The appearance and shape of the hardware can be imitated, but the internal teaching logic such as the system and content of the course content cannot be copied.
Will AI revolutionize learning machines?
If measured by equipment shipments, the current student tablet or learning machine, occupying most of the market share is still traditional hardware manufacturers such as BBK, Youxuepai, and Yoshulang.
However, because the pricing of new products is too high, coupled with the entry of more and more companies implanted with educational resources, traditional companies have lacked price advantages in the competition, resulting in market share gradually being divided.
Education technology new company task, China's learning machine market is still in the early stages, the data and resources accumulated in the APP scene have given them the confidence and confidence to enter the hardware market.
But what exactly should a learning machine bring to students? Many in the industry don't seem to have the answers.
Driven by learning anxiety, parents and students alike expect the learning machine to have everything and carry all their learning needs. This has led to the widespread stacking of content by major brands of learning machines to meet a variety of different kinds of needs.
As a result, the content of the learning machine has become "bloated". Titanium Media APP observed that most learning machines on the market, from poetry and song, astronomy and geography, literacy subjects, and test games, serve people at all stages from 8 months to 18 years old, trying to complete the full coverage of a student's learning life cycle.
People who make hardware products in the teaching and training circle generally believe that how a learning machine can gain insight into the needs of students and improve the efficiency of learning is reflected in three aspects: form, resources and concept. In their view, when the hardware configuration has been difficult to improve significantly in a short period of time, parents first value its built-in learning resources.
However, the principle and content of the current various styles of learning machines are similar. Under the premise of serious product homogenization, price wars have gradually become dominant, and the entire industry lacks real innovation and lacks phenomenal products that dare to define new categories.
With ChatGPT once again focusing on artificial intelligence, AI learning machines seem to be a solution, which is also the main concept of current education and training companies that emphasize learning content, or marketing concepts.
iFLYTEK learning machines, which focus on AI learning, are taking the lead-mover advantage. In January this year, its chairman Liu Qingfeng revealed at an internal annual meeting that in 2022, iFLYTEK's AI learning machine revenue increased by 53%, new stores achieved 100% growth, and offline sales increased by 130% year-on-year. iFLYTEK's advantages lie in speech recognition, text and semantic recognition, and image recognition in educational scenarios.
An industry insider told Titanium Media APP that the challenges faced by the application of AI technology in the field of education mainly include labeling training data, obtaining a large number of comprehensive data, interpreting output results and universality of learning.
Mapped to the AI learning machine, it mainly reflects the following pain points: First, the localization of question bank resources does not match, and the local pertinence is not strong; Second, the judgment of subjective questions is not accurate enough, which may produce misjudgment bias in the case of "multiple solutions to one question"; Third, the requirements for children's self-control ability are high, how to help children develop independent learning ability.
The giants are fighting hotly, but from the perspective of the market, the learning machine seems to have a chill on the sales side.
NetEase Youdao's financial report for the first quarter of this year shows that due to the special macro environment in the first quarter, the smart hardware sector has fluctuated. Net revenue from smart devices was RMB212.7 million (US$31 million), down 16.0% from the same period last year. Affected by this, Youdao's net income in the first quarter fell by 3.1% year-on-year.
This is NetEase, which focuses on the advantages of intelligent learning hardware, and has suffered a rare setback in this field. However, in the conference call after the earnings report, NetEase Youdao CEO Zhou Feng said that the negative impact on NetEase Youdao learning hardware in the first quarter was not representative. He still believes that educational smart hardware has shown resilience in the current macroeconomic environment compared to other consumer electronics. Youdao will also release a new smart hardware product in the third quarter of this year.
(This article was first published in Titanium Media APP, author|Li Chengcheng)