MBA does not repair "internal skills", the sequelae of smart speakers

Author | Chu Yilong

Source | Insight New Research Society

Smart speakers, have you turned off?

"Smart speakers are a chicken rib. I have been idle. I do n’t understand the sound quality of listening to the song." As a smart speaker, Xiao Li commented on social media.

In fact, searching for Xiaocu speakers, Xiaomi speakers, and Tmall elf on the black cat complaint platform, you can see nearly a thousand customers complaining. Most users have left complaints such as "the so -called smart speakers have not reacted at all", "false propaganda exaggerated product functions", and "no use can be turned on without using it."

Picture source: Black Cat Complaint

While deeply trapped the quagmire, the sales of smart speakers declined sharply.

IDC's "Monthly Tracking Report of China's Smart Speaker Equipment Market" shows that in the first half of 2022, China's smart speaker market sales were 14.83 million units, a year -on -year decrease of 27.1%, and sales of 4.2 billion yuan, a year -on -year decrease of 16.2%.

Why does smart speakers fall here? How should players seek a transfer?

01 The sales volume is collectively declined, the smart speaker dreams broken

Once upon a time, the wind of smart speakers scraped the world, and technology giants scratched their fists and scrambled to enter the game. Google, Apple, Baidu, Ali, Xiaomi and other domestic and foreign science and technology giants have joined smart speakers to launch their own smart speaker brands.

It can be said that smart speakers have become a hardware product that develops prospects after smartphones and tablets.

In the outbreak period from 2018 to 2019, domestic smart speakers recorded 823.3%and 126.6%of sales year -on -year growth rates. In 2019, smart speakers' global shipments increased to 147 million units, showing index -level growth trends.

But now the growth of the smart speaker market has been difficult to reunite.

The "Month Sales Tracking Report of China's Smart Speaker Equipment Market" released by IDC shows that in the first half of 2022, China's smart speaker market sales were 14.83 million units, a year -on -year decrease of 27.1%; the corresponding sales were 4.2 billion yuan, a year -on -year decrease of 16.2 %.

Picture source: IDC

Data show that the sales of online channels for domestic smart speakers have begun in the fourth quarter of 2020, and have declined from the previous quarter for six consecutive quarters. IDC reported that the main reason was that smart speakers were affected by weak demand, and the sales of smart speaker market were facing pressure.

According to Strategy Analytics data, in the first quarter of this year, the shipments of smart speakers of Ali, Baidu, and Xiaomi fell by 25.6%, 23.8%, and 18.5%, respectively.

Foreign conditions are not much better. According to the smart speaker report released by the well-known municipal research institution OMDIA, the annual compound annual growth rate of smart speakers in North America from 2021-2026 is expected to be only 1.3%, of which the annual compound growth rate of Amazon smart speakers has fallen to negative numbers, and Google also also Only 0.2%.

And smart speaker products such as Home Max, Home MINI, HOMEPOD, HOMEPOD Mini have exited the historical stage one after another.

The sales of domestic intelligent speakers have fallen into negative growth, and the growth of the North American market has approached. Is the business of smart speakers really the head?

02 The experience is poor, the price is high, and the smart speaker has come to the end?

You know, the reason why smart speakers can quickly expand their capacity is to a large extent because its voice interaction ability is regarded as the entrance of smart homes, but consumers have gradually discovered that this is a "scam."

First of all, the voice interaction function is not unique to smart speakers. Nowadays, the era of intelligent in the whole house has not yet come. Except for smart speakers, other smart hardware products with voice -over and interactive functions may become the next smart home entrance. For example, more and more manufacturers are already using mobile phones, tablets, TVs, etc. as an interactive entrance to smart homes.

The technology giants also realized that the "Bao Bao" smart speakers were not wise, so they went out of smart speakers one after another. For example, Baidu's Xiaolu and Ali Tmall Elf began to start "cross -device integration"; and smart home manufacturers such as Huawei, Xiaomi, Haier, and Ouerbo have launched smart central control screens.

Second, smart speakers are not "intelligent". This is an old -fashioned topic. Until now, users still need voice awakening when using smart speakers, and then use "keywords+ commands" to use smart home products, which means that smart speakers lack the ability to actively serve, and smart speakers cannot understand complex language scenarios. Can achieve simple functions such as playing music, storytelling, and viewing weather.

The ideal blueprint for smart speakers relies on the development of artificial intelligence technology. The foundation is to train with massive data. Artificial intelligence and acoustic technologies such as ASR (voice recognition), NLP natural semantics, distant pickups have not yet made great progress. In the current situation, voice interaction is difficult to replace touch interaction in a short time.

From the perspective of actual needs, buying a house is generally refined now. Developers have their own sound control, and there is no need to use smart speakers at all. Ordinary consumers are more like to iterate in the refrigerator, TV, and washing machine. Low, it usually takes ten years to change new. In this way, the fate of smart speakers cannot escape ash.

In the environment, the development of the Internet of Things is not mature, and the ecology of smart homes has not been formed. Various domestic smart home players are fighting each other. Smart speakers between different suppliers and different ecology are difficult to work together, and the situation is slightly embarrassing. Not only is the degree of intelligence insufficient, the smart speakers are also caught in a "leakage privacy" scandal, which makes consumers more respectful.

In 2019, some media revealed that smart speaker products such as Amazon, Google, Apple and other giants turned into "eavesdroppers" and the negative news of collecting user voice. Smart speaker players collected natural dialogue and improved their technical conditions, but to users Said that family is the most private place, and this behavior is tantamount to streaking.

In addition, the decline in sales of smart speakers has nothing to do with bad market competition.

The smart speaker market has been monopolized for a long time by head players, and lacks competition and product vitality. Data from IDC show that Ali and Baidu account for the top two in market share of 34.96%and 33.4%of the smart speaker market, respectively, and Xiaomi ranks third with a proportion of 27.2%, and the total share of other brands does not exceed 5%.

In the highly solid competitive pattern, MBA (Xiaomi, Baidu, Ali) began to fight for price subsidy. Through various promotional methods, the price of smart speakers was compressed to 100 yuan. Xiaomei Technology CEO Jing Yan publicly stated in 2019: "Through a certain subsidy, we can reduce the threshold of this product. From the front line to the sixth line, we can pass through all the people. "

"Burning money" has become the main theme of competition. Both Ali, Baidu, and Xiaomi have lost their losses to varying degrees. 36 氪 reported that Baidu launched a screen speaker for the first time, each loss and subsidy amount exceeded 200 yuan. As the output rose, the number decreased, but the subsidy continued.

The intensive price war in a short period of time allows smart speakers to sink to sink market consumers, and the market has also rapidly shifted from incremental to stock, but manufacturers have been able to afford such a business that burns money.

Nowadays, Internet manufacturers work together to enter the era of contraction and reduce scale to the first priority. Like smart speakers seem to be beautiful in the future, but in fact, serious losses have naturally become the existence of "abandoned". Manufacturers have narrowed their subsidies, the discounts of promotional periods were significantly weakened, and the daily price of smart speakers rose.

Insufficient product intelligence experience, insufficient user privacy, and manufacturer's reduction of subsidies lead to rising prices, and then overlap the new crown epidemic, consumer shopping decisions tend to be rational, and non -rigid consumption smart speakers can no longer be sold.

03 High -end + decentralization, smart speakers go to the second half

Smart speakers are typical of "I don't learn to walk, I want to run". In order to expand the market share, the head manufacturers did not repair the "internal skills", but they were diligent in sales.

Players piled up a bunch of concepts on smart speakers, but they could not be fulfilled, allowing consumers to come back and return. After sacrificing the price of quality replacement, this track seems to be a flash in the pan. The user's demand for smart speakers is insufficient, and the market growth falls into a bottleneck.

Perhaps improving the high -tech experience and speeding up the iteration of update are the key to letting smart speaker products get out of the trend.

The data from Iri Consulting confirms this view. The report shows that the top three of the user's requirements for smart speakers are rich functional, accurate voice recognition and good sound quality, respectively, accounting for 38%, 35%, and 33%, respectively. The sinking market has more than 40%of consumers that the primary purpose of buying smart speakers is to experience high -tech technology, which is much higher than 18%of the price -performance performance.

Transition to high -end, stimulate consumers to change new paths to the development of smart speakers through higher -quality smart speakers. The screenless smart speaker will strengthen the audio playback function and sound quality to expand the market. For example, Xiaomi teamed up with Manhattan to launch Xaiomisound, which is the main sound quality, priced at 499 yuan; Huawei combined with Divale to launch high -end products SOUND, emphasizing the ultimate sound quality, and the price of the product is more than 2,000 yuan.

Apple has also been exposed to a smart speaker with a screen -suitable for the use of kitchen. This product will be the closest to Google's Nest Hub and Amazon's Echo Show. This product is a new category that Apple has not been launched, and now it is highly expected by consumers.

A online market data report from Runto shows that in the first half of 2021, the price segment of more than 600 yuan in the Chinese smart speaker market reached 8.1%, an increase of 7.0 percentage points from the same period last year; 2.4%, an increase of 1.9 percentage points from the same period last year; and the share of the price segment below 200 yuan decreased by 7.4 percentage points.

Another thing to note is that the business logic of getting out of the speaker's hardware attribute is not just. At the product level, decentralization should also be valued.

Smart speakers should not only have a single voice interaction function. Smart speakers with screens and cameras that can realize multi -modal interaction capabilities will have a wider imagination space.

In the era of Wisdom of Wisdom, the entrance dispute between the traditional Internet is no longer meaningful. If the smart speakers want to be invincible, we must realize the intelligent interaction everywhere and actively provide users with smart services.

At this point, Internet manufacturers began to "show their magical powers." Xiaomi began to emphasize ecological cards, and strived to strengthen the linkage of smart speakers and other IoT products; Baidu combined with its own technical advantages in the AI ​​field to improve the smart interaction performance of the product; Ali made articles in the application scenario, extending application scenarios in the application scenario, extending application scenarios And create customized products. For example, Ali Tmall Elf announced cooperation with BMW, Volvo, Daimler, and launched special products for different scenarios such as car, education, and hotels. The Guanyan World Data Center shows that in the future, the sales scale of smart speakers in my country will still have a lot of room for improvement. As smart speaker manufacturers expand their market downward market, it is expected that my country's smart speaker sales will reach 17.42 billion yuan in 2023.

The "grass reckless" road of smart speakers has gone, and then enhanced experience will become the focus of competition. It can only evolve better and more valuable. It becomes an indispensable electronic device for consumers. Mobile phones, tablets, and smart central control screens compete for smart home entrances.

The second half of the smart speaker has arrived. Whoever can provide consumers with an experience beyond expectations can win more rivers and mountains.

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