Shulou(Shulou.com)06/02 Report--

What are headphones?

Everyone seems to know the answer to this question, but no one seems to know how many ways headphones have.

From headset to in-ear type, from wired to wireless, it seems that headphones are always undergoing rapid changes, but each kind of headphones will not withdraw from the stage of history; from a few yuan to tens of thousands of yuan, headphones may be the terminal products with the greatest difference in unit price. but every price of headphones seems to have its own market. From PC to the mobile era, countless hardware has come and gone over the decades, only headphones have never exited, and even with the advent of AI, the value of headphones as a sound portal has been rising.

When 5G accelerates, AI has become a new mode of human-computer interaction, and headphones seem to have ushered in new changes. In the vast universe of audio intelligent experience, headphones can be said to be the "North Star". Capturing its light has become an urgent task for today's consumer terminal industry.

Huawei first unveiled its audio brand strategy and its landing results: Kirin A1 chip and HUAWEI FreeBuds 3 TWS headphones at IFA on Sept. 6.

Huawei and audio hardware, which seems a little strange to CP, but unexpectedly ironed.

In fact, the Huawei terminal, which has been committed to creating a full scene and the ultimate intelligent experience for consumers, is like a child with hands-on skills and curiosity today, re-examining many of the things we are used to with future ideas.

For headphones and audio hardware, Huawei's gaze seems to be a coordinate parameter. Let's define a coordinate for headphones in the star river of technology and market: changes in technology and market are causing a chain change in the strategic value of products from headphones to audio.

Opportunities for audio hardware are gushing out, and on this stage, Huawei is coming.

Technological advances make headphones the closest place to AI and 5G

When you enter the world of headphones, at first glance, you will find that headphones are at the crossroads of technology today.

First of all, AI brings a new generation of interaction, and the basic capabilities of AI are speech recognition, semantic understanding and multi-round dialogue. Then according to the current evolution of AI technology, language and sound will be the entrance to the next generation of interaction. So where is the most convenient and private starting point for language interaction? of course, headphones.

On the other hand, 5G is accelerating the tight connection between mobile phones and IoT hardware. Under the full scene intelligence, family intelligence, vehicle intelligence and pan-social service intelligence are coming. However, if you install buttons on each IoT device, or put the buttons on your mobile phone, instead of liberating the interaction, humans fall into an endless burden of operation. If you want to reduce the interaction cost in the IoT era, sound-based understanding and control is the best solution. Then the entrance status of headphones will naturally rise.

In addition, we should also see that the 5G era is giving birth to the arrival of high-definition audio content, and more interaction and intelligent control between users and content can not be separated from headphones, which are the interactive nodes in the fragmented time. AI experience and 5G network need to prove their value to users, while headphones are the core carrier of audio experience upgrade, and the technical value is self-evident.

From the perspective of headphone usage, TWS headphones are the key nodes to enhance the consumer experience in the intelligent era of the whole scene. If this experience can not keep up, AI technology can only be based on mobile phones to complete interaction, consumers will feel that many interaction designs have been artificially stretched out and become superfluous. If the full scene Wisdom Life is a wonderful house, then the headset is the garden-it is responsible for the owner's first impression when he comes home.

Headphones, which are located in the key position, must not become the shortest bucket plate in the intelligent age.

User demand and market growth make headphones hot in the future

Another major change in headphone products today is that the TWS headphone market is in a period of high-speed explosion.

According to data previously released by GfK, retail sales of TWS headphones in China grew by more than 630% year-on-year as of September 2018, the fastest growth of all consumer hardware with an average price of more than 1,000 yuan. In the TWS's high-speed mode, Apple's Airpods is undoubtedly the most dazzling presence. Airpods now accounts for more than 64% of the TWS headset market and generated more than $5 billion in sales for Apple in 2018, showing the world how big the market space for TWS headphones is.

The butterfly change of technology is constantly aggravating the internal competitive tension in this field. Apple has been slow to upgrade its Airpods, and Apple's $3 billion acquisition of Beats may show the truth in the headphone market: the product is hard to make, but the market is huge.

Why is the headphone market still in the midst of rapidly growing demand today? The most fundamental reason is that headphones as an independent need is always worth paying for by users, and in the mobile era, user needs are still not fully met. Today, picture enjoyment is brought together by PC, large screen, tablet and mobile phone, but the sound quality is almost the only way to enjoy it. Although headphones have experienced technological evolution for wireless solutions, this field has always been in diversified value and still has a large incremental market.

When mobile phones enter the stock era, it is easy to find that young people around us are a little tired of changing phones, but when it comes to changing headphones and collecting headphones, there is always a glow in their eyes.

As the fastest growing wearable device, the reason why headphones can arouse users' long-term enthusiasm mainly comes from four aspects:

1. The habit of paying has been formed

Today, headphone products have perfect evaluation programs, fan groups, fans in different fields (sports, music, games). This point in the mobile phone into the market homogenization of the file, leaving a strong brand value-added and building differentiation space. Consumers are willing to pay the experience cost for headphones. High-end headphones are the most profitable consumer hardware, but they still have a wide following, which constitutes a unique position for headphones and audio hardware.

2. User time soars in a straight line.

With the increasingly serious fragmentation of time and the rapid rise of audio FM and knowledge payment, headphones begin to become the same high time consumables as mobile phones. Then its comfort, wearing experience, connection ability and endurance ability are endowed with an increasing time test, which indirectly promotes the value-added products.

3. The quality is clear at a glance

Today, TWS headphones have developed into a very complex process system, which requires the integration of sound quality, connection and interaction technology in minimal space and engineering layout, taking into account battery life, wearing comfort and connection ability. This makes the product differentiation of headphones extremely strong, and user word-of-mouth can play a direct role in market feedback. There is a strong positive correlation between the product capability of headphones and the incremental market of mobile phones.

4. Brand premium is very obvious.

Today, 95% of the world's headphones are made in China, and Apple's AirPods accounts for 40% of the global headphone market. These world brand headphones made in China are returning to the Chinese market at a very high brand premium. For Chinese enterprises with technological foundation and industrial system, the brand premium of headphones has created a lot of catch-up value.

Overall, TWS as the representative of the mobile era headphone products, the basic set is the consumption potential and profit space is broad, technology and the market show a positive relationship, Chinese brands need to be improved.

Or it can be said that the light can be lit in front of the TWS headphones. Perhaps headphones are on track to become the next mobile phone market.

The strongest technology: Huawei's dance gift for audio hardware

If the technology iteration and the growth of user demand are the background music of this era about headphones and audio hardware, then the demand of this music is to let headphone players bring unique dance steps to the market. This dance must be in line with the trend of technological evolution to meet the growing needs of consumers' experience.

Headset is a kind of hardware that is at the crossroads of market and technology iteration. Moving forward is the brand premium space and new profit growth point that terminal products urgently need in this era, connecting AI interactive iteration to the left and IoT full scene experience to the right.

Based on this coordinate, Huawei Terminal has just launched a strategic idea for audio products: to create a people-centered fully connected seamless audio experience.

When this strategy is dismantled, there are two key points, one is the upgrade of human-centered interaction, and the other is the upgrade of audio device connection under seamless experience. The achievement of these two capabilities is not simple today. As terminal products, they require the highest integration process, and involve chips, network connectivity, AI algorithms, cloud services, and TWS headphones in a variety of industry ecology. In today's basic technological form, it has a very high growth potential, but every technology in the soil must have sufficient nutrients, otherwise it will fall short once there is a deficiency. Specifically, TWS headphones face technical challenges in four main directions:

1. IoT devices in the whole scene, and how to achieve a better fast connection between mobile phones and headphones.

2. Extremely fast speech recognition to enhance the experience and efficiency of AI interaction.

3. Experience enhancement of HD sound quality.

4. The problem of anti-interference in audio transmission and interaction.

These problems constitute a complex system of technical requirements. Looking back at Huawei, we will find that Huawei's huge R & D system and extensive technology accumulation are exactly the technology soil that headphone products urgently need today. AI computing power and multi-domain algorithms, cloud services, network capabilities, and dedicated chips can all find future solutions for headphones in Huawei's technology lake.

In other words, if Huawei wants to do this dance, it needs to focus the best technology it has accumulated on TWS headphones and the release of audio hardware products, so that Huawei has the technology to become the brand of Huawei headphones.

In fact, as soon as it launched its audio product strategy, Huawei began to transplant the capabilities of the "strongest technology" to headphones.

We know that there are many ways for science and technology enterprises to talk about strategy. Some people use data to talk about strategy, some people talk about strategy with vision, and some people talk about strategy with PPT. What makes Huawei special is that they are used to using chips to talk about strategy.

The audio product strategy is accompanied by Kirin A1, a Bluetooth SoC chip from Huawei that can support both TWS headsets and wearable devices, integrating advanced Bluetooth processing units, powerful audio processing units, ultra-low power application processors and independent power management units on the small size of the 4.3mm*4.4mm.

Behind Kirin A1, Huawei's self-developed chip, Huawei released its unique technology into headphone products through Kirin A1. For example, we know that the traditional transmission scheme of TWS headphones is to transmit the two channels to the main headset, and then the main headset forwards the channel to the secondary headset. However, this mode can easily lead to some problems, such as low forwarding efficiency, large delay, easy disconnection, high power consumption of main headphones, and so on. TWS headphones often encounter stutters in shopping malls, office buildings and other scenes. This pain point can be said to be common in today's TWS headphone market.

The solution to this problem, in Huawei's view, must implement the underlying technological breakthrough. That is, to complete the accommodation of self-research technology in the chip layer, and change the pain point of the market products in the fundamental mode. As a result, we can see that the Kirin A1 chip loaded Huawei's self-developed dual-channel synchronous transmission technology. This technology can realize that the two headphones can obtain the signals of the left and right channels directly from the mobile phone, communicate directly with the mobile phone, and avoid interference between the two headphones.

In addition, the unique BT-UHD technology can achieve ultra-high-speed Bluetooth data transmission, with efficient and stable connection performance, strong audio processing capacity, support chip layer AI human-computer interaction, can bring immersion in high-quality music and audio-picture synchronization of the game experience.

From the strategy to the realization of the underlying technology is the first step for Huawei to release the audio strategy, and the second step is to apply the underlying technology to the product to really release Huawei's capabilities in Bluetooth, transmission, AI and so on to the market.

In this step, Huawei also "packaged" together when the audio strategy was released. The HUAWEI FreeBuds 3 TWS headphones equipped with Kirin A1 chip are transformed from production, technology, and then to product landing.

With minimalist design, stylish color matching and open bionic design, FreeBuds 3 integrates a series of cool techs and super performance in headphone connection, sound quality, anti-interference and other experiences.

In addition, due to Kirin A1 chip with high-performance antennas and optimized encoders, HUAWEI FreeBuds 3 also has excellent anti-jamming performance in complex environments such as airports and shopping malls, and its new intelligent noise reduction technology can support real-time and accurate open active noise reduction and bone voiceprint call noise reduction. In addition, FreeBuds 3 also has extremely fast pairing, intelligent sensing and other functions, it can be said that the real realization of human-centered interaction, as well as seamless connection experience docking and integration.

Looking further away, Huawei still has a large number of cool techs waiting to enter the new field of audio. For example, Hongmeng OS can improve the connection capability of full-scene IoT devices based on distributed technology and hardware virtualization capabilities; the transmission, identification and connection of headphones require the division and cooperation of different chips, which happens to improve the solution quality by Huawei's chip capabilities; Huawei's full-stack full-scene AI system can solve the continuous AI needs of headphones.

Headphones are the audio entrance to the full scene wisdom era, which is in line with Huawei's technology layout and advantages in the computing and AI fields, as well as the concept of consumer experience first, as well as the full scene intelligence strategy. It also fits Huawei's enabling developers and ecological expertise.

Chips, AI, network capabilities, distributed OS,IoT architecture and developer ecology-these capabilities are giving Huawei the opportunity to become a core player of headphones and even audio hardware. Huawei is using the most powerful technology it has accumulated over the years as a dance gift, inviting our headphones into the fully connected intelligent waltz of the times.

At the beginning of Hongmeng, "sound" is the affection.

With the release of Kirin A1 chip and Huawei audio brand strategy, we can see that Huawei has shown considerable determination to join the blue ocean of audio hardware market.

The characteristic of this track is that it is easy to learn but difficult to master. Headset is a kind of "big sound, elephant invisible" product. Its entry is extremely easy, anyone can do it, but really want to enter the sound hall, and even lead the crisscross and climb of the times, we need to face endless challenges.

Combined with Huawei's technological advantages, terminal product advantages and application ecology, Huawei audio hardware strategy must complete three tasks in order to make Huawei audio products brand and go to the future.

1. Pursue the differentiation from technology to products and establish the brand of "Huawei Audio".

Today, Huawei already has the differentiation of technology, which can naturally derive the differentiation of ecology and products. With the help of AI and distributed panoramic technology, the combination of open and vertical applications, such as education, health care, sports, etc., requires an integrated collaborative experience of AI technology and IoT system and cloud, and star products are needed to consolidate user awareness and promote differentiation. Huawei's innovative single smart glasses in partnership with GM have demonstrated some of Huawei's understanding of the future of smart audio.

2. Pursue the technological limit and widely transform Huawei's technological advantages into audio products.

When Huawei makes headphones and audio products, its biggest advantage is technology accumulation, and its biggest task is to fully release technology accumulation into products and complete value conversion. From today's point of view, AI interaction and full scene experience is an excellent starting point. With intelligence as the entrance, constantly promoting the overall difference in sound quality, wearing and battery life, this mobile phone road is also suitable for headphones. The task of Huawei audio products is to tell consumers that Huawei is the energy source of headphones, not the limit of headphones. Chip technology, full-stack AI capabilities, and Hongmeng OS-driven full-scene IoT solutions need to continuously inject "Huawei-style practical information" into headphones.

3. Accommodate 5G+AI+IoT and open the imagination of audio products in the era of fully connected audio.

Under the change of 5G wave and the interaction mode of AI, all kinds of hardware are undergoing new and imaginative changes. Mobile phones have entered the mobile AI track; speakers have entered the era of full intelligence; and television has entered the future imagination space of "smart screen" mode. So how on earth should headphones change with Huawei's leading 5G and AI technology? Into what? Will it evolve into "new species" that we can't imagine today? This is a subject to be solved by Huawei, and it is also an excellent opportunity for Huawei in the audio hardware track.

Headphones are a bright star, but today there are still too many problems. From connection, interaction to experience, this is a treasure trove of audio that needs to be upgraded. Huawei's Hongmeng, chip and AI technology are trying to solve these problems from the bottom to build a truly seamless, people-oriented audio product connection with users.

Huawei, which solves the basic problems in a down-to-earth manner, has made it clear through its audio product strategy that it is about to begin to embrace the acceleration of the audio market. Huawei, which is adept at constantly shifting dividends from technology, may be just the reformer the industry needs today.

When the playing of the times sounded in our headphones, Huawei came.

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