Learn and think about entering the hardware, and find a way to survive in a muffled voice

Reporter|He Jipai

Edit|Yan Ziwei

The teaching and training leader learns and thinks, and the hardware sells well.

In late December, it launched a new Xi machine xPad flagship model, with built-in resources for all disciplines and all school sections, and a new self-developed nine-chapter model.

The first price of the two models is as high as 8599 yuan and 6599 yuan, and the volume is rapidly rising.

According to the sales page of its Tmall flagship store, as of press time, 8000+ units of the xPad flagship series have been sold, with a starting price of 6599 yuan, and the GMV of a single channel for 2 weeks has exceeded 52 million yuan.

According to this calculation, there is a high probability that the new omni-channel products have exceeded 100 million.

Benchmarking against the industry leader, Xueersi's business has an annual income of up to one billion, which can support the team to find a way to live.

A new machine is on the field

Xi and Si, who came from education, are good at learning the content, and the new products focus on upgrading the hardware configuration.

"When the classic model was issued, the industry was skeptical and did not believe that we were serious about making hardware for education. ”

Zhao Puzheng, head of the Xi machine, said that when preparing the flagship model, they had a simple idea to "fill up all the hardware configurations".

There are two new models, the xPad with a 14-inch screen and the xPad with a 12.35-inch screen, both of which use 11-layer futuristic paper eye screens.

Two generations of products, only 10 months apart. Many people believe that the frequency of new products is short, and the learning and thinking that does not play cards according to common sense also caught competitors off guard.

"The follow-up product and market rhythm will be adjusted, and it will be carried out for about a year. Zhao Puzheng added.

For the whole group, the Xi machine project occupies a high ecological niche.

This category is directly named after Xueersi, which has never been used as a brand for an innovative project before.

It took two months to convince Zhang Bangxin, the founder of Xueersi, to accept this.

The first model will only be launched in February 2023, and compared with other manufacturers, the time node for Xueersi to make a Xi machine is late. Zhao Puzheng revealed that this is because the product has undergone three suspensions.

In the second half of 2021, Xueersi decided to study the Xi machine on its own, which was a critical period of the company's transformation, and the number of employees was reduced by nearly 90%.

The first version of the Xi machine project was redone, and the leader of the hardware team of the intelligent Xi was replaced. Two days before the original sales date, in order to provide a better user experience, it encountered the situation that the system boot and restart mode needed to be modified.

The team chose to delay by a year and give up on seizing the critical time window. The project team attaches so much importance to the insight into the desk scene.

"Learning Xi machine is a very stable product form that can carry many things, and we choose to focus on this category to be deep and solid. Zhao Puzheng said.

According to data from IDC, a research institution, in the second quarter of 2023, Xueersi Xi will ship about 90,000 units, ranking fourth in the domestic Xi tablet market, with a market share of 8.6%.

Xueersi xPad classic, the entry price is 4599 yuan, according to this calculation, the revenue flow in a single quarter has reached 400 million.

Festivals

Since Xiaobawang launched the first generation of Xi machine in 1993, the vitality of this category has lasted for 30 years.

IDC data shows that in the first half of 2023, China's Xi tablet market shipped 2.19 million units, a year-on-year increase of 37%. It is estimated that by 2027, the market size of China's education Xi scenario will exceed 150 billion US dollars.

A senior practitioner told "21CBR" that in the educational hardware track, the complexity of the learning Xi machine is the highest, and it needs to be considered in combination with software and hardware, as well as teaching and research content. "The difficulty lies in how to make users feel the value of learning Xi. ”

From technology giants, AI companies, traditional Xi hardware manufacturers to education companies, players are pouring in. Educational companies usually offer the weapon they are best at, "teaching and research content".

According to the official, Xueersi has gathered the offline content of the past 20 years in the Xi machine, including the content of the diligent thinking class, innovation class, and training team, 95% of which was recorded and explained by the original Xueersi S-level (top class) teacher.

"The built-in content is self-developed by Xueersi, which can cover the whole period and all subjects from enlightenment to high school. What's more, the Xueersi teaching and research team will update these contents synchronously, so as to achieve synchronous iteration with the on-campus courses in various places. Zhao Puzheng said.

It revealed that at present, the learning Xi machine covers 14 million minutes of video explanation, which is 30-40 times that of the traditional learning Xi machine, basically according to the rhythm of updating the content every two weeks and updating the version once a month.

One of the great gains of Xueersi is to quickly realize Xi the brand sinking.

The team observed that new first-tier and second-tier cities accounted for the largest proportion of users using Xi learning products. In the past, Xueersi's users were mainly concentrated in high-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, which was internally described as a "high-line high-level high-score group".

"The number of users in lower-tier cities has risen, the user base has become more complex, and the demand has increased. This wave of users pay more attention to training and making up for the difference, and those with strong spending power have begun to pay attention to AI applications. We can see a noticeable expansion of the circle. Zhao Puzheng said.

Planting "Chapter 9"

At the release site of the new generation of learning Xi machine, the Xueersi large model MathGPT was unveiled at the same time, and the Chinese name "Nine Chapters Large Model" was officially announced.

MathGPT, which passed the filing in November 2023, is a large model in the field of mathematics with problem-solving and problem-telling algorithms as the core, and this is the first time that the department has landed educational hardware.

Tian Mi, CTO of Xueersi, said that the Jiuzhang model is the "AI chip" of Xueersi Xi machine.

Based on the large model, the learning Xi machine has implemented a series of AI functions, including Chinese and English composition correction, personalized AI conversation, mathematics and other questions.

Zhao Puzheng told the "21CBR" reporter that the nine-chapter model contains two major abilities: problem solving and topic speaking. The problem-solving model is responsible for answering the questions correctly and applying the large model to do the problem. After that, the problem-solving process is explained, and the ability of the problem-solving model is used.

"For example, there are many ways to teach a third-grade question, but for 9-year-olds, it is necessary to tell it in a way that they can understand and not exceed the outline. The nine-chapter model is equivalent to two models running. ”

Since the emergence of ChatGPT in 2022, Xueersi has been planning and preparing around generative artificial intelligence, reserving talents to form a team.

It develops self-research with one hand and invests with the other, and actively deploys AI. Tianyancha shows that in mid-2023, the entity of Good Future (Xueersi's parent company) will become a shareholder of AI start-up Shenyan Technology.

Increasing AI can enhance the core competitiveness of hardware products such as Xi machines, and it is also part of Xueersi's transformation.

One and a half years ago, Zhang Bangxin announced a new strategy, which was summarized into three "sciences", science and education, science and technology, and science popularization. The bottom of these three business routes is inseparable from the support of cutting-edge technology.

It has been less than a year since Xueersi officially entered the Xi machine, and the investment in intelligent hardware is still in its early stages.

As of the end of August 2023, Good Future's net profit was US$37.9 million, the first profit since the end of 2020. At the very least, exploring new business has given back a positive signal.