Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

The smart speaker seems to have touched the ceiling.

According to the monthly sales tracking report on China's smart speaker equipment market released by IDC, sales of smart speakers in China were 14.83 million units in the first half of 2022, down 27.1% from the same period last year, and sales were 4.2 billion yuan, down 16.2% from the same period last year.

The domestic smart speaker market has been in the doldrums for more than one or two days. According to the IDC report, the online channel sales of domestic smart speakers have declined month-on-month for six consecutive quarters since the fourth quarter of 2020. Even Xiaomi, Baidu and MBA, which are in the top echelon, are under pressure from sales. Shipments of smart speakers from Alibaba, Baidu and Xiaomi fell 25.6 per cent, 23.8 per cent and 18.5 per cent respectively in the first quarter of this year, according to Strategy Analytics.

Today's smart speaker market, it is difficult to repeat the prosperity of that year.

In 2014, Amazon launched the smart speaker Echo, and then the wind of the smart speaker blew all over the world. Tech giants such as Google, Apple, Xiaomi, Baidu and Ali, as well as a number of start-ups, joined the scuffle to launch their own smart speaker brands. By the second half of 2017, there were nearly 50 domestic enterprises making smart speakers.

Xiaomi, Baidu, Huawei and other intelligent speakers

At that time, the tech giants insisted that smart speakers were a rising star after smartphones and tablets. Voice interaction technology is considered to be the core of the next generation of human-computer interaction, while intelligent speakers are the standard home equipment in the era of 5G and the Internet of things. In the vision of the technology giant, smart speakers will become the entrance and command center of smart homes, linking air conditioners, lights, curtains and other household items.

In order to compete for this AIot "entrance", MBA and other companies began to fight a price subsidy war, pressing the price of smart speakers to less than 100 yuan. Long-term price competition, so that small companies can not afford to leave early, large manufacturers generally lose money, but until today, smart speakers have not found a suitable position in the market.

As the novelty fades, the embarrassment of its own positioning, functional limitations and privacy security storm make it a rejected object. Behind the huge 5G and Internet of things ecology, the track logic has quietly changed, the voice interaction technology will be presented in a richer media form, and the intelligent speaker itself is blurring.

The "fake entrance" of smart home goes against one's wishes, and the development of smart speakers in recent years is not satisfactory. The tech giants drew one big cake after another for the smart speakers, but failed to deliver, making consumers take advantage of the fun and return home. The tech giants waved their hands and gave away money for sales, but it was just a flash in the pan.

The fundamental reason is that the concept of smart speakers as the "entrance" of smart homes does not meet expectations, the so-called family intelligence revolution has not been realized, and consumers shout that it is a "hoax".

Before the birth of the smart speaker, the interaction of the smart home was realized by touch, and the intelligent speaker equipped with voice interaction technology can use sound to manipulate the device, which is indeed more in line with the nature of human laziness and better interaction than manual control. Therefore, in theory, the logic of smart speakers as the entrance to smart homes is established.

Take Xiaomi's Xiaomi speaker, for example, it supports all Xiaomi's smart hardware, if a consumer has a "Xiaomi home", then he can control all the equipment in the house with a word.

However, it seems that the smart high-end, hands-free home life is based on smart speakers and all smart homes come from the same manufacturer, which is not likely in daily life. Due to the lack of a unified standard, it is difficult for smart speakers to interconnect many devices.

The intelligent hardware devices in a family may come from many different manufacturers, and they fight each other on their own. It is difficult for intelligent hardware products between different suppliers and different ecology to work together, and there is a complex game of interests. To put it bluntly, the intelligent speaker, which is only at the ecological end of the Internet of things, cannot be manipulated by other intelligent devices.

And why does the entrance to the Internet of things have to be smart speakers? In terms of voice interaction, intelligent speakers are no better than smart bracelets, which do not have the problem of far-field interaction. For example, the small love speaker Pro does not have a built-in battery and must be plugged in to work, and users can only call Xiao Ai within a specific range.

More and more manufacturers have been using mobile phones, tablets, intelligent central control screens as smart home interaction portals, and the carrier of voice interaction technology can also be switches, televisions, washing machines, air conditioners and other household appliances. As multi-entry, non-inductive interaction and active intelligent service gradually become the mainstream development trend, smart speaker is no longer the only entrance to smart home.

According to Zinc Finance, Xiaomi's intelligent ceiling lamp has two voice control modes, one is Xiaoai speaker, the other is Siri. In other words, if you have any Apple products such as iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, etc., you don't need to buy extra speakers for voice control.

Xiaomi flagship store chat screenshot so, from the current market situation, through a speaker to achieve smart home scene, it is almost difficult to achieve.

In the hot years of artificial intelligence, there is a saying that intelligent speakers can be the companions of celibate young people who rent houses alone in a foreign land, providing them with spiritual comfort. On a larger scale, smart speakers seem to be able to bring companionship services to the elderly, children and anyone with emotional needs.

The ideal is very full, the goal is very clear, but the reality is indescribable. Until now, users still need to wake up with keywords such as "Xiao Ai" and "Xiaodu" when using smart speakers. Smart speakers can only passively accept instructions, which is a far cry from "companionship with temperature".

Users want to achieve "conversational" communication with smart speakers, but most of the time they talk to each other. Intelligent speakers can not understand complex language scenes, can only play music, tell stories, check the weather and other simple functions, and sometimes even the most basic instructions can go wrong. Basically all smart speaker users have experienced a "mentally retarded conversation" with smart speakers.

For example, "Xiao Ai, turn on the table lamp."you have several lights, so why don't you tell me which room you want to control the equipment?"turn on the table lights!"I don't understand." Or "Xiaodu, sing S.H.E 's Ring Ring Ring."I guess you want to hear Gong Lina,"slightly". "" Xiaodu, it's Ring Ring Ring singing S.H.E. "" well, a song of S.H.E 's "galacosaccharism" is for you. "

When a netizen shared with Xiao du in bilibili, there was a movie called "Machine Butler". The protagonist of the story is Andrew, the robot. He is not only a household machine, but also a member of the host family. He understands human customs and emotions. Can share laughter and sadness together. Although Samantha, the artificial intelligence system in the movie "she", has no specific form, her humorous, gentle and considerate character makes her gradually walk into the heart of the protagonist and become each other's soul mate.

Although high-intelligence artificial intelligence will also give rise to a series of ethical problems, what is certain is that basically no user will get the satisfaction of "escorting" from a speaker.

After experiencing similar incidents, users often angrily throw smart speakers into the corner to eat dust, or automatically downgrade it to a regular stereo with AI technology and use it as a content player.

In fact, after a clear understanding of the situation, even manufacturers have developed smart speakers to high sound quality. For example, Xiaomi's Sound and Huawei's Sound X both use sound quality improvement as their main selling point. Xiaomi Sound adapts functions such as UWB music relay, while Huawei continues its cooperation with Tivale. The price of smart speakers has also risen from dozens of yuan to hundreds or even thousands of yuan.

Caught up in the scandal, the smart speaker has not achieved the "entrance" of smart home, nor can it be a companion artificial intelligence, and it is also faced with other difficulties to persuade consumers to quit.

Two years ago, the media exposed that the smart speaker products of technology giants such as Amazon, Google and Apple had turned into "bugs" to collect negative news about users' voice. Amazon has a team of thousands around the world that listen to recordings of all commands sent to voice assistant Alexa by users on the grounds of improving their software. Apple's Siri team and Google Assistant team have adopted a similar manual listening approach.

Smart speakers are often used in private spaces, and if they become bugs, users are almost streaking in the sun. In this unsafe situation, consumers naturally lose confidence in smart speakers.

Not long ago, some netizens reported on black cat complaints that the Tmall genie they bought often staged a late-night "Psycho". This smart speaker almost sings in the middle of the night, and it can turn up the volume by itself, and it doesn't work if it is reset by itself. Their children are often frightened by the sound of sudden arrival, so that they only dare to turn it on during the day.

Black cat complains that screenshot smart speakers not only fail to bring convenience to users' lives, but also bring a series of troubles, so what's the point of buying smart speakers?

To some extent, smart speakers are disappearing. The voice interaction technology behind it is being integrated into the intelligent ecology of various families in the form of a voice assistant, while the intelligent speaker itself is getting closer and closer to the "sound". Perhaps in the future, smart speakers will no longer exist independently as a hardware device.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: zinc Finance (ID:xincaijing), author: Chen Yan

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.