Following the many "tosses" in mobile phones, eye protection lights, and headsets, ByteDance has chosen a new track in the field of smart hardware.
On October 17, ByteDance's first AI agent headset Ola Friend will be officially shipped. Although ByteDance did not hold a special press conference for this product to sell it directly, judging from the overwhelming publicity content online in the past week, ByteDance has high hopes for AI headsets.
Image source: Online promotional content
However, the "International Financial News" noticed that as of now, the number of pre-orders for the product in the Taobao Ola Friend flagship store is displayed as 500+, and the total number of pre-sales of the Jingdong flagship store and the Jingdong self-operated flagship store is just over 1,000, which is not outstanding in the category of Bluetooth headsets.
According to official information, the main feature of this headset is that it can be connected to the large model of the bean bag by adapting to the bean bag APP. In the commercialization of large-scale model software, a new round of hardware innovation has become an outlet, and technology companies are trying to combine generative AI with various hardware, and ByteDance will naturally not be absent. However, judging from ByteDance's past experience in the hardware field, every huge investment ultimately brings a lot of regrets. This time, will ByteDance pay more cost and patience for AI hardware, and can Zhang Yiming's hardware dream be fulfilled?
豆包App内部已接入Ola Friend相关功能
Byte Fights Hardware
Judging from the appearance, the Ola Friend intelligent body headset launched by ByteDance this time is similar to a headset previously released by the Chinese headphone manufacturer Oladance, and according to media reports, in May this year, ByteDance has completed the acquisition of Oladance.
According to Oladance's official website, the brand was founded in June 2019 as the world's first pioneer of OWS (Open Wearable Stereo) technology, and released the OWS technology concept to the public for the first time in September 2021. According to the company's information, Shenzhen Top Ten Future Technology Co., Ltd., the operating body of Oladance, changed its investors in August this year, and the changed investor is Tianjin ByteDance Technology Co., Ltd., with a capital contribution ratio of 100%.
It is the usual operation of large companies to quickly enter new tracks and expand their business through acquisitions, and in order not to lose the wind, ByteDance has acquired many start-ups in the past, but in the field of hardware, ByteDance is not as comfortable as a fish in water in terms of software.
As early as 2019, ByteDance acquired some of the patents and teams of local mobile phone manufacturer Hammer Technology; In 2020, ByteDance launched a new brand of "Vigorous Education" in the education track, and successively released a number of smart learning lamp products; In 2021, the new stone laboratory established by the original Hammer Technology team was merged into the educational hardware team. However, under the influence of the "double reduction" policy that year, vigorous education had to retreat and transform.
ByteDance's biggest investment in hardware in recent years is VR. In 2021, the concept of the metaverse is flourishing, and ByteDance spent 9 billion yuan to acquire PICO, a domestic VR equipment manufacturer, and obtained the "admission ticket" to the metaverse. In just two years, the metaverse has gone from being popular all over the world to almost no one cares about it, and as the trend has receded, ByteDance has also adjusted PICO's strategy and business to no longer continue to burn money. A source in the VR industry recently revealed to reporters that PICO still occupies most of the domestic VR equipment market, but the entire industry is declining, and the market penetration rate needs to be improved.
Judging from these experiences, when encountering the outlet, ByteDance moves quickly and does not hesitate to invest huge costs, but in addition to changes in the external industry environment, ByteDance is often criticized for lacking "hardware genes" and enough patience.
Nowadays, the agent hardware based on generative AI software is gradually becoming a new outlet, which is expected to open a new round of innovation cycle of consumer electronic products, and ByteDance, which continues to deploy AI, has once again embarked on the hardware track.
How to convince consumers
For ByteDance's latest attempt in the hardware field, Internet analyst Ding Daoshi believes that the current various Internet models, playing methods, and concepts have almost been exhausted, and there are still enterprises willing to explore some new opportunities, which is worth encouraging.
Compared with the previous smart learning lights and VR headsets, ByteDance's choice this time is relatively "conservative" - smart headsets are already a mature market and have enough market demand.
In addition, the open-back (OWS) headphone category to which Ola Friend belongs is also on a small tuyere in the subdivision. With the continuous maturity of directional sound transmission technology, open-back headphones have become one of the key product lines of major manufacturers this year and in the future. According to RUNTO's online monitoring data, in the first half of 2024, the share of open-earphones in the online headphone market reached 20.9%, an increase of 12.7 percentage points over the same period last year, and the sales volume increased by 165% year-on-year, which is an absolute increase in the overall headphone market. Among them, the proportion of sales volume in the second quarter of 2024 has further expanded, and it is close to a quarter of the market.
Compared with traditional headset manufacturers or mobile phone manufacturers, most of the technology companies that are good at software are currently entering the hardware track with AI technology, just as Ola Friend not only advertises its single weight of 6.6g, battery life of 8 hours and other characteristics, but also focuses on introducing its exploration in AI scenarios, users wear Ola Friend earphones and shout out the keyword "Doubao Doubao", you can wake up Byte's self-developed chatbot "Doubao" and open voice interaction.
In the first half of this year, iFLYTEK launched a variety of AI smart headsets, featuring functions such as recording shorthand, voice recognition, and simultaneous interpretation. According to the Double 11 battle report recently disclosed by JD.com, as of 0:00 on October 15, iFLYTEK AI conference headsets ranked first in the sales list of all categories of AI headsets on the JD platform.
iFLYTEK is not ByteDance's only competitor. Although the average price of domestic AI headset products is stable at more than 1,000 yuan, the price of Ola Friend 1199 yuan makes many potential users feel that "there are many headphones to choose from at the same price"; On the other hand, Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi and other manufacturers have successively implanted AI functions into their headphone products.
More importantly, whether Ola Friend provided sufficient reasons to buy, some users questioned under the relevant evaluation content of Ola Friend: they did not find the reason why they had to have a special headset to talk to Doubao. In Ding Daoshi's view, although the artificial intelligence of the bean bag model is very powerful, for users, intelligent functions including voice interaction can also be realized through mobile phones, why spend more than 1,000 yuan to buy a piece of hardware, it is not logically clear.
When many tech companies promote AI headsets or AI voice assistants, they will mention images from the sci-fi movie "Her", where the hero wears a small wireless smart headset and can talk to the voice assistant built into the headset at any time no matter where he goes.
When the reporter asked in the Ola Friend online flagship store "Does the AI function come from the earphone itself or from the Doubao APP", the answer given by the customer service was "You need to link the earphone with the Doubao APP to realize voice wake-up Doubao". This also means that mobile phones are still indispensable.