Released the AI headset ByteDance re-battle hardware

On October 17, Doubao, the AI business of ByteDance (hereinafter referred to as "Byte"), launched the first AI headset OlaFriend (hereinafter referred to as Doubao AI headset), priced at 1199 yuan. As of 11 a.m. on October 18, the OlaFriend Tmall flagship store showed that more than 1,000 people had paid for the product; In the O-laFriend JD flagship store, the product comes in 4 colors, two of which are out of stock, and the other two show only 2 left.

Previously, it was mainly startups making AI headsets, and Byte was the first Internet company in China to enter the track. Byte's move is not surprising, and when it comes to hardware, the company has shown a lot of interest in recent years. When it was in the education business before, Byte launched a vigorous intelligent learning desk lamp. When it was ready to make virtual reality (VR) hardware, Byte acquired VR company PICO. These are areas that no other major Internet companies have entered.

However, compared with the previous two high-profile press conferences and large-scale subsidies for users, Byte's strategy on AI headsets is relatively low-key. This time, Byte released the AI headset, which was only placed on social channels, and no press conference was held, and the relevant teams did not accept interviews.

What is the condition of the byte AI headset? Can this headset with a price of more than 1,000 yuan carry Byte's dream in the AI era?

How is the condition

The Doubao AI headset is a non-in-ear open-ear headset that can be hung on the ear, which is a popular type of headphone at the moment. According to the "Independent Market Research Report on the Global In-Ear Open-Back Headphone Industry" released by Frost &Sullivan, a third-party consulting company, the overall market size of the global in-ear open-back headphones will almost increase tenfold from 2019 to 2023, with a compound annual growth rate of 75.5%.

In the Jingdong platform, the price of big-name open-back headphones is more than 1,000 yuan, Huawei's FreeClip headphones cost 1149 yuan, and the United States audio equipment company BOSE's Ultra headphones cost 1999 yuan. There are also cheap products for open-back headphones, Xiaodu's S108 headphones are priced at 368 yuan, and Philips' ear clip-on headphones are priced at 197 yuan. In addition, there are a batch of "white label" open-back headphones, which are priced below 10 yuan.

The main function of the Doubao AI headset is companionship, and it focuses on recommending 5 scenes: portable know-it-all, English sparring, travel guide, music DJ, and emotional gas station. An AI reviewer said after experiencing the product that the headphones look good and the sound quality is also very good, but she did not find a reason to buy it, and users can choose a lot of headphones at the price of 1199 yuan.

Why do AI headsets

After Byte launched the AI business bean package, the outside world speculated that its next step would be to make AI hardware.

In April this year, Byte acquired Oladance, a headphone startup, with an acquisition amount of 300 million yuan to 500 million yuan. This is a rare wholly-owned acquisition in the past two years under the background of byte's "fat and thin", team cut, and business reduction.

Oladance's founder, Li Haoqian, previously served as an executive at BOSE. Oladance's core technical team members are also from BOSE. At present, the Oladance team has been integrated into the byte system.

On October 11, the Economic Observer asked Byte why it chose headphones as the first AI hardware, but did not receive a response as of press time. Industry insiders interviewed by this newspaper generally believe that headphones are easier to achieve a sense of companionship. "There are some technical products that are actually very far from life. But headphones are devices that people come into contact with every day, and they are very close to our lives. Liu Da, chief product officer of Future Intelligence, said. Future Intelligence was born from iFLYTEK and is the manufacturer of iFLYTEK AI headsets, and the company's first AI hardware is also a headset.

Jingdong released the "Double Eleven" AI headset sales list on October 14, and a total of 3 brands of headphones were selected: Doubao, Samsung, and Xunfei. Among the top 10 products in terms of sales, iFLYTEK AI headsets account for 7.

Liu Da said that AI headsets are still a niche market, but they are growing rapidly. For two consecutive years, the sales growth rate of iFLYTEK AI headsets has been more than 300%.

Another reason for the future intelligence to make AI headsets is that the headset technology is already very mature, and the start-up cost is relatively low, which is a more suitable path for startups.

At present, iFLYTEK AI headsets mainly focus on conference scenarios, and the main functions are voice transcription, translation, AI summarization, AI Q&A, etc. Liu Da believes that in the future, AI headsets may break the boundaries between people and devices, and headphones can not only be used to listen to songs and hold meetings, but also become human interaction partners, like today's mobile phones, to accompany humans at all times.

After Byte made AI headsets, a big factory entered this track. Liu Da believes that for future intelligence, this matter not only means that competition is coming, but also will expand the AI headset market.

Fight the hardware again

Before making AI headsets, Byte had made two pieces of hardware, namely the 2020 Dali Intelligent Learning Desk Lamp and the 2021 VR device PICO.

Byte's first two hardware shows are very popular. When the Dali Intelligent Learning Desk Lamp was released, Byte held a special press conference in Beijing to announce the launch of a new education brand, Dali Education. At that event, Chen Lin, then CEO of Dali Education, also left a sentence that was widely quoted by the media - "In the next three years, we will invest a huge amount of money every year, and there is no profit expectation."

The second time Byte did the hardware is even more eye-catching. In 2021, at the hottest time of the VR industry, Byte acquired PI-CO, the largest VR company in China at that time, and became the first company among major Internet manufacturers to enter the VR hardware market. At that time, Byte also launched a large subsidy policy, and every time a user buys a PICO and punches in the system for half a year, Byte will return half of the purchase price.

However, Byte's two attempts at hardware were not successful. After the introduction of the "double reduction" policy in 2021, Byte will cancel Dali Education and no longer launch a new Dali intelligent learning desk lamp. In 2023, PICO will make layoffs, shrinking both team size and business.

This time bytes fight hardware again, will there be a different story? Chen Zemin, the former chief analyst of Internet media at Guojin Securities, agrees with Byte's strategy of making AI headsets. He believes that headphones are already a relatively high-frequency traffic entrance at the moment, and there have been some scenarios that have been verified, and it is unlikely that bytes will fail when they enter this track.

Compared with large manufacturers such as Tencent, Byte has always been very persistent in hardware strategy. Chen Zemin told the Economic Observer that this is due to the fact that Byte's main product is Douyin, and its connection density with users is not as close as Tencent's WeChat, "In the AI era, people still need to socialize, but they don't necessarily need short videos." Therefore, Byte will be more active in the layout of next-generation hardware than other large manufacturers. Moreover, in the era of AI, hardware itself is a new computing infrastructure, and it will be a very good choice if Zi Energy Conservation occupies the next generation of infrastructure as soon as possible.

A hardware entrepreneur believes that whether the Doubao AI headset can succeed still needs to wait for the market test. According to his observations, large Internet manufacturers will naturally have a software mindset when making hardware, and conflicts are prone to occur in the process of integrating software teams and hardware teams. In the process of starting his business, he has seen a large number of Internet teams that are not short of resources and funds, but these teams are rarely able to make successful hardware products.