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

Draw the key points: the intelligent speaker has fallen from the tuyere, on the one hand, the intelligent experience is not good, and the sales volume is declining; on the other hand, big factories fight a price war, start-ups quit, and the track is always in the stage of losing money and shouting, and can not get out of the predicament for a long time.

"it's basically gray, so it can only be used as an alarm clock," many users said when talking about smart speakers.

One of the major pain points that smart speakers are complaining is that the interactive experience is not completely intelligent and mentally retarded behaviors are frequent, not to mention realizing the beautiful vision promoted by the manufacturers who control the smart home.

Smart speakers really can't sell. Data show that the market sales of smart speakers in China have fallen by more than 20% for three consecutive quarters this year, in sharp contrast to the hot situation in the early years.

More importantly, under the price war of Baidu, Ali, Xiaomi and other giants, smart speakers are basically in a state of losing money and shouting, and a large number of smart speaker start-ups have withdrawn. Smart speakers, to be abandoned by users and capital?

The dream of a "control center" was dashed in 2014, when Amazon launched a smart speaker Echo, which not only integrates voice functions, but also controls switches and lights, and is seen as a promising control center for smart homes in the future. Under the popularity of Echo, for a time, many domestic Internet companies have entered the bureau, Ali, Baidu, Xiaomi, Huawei and so on have launched their own intelligent speaker products.

However, until now, it is still difficult to say that the smart speaker has realized the final vision.

Yuan Shuai, executive vice president and senior data analyst of the Agricultural Travel Industry Revitalization Research Institute, said that the biggest reason is that consumers' cognition has returned to rationality, and smart speakers are not used in the legendary Internet of everything. Give full play to the role and value of Internet product companies. It is rare to see all kinds of smart home decoration and smart equipment manufacturers announce the combination and integration of smart speakers. In the configuration of a full set of smart homes, compared with smartphones, smart speakers actually play an "dispensable" role.

It is true.

First, there are many possible "control centers" in smart homes, such as mobile phones, televisions, central control screens and so on. For Internet manufacturers' intention to turn smart speakers into smart home control centers, TV makers clearly will not agree to put themselves in a subordinate position.

In 2015, Yang Dongwen, then president of Skyworth Group, shouted that television would change from a simple program receiving tool to a family intelligent control center and a family entertainment center. As the protagonist of the living room and an important display terminal in the smart family, TV has natural advantages to become the interaction center, control center, playback center and storage center in the smart family.

With the emergence of more and more enterprises advocating whole-house intelligence, they have launched new control centers, such as Huawei, Orebo and so on. Compared with the control of intelligent speaker, the intelligent central control screen integrates more scenes and functions.

More interestingly, in the process of upgrading the intelligence of all kinds of traditional household appliances, many household appliance companies are adding screen touch functions to refrigerators, washing machines and even integrated stoves.

Second, the control protocols and standards of smart home are still in a state of disunity. Take Xiaomi and Huawei as an example, the two smart devices are not compatible, neither Xiaoai speakers nor Huawei speakers can control each other's products, while Internet companies such as Ali and Baidu are also building biosphere around themselves. even home appliance companies are launching their own agreements and platforms.

In mobile phone manufacturers, Internet enterprises, home appliance enterprises and other players go their own way, it is undoubtedly very difficult to use intelligent speakers to achieve unified control.

What is more controversial is that, compared with the voice control of intelligent speakers, some intelligent enterprises in the whole house have proposed active and intelligent interaction, that is, identifying the status of users through sensors and other technologies, and actively providing services such as switching lights and home appliance control, which poses a challenge for intelligent speakers to become a control center.

Unintelligent and retarded? Yuan Shuai believes that the intelligent speaker itself also faces many core product problems, such as information and data security, intelligent interactive experience, obstacles in voice interaction, link adaptation of content, and so on.

It is worth noting that this is also the most complained by smart speaker users. Under the publicity of manufacturers, users hope to achieve similar "conversational" communication with intelligent speakers, but most intelligent speakers cannot understand complex language scenes. They can only achieve simple functions such as playing music, telling stories, and checking the weather, and sometimes even the most basic instructions can go wrong. Many smart speaker users have experienced "mentally retarded conversations" with smart speakers.

A video blogger posted the mentally retarded behavior of his little love speaker on social media. After he gave the order to open the curtains, the little love speaker called it a "small thing" but did not take action; it issued the order to turn on the air conditioner. The little love speaker plays air-conditioning-related songs directly.

"the lights in my house have to be turned off two or three times every night, and sometimes I suddenly turn on the lights for you when I watch TV. Just like the mentally retarded, are you still smart?" He complained.

In fact, one year at Xiaomi's AIoT launch, Xiaomi's chairman, Lei Jun, flipped over while demonstrating a small love speaker. After being asked many times, "what are the names of the three trees?" When asked, "how much is 125 plus 357 plus 567?", Xiao Ai's speaker did not respond directly, causing a lot of laughter at the scene.

Similar situations of mental retardation have occurred in other brands.

On the black cat complaint [complaint entrance], a parent responded that the Tmall genie bought was always singing and talking by himself, scaring the children. " Almost sing in the middle of the night, turn up the volume, and reset it to no avail. I responded to Tmall's elf customer service nine times, and none of them was able to deal with the problem. The children were often frightened by the sudden sound when they were playing. As a result, I had turned off my phone for a long time and only dared to open it during the day to listen to children's songs. "

Baidu's Xiaodu smart speakers have been exposed to the bad experience of interspersing ads.

One user complained that since May this year, every time a small smart speaker is awakened to play a song or story, the speaker will insert some advertisements promoting "618" and some 10-second "chicken soup words" before playing. Seriously affected the use of the experience. Especially before going to bed at night, lullaby and hypnotic stories are interspersed with advertisements, making it impossible to sleep quietly.

Under all kinds of poor experiences, many users say that the smart speakers at home are used very infrequently, either as an alarm clock or occasionally as a music player, and spend most of their time eating gray. Smart speakers were also on the list in a poll of the most ash-prone electronic / electrical products.

A loss-making business? According to the latest report from research firm Loto Technology, in the third quarter of this year, sales of smart speakers in China were 5.75 million, down 26.2% from the same period last year, and a sharp decline of more than 20% for three consecutive quarters. It is clear that the market for smart speakers has long been saturated.

Behind this, it also has something to do with the big price war among the head enterprises.

In previous years, when smart speakers were hot, Baidu, Ali, Xiaomi and other enterprises have launched low-cost products to compete for the market, and some mini smart speakers even sold for dozens of yuan, which made many smart speaker startups unable to bear it.

For example, Ruoqi Rokid, go out to ask, early years have launched ask speakers Tichome and Rokid speakers and other intelligent speaker products, now the two companies no longer sell such products on the official website. At present, Ruoqi Rokid focuses on AR glasses, while going out to ask questions has shifted the focus to smartwatches.

In 2020, Yun Zhisheng, who started with voice technology, said in his prospectus that the company had given up the business related to smart speakers. " In the field of smart speakers, Baidu and Xiaomi occupy market share in the form of price war and subsidies, resulting in significant price cuts or withdrawal from the market for smaller downstream customers. The living space of small and medium-sized speaker manufacturers has been seriously squeezed, and some manufacturers have gone bankrupt, resulting in the corresponding loss of high-margin customer resources. "

According to Loto Technology, Baidu, Xiaomi, Tmall and Huawei ranked among the top four in China's smart speaker market in the third quarter of this year, with a combined share of 97%. It can be seen that these four companies have monopolized the smart speaker market.

However, under the outcry of losing money, various companies are also looking for a new way out for smart speakers.

For example, Baidu, Xiaomi and Tmall have launched intelligent speakers with screens. Compared with early intelligent speakers, they also add touch screen interaction in addition to voice interaction, and also have richer functions such as watching videos, so the price naturally increases accordingly. Huawei tilts the focus of intelligent speakers to sound quality, focusing on high-end sound quality, and pricing naturally moves towards high-end.

Yuan Shuai suggested that next, intelligent speaker manufacturers should no longer only pay attention to seizing the share, but should focus more on the function and experience of the product itself, so that good products can occupy a stable market, and the so-called intelligent products with single function and poor experience are bound to be eliminated by the market.

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