Source | Tech Planet
Text | He Xuyang
Image source | Figureworm Creative
The smart speaker, which has been silent for a long time, has once again ignited new hope after the emergence of this year's big model.
On February 9, Xiaodu announced that it would integrate the words of Wen Xin to create an AI model "Xiaodu Lingji" for smart device scenarios, and apply it to all Xiaodu products.
On April 11, Tmall Genie announced that it would combine Alibaba Tongyi Qianwen, Alibaba Group CEO Daniel Zhang revealed that in the future, Tmall Genie hopes to become a "personalized intelligent assistant", such as "Bird Bird Split Bird" with the voice and personality characteristics of stand-up comedian Bird Bird.
"It's like a dream, waking up is still very moved", smart speakers since the beginning of their birth, has been carrying the vision of becoming the next generation of Internet entrance, now with the blessing of self-developed large models, Xiaodu and Tmall Genie natural language understanding, content generation and other capabilities will be greatly improved. What was once a vision seems to become a reality.
It's just that when Xiao Du and Tmall Genie, who had successfully snatched the run, looked around, they found that there were already few people around. Looking back at the development of smart speakers, giants have always had an innate advantage in the competition. Now Xiaodu and Tmall Genie can still stand, that is, relying on the original subsidy war to stabilize their footing, kill the siege, and because of the resources of large factories in recent years, they have been able to survive with difficulty.
But more players have fallen in the early fierce price war, and the remnants have not survived several years of winter. On March 31, Dingdong smart speakers, which once occupied the domestic smart speaker market with a 65% share, announced that it would stop serving and silently fell on the eve of the outbreak of ChatGPT.
The surviving Xiaodu and Tmall Genie, after carrying large models, still have to face many challenges such as product usability and ecological construction, and it is still unknown whether they can have the last laugh.
"Hundred Box War" closed for three years
Few people remember that smart speakers at that time, like ChatGPT at this time, were also synonymous with trends a few years ago.
The boom of smart speakers first came from across the ocean. In November 2014, Amazon launched its first smart speaker "Echo", which can help users play music, news, online shopping, and ride calls. Because of the attributes of population intelligence given to traditional speakers, the birth of "Echo" pushed the concept of population intelligence to the wind, and then the smart speaker boom swept the world.
The domestic smart speaker boom is also surging, and hundreds of companies have smashed the market into a red sea, including giants such as Ali, Xiaomi, and Baidu, as well as Internet and AI startups such as Himalaya and Mobvoi, and even traditional audio manufacturers and technology companies have cooperated.
Ali anchored this opportunity earlier than Baidu. In 2018, Ali invested 3 billion "artificial intelligence subsidies" in smart speakers, and the main shipment of Tmall Genie in smart speakers that year was "Tmall Genie Sugar Cube", with a promotional price of only 89 yuan, becoming Tmall Genie's first product with tens of millions of sales, and finally helping Tmall Genie gain 38% of the market share.
Despite belatedly, Xiaodu took a bold strategy: overlaying a touch screen on a smart speaker. At that time, the design of the product was not optimistic, but Xiaodu counterattacked, according to Canalys data, Xiaodu smart speakers shipped a total of 17.3 million units in 2019, becoming the first in the country, attracting other friends to follow suit. Xiaodu CEO Jing Kun often talked about this matter afterwards and concluded: "Involution cannot change the world, innovation can." ”
At that time, the battlefield of smart speakers could be described as "a hundred flowers blooming, each leading the way".
Specifically, Baidu's path is to combine product subsidies and content investment, allowing users to get used to interacting with voice through touch screens and accessing the services behind the speakers, so Baidu has invested in many well-known content brands, such as "Uncle Kai Tells Stories".
Alibaba, on the other hand, controls online trading channels such as Taobao and Tmall, and links with other brand products. On Double 11 in 2019, Tmall Genie's "voice shopping" service was greatly promoted, and users could use smart speakers as shopping entrances and enjoy commodity subsidies. According to data provided by Tmall Genie, more than 5 million people experienced voice shopping on Double 11 that year, and finally 1.05 million orders were successfully traded.
Other players also have their own advantages. For example, Dingdong speakers, which entered the battlefield before Alibaba, rely on the accumulation of iFLYTEK's intelligent voice technology and can connect hundreds of smart home products cooperated with JD.com; Xiaoai's Xiaoai classmate launched by Xiaomi has the supply chain advantages built by Xiaomi, and is related to the Xiaomi ecology behind it...
For a time, players fought hand-to-hand, and the "Hundred Box War" opened fiercely. According to data from Luotu Technology, the domestic smart speaker market sales in 2020 will be 37.85 million units, which is the peak of domestic smart speaker sales.
But after the subsidy war, everyone realized that widespread user consumption habits had not formed. In 2019, when smart speakers were incomprehensible, Sogou CEO Wang Xiaochuan predicted at a conference: "In the next few years, this product will not be sexy." ”
And that's exactly what happened. After buying smart speakers, many buyers jokingly refer to the artificial intelligence technology in them as "artificial mental retardation": "You give instructions that it either does not hear clearly or does not understand; But when you call, it jumps out and interjects aggressively, and has to participate." Before I bought the speaker, I thought I could use it to listen to songs and stories, but after I bought it, I found that these services were charged, but later "it became to turn on and off the lights and report the weather forecast for me".
Consumers not buying it is also reflected in the data. According to data from Luotu Technology, after China's smart speaker sales reached their peak in 2020, they fell all the way, with domestic smart speaker sales in 2021 and 2022 being 36.54 million and 26.31 million units, respectively, down 3.5% and 28% year-on-year. In the first quarter of this year, the overall sales of domestic smart speakers were 5.709 million units, down 25.2% year-on-year.
In the past three years, the popularity of smart speakers has declined year by year, and the decline in sales has directly affected the business adjustment of Xiaodu and Tmall Genie. Xiaodu split off from Baidu on September 30, 2020, and later claimed to be listed, but more than two years have passed without further action. Tmall Genie has experienced several twists and turns, and in 2019, it changed from reporting to Daniel Zhang to reporting to Zhu Shunyan, and was upgraded to an independent business unit on January 1, 2020, and was rumored to be "cold treated". At the end of 2020, Du Haitao, then general manager of operations and marketing of Tmall Genie, left
The battle for ecology beyond speakers
"I'm not angry with it (Siri) saying something wrong, I'm angry with its arrogance. It can be completely modest, for example: the current weather we dare not talk nonsense, the weather forecast is not accurate, or else, you ask Xiaodu? ”
This is a performance clip at the Talk Show Conference Season 4 Finals live. After several years of fierce fighting, the smart speakers represented by Xiaodu and Tmall Genie have been implanted in the minds of buyers and become user memories, whether it is praise or disparagement, it can always make people angry and funny to ridicule a few words. But discerning people will find that Xiaodu and Tmall Genie have been expanding beyond the speaker for several years.
"Smart speakers shouldn't be sold at all," Li Di, CEO of Xiaoice, who has also been working on artificial intelligence assistants for a long time, told Tech Planet. Similar to Xiaodu and Tmall Genius, Xiaoice is also independent from the big factory behind - Microsoft, but does not make smart speakers. Li Di believes that artificial intelligence assistants should span all platforms and scenarios and not be limited by speakers.
"We want to have an artificial intelligence assistant that I can communicate with in my mobile phone and WeChat, and I can communicate with it in the car; To the house, to the convenience bee downstairs, it is still it that communicates. ”
It is also following this idea that Xiaodu and Tmall Genie began to launch more intelligent hardware products in an attempt to create their own intelligent ecology. But in terms of specific paths, the two are different.
Xiaodu takes the route of self-research and self-sale, marketing and breaking the circle. Following the smart speaker, Xiaodu has launched TWS headphones, smart fitness mirrors, smart camera TVs and other products to implant Xiaodu assistant to users. Xiaodu CEO Jing Kun mentioned in an interview that the launch of many intelligent hardware products is to allow Xiaodu to "have its own test field, if it can only be tried in other people's fields (hardware), it will inevitably involve a lot of communication and coordination."
In order to enhance Xiaodu's exposure in the market, Baidu has riveted its strength in variety shows, and has successively sponsored variety shows such as "Ace to Ace" and "Longing for Life". In almost every issue, guests will take the initiative to have a dialogue with Xiaodu to plant grass for the audience.
Tmall Genie is focusing on the Internet of Things and cooperating with other companies to create a "comprehensive AI empowerment system". Previously, according to 36Kr reports, Ku Wei, the head of Tmall Genie, was also the head of Alibaba Cloud IOT, which promoted the integration of the platform, team and technical interface between Alibaba Cloud IOT and Tmall Genie.
As early as 2018, when domestic smart speakers were hot, Tmall Genie established the "Tmall Genie AI Alliance" to jointly develop products with cooperative manufacturers. In 2020, Tmall Genie held a spring conference and launched the "Miaowu Plan" and "Double Hundred Plan" on the basis of the previous one: investing 10 billion yuan in ecological construction and jointly launching 100 tens of millions of smart products with partners. Tmall Genie comes out of the speaker and implants it into more and more products, such as air conditioners, sweepers, projectors, juicers, etc.
In the general direction of intelligent ecology, Xiaodu and Tmall Genie have also found a second point of strength: smart education.
In 2021, the "double reduction policy" has blown a violent storm in the education and training market, coupled with the catalyst of the epidemic, all players have cut into the smart education track. In March 2021, Xiaodu released the first professional learning tablet; In May, Tmall Genie released the smart screen Tmall Genie E1, which has successively entered the education track.
Tech Planet Observation found that compared with education and training companies, Xiaodu and Tmall Genie are more inclined to do tool products and work technology and products, while Xiaodu obviously invests more in intelligent education than Tmall Genie. Following the launch of the learning tablet, Xiaodu has released a number of products such as dictionary pens and large-screen eye-protection learning machines.
Starting in the third quarter of 2022, Jing Kun personally led the team to carry out a "full closed-loop campaign" within Xiaodu and build the education line into another growth curve after smart speakers. At present, the revenue of educational intelligent hardware products has accounted for 50% of Xiaodu's total revenue.
Big model activates smart speakers again?
Three years later, what are the results of Xiaodu and Tmall Genie's intelligent ecological strategy?
In March this year, Xiaodu Intelligent Ecology added a new species "Add Girlfriend Machine", which is a 27-inch super large tablet with a rotatable screen and a movable machine, and its main selling point is that it can play games, watch movies, fitness and other multi-functional activities in multiple scenes such as toilets, bedrooms, and kitchens. Following the traditional way of breaking the circle of marketing before, Xiaodu has carried out carpet "planting" in channels such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu, and the current record is good, with sales exceeding 100 million in two months after launch.
Xiaodu's offline physical store sales told Tech Planet that the "Tian Tian Girlfriend Machine" is currently out of stock throughout Beijing, and customers often call to inquire about replenishment, but the factory has not yet completed replenishment.
There was also a murmur in the cheers. Tech Planet visited and learned that in 2020, Xiaodu TWS headsets made a batch of 300,000 orders, which were not sold out in a short period of time. For the newly launched girlfriend machine, some users complained in the Xiaohongshu comment area that it was a "large-screen toilet partner", and believed that its application scenarios could be replaced.
On the other hand, it can be seen on the shopping platform that the commercialization of Tmall Genie mainly relies on self-operated products, of which "IN Sugar" smart speakers have the best sales, but the sales of small red box projectors, sweepers and other products under the "Miaowu" plan are mediocre. Because the marketing efforts are not as small as Xiaodu, the overall voice of Tmall Genie is not high.
Like finally seeing the light in the dark tunnel, after the release of ChatGPT, Xiaodu and Tmall Genie were the first to access the self-developed large model.
Former Baidu architect Li Tianhua blessed Xiaodu CEO Jing Kun in the circle of friends. He believes that dialogue is human instinct, and the new conversation search assistant will partially or completely replace the traditional search engine in 3-5 years. If Baidu increases investment, the market value of Xiaodu may exceed 50 billion US dollars or even as high as 100 billion US dollars in 5 years.
But after accessing the big model, will Xiaodu and Tmall Genie definitely be able to rejuvenate the "second spring"?
Whether it is Xiaodu or Tmall Genie, the most important thing in the product is the intelligent software system they carry on it. But if the technology of the large model has matured, and the user has the company of virtual assistant in the mobile phone and the APP, why do you need to buy a smart speaker as an entrance? On June 1, the "Hanzo Forest Clone" launched by Xiaoice using its own Xiaoice framework was officially launched, allowing users to chat, voice, and even video chat with them in the Xiaoice Island APP.
In addition to the need to firmly believe in smart hardware, the products of Xiaodu and Tmall Genie need to be further polished.
On May 22, Xiaodu launched a learning mobile phone "Xiaodu Qinghe", equipped with a large model of "Xiaodu Lingji". In an interview with the media, Jing Kun said that the concept of "learning mobile phones" is aimed at the ambivalence that parents understand and worry about when they see their children's desire for mobile phones. "I particularly like the paradox, if there is a growing need that is not being met, and parents are struggling to meet [the child's needs], it means that we need this product."
After its release, the product received the same feedback as the smart education product launched by Xiaodu before. Many users pointed out that the level of course teaching content that comes with it is not enough, and it is not as good as other smart education platforms. The sales of the above-mentioned Xiaodu offline store told Tech Planet that in terms of intelligent education, Xiaodu does not have so much connection with school education resources.
On May 26, Tmall Genie released a new product smart glasses, which are equipped with Ali's "Tongyi Qianwen" large model, and use bone conduction technology, listening to music without headphones. However, the main test of station B UP shows that the face will be vibrated and numb after the volume of the glasses is adjusted to seventy. Some users in the comment area echoed that even if the ambient noise is not loud, the sound of the glasses cannot be heard clearly.
Under the c-end interactive experience still needs time to improve, Xiaodu and Tmall Genie have both chosen to do B-side smart solutions to improve their commercial ceiling version.
Some netizens reviewed and found that the APP attached to the Tmall Genie smart speaker needs to watch ads when the screen opens. In addition, it is reported that Xiaodu is doing solutions such as wine hotels and cooperating with Baidu Intelligent Cloud and advertising departments.
Industry insiders introduced to Tech Planet, for example, a third party purchases 100 million yuan of hardware products, and Baidu will have 80 million yuan of cluster-screen advertising. This is not only conducive to Xiaodu low-price shipments, but also conducive to Baidu advertising to obtain offline traffic.
Market education is always difficult, people are always happy to do it in one step, directly enjoy the intelligent and understanding intelligent assistant service like Smantha in the movie "Her", but choose to ignore or are not willing to wait for the slow long night of enterprise and technology development before this.
In any case, we should pay tribute to the dream of intelligent revolution between Xiaodu and Tmall elves.