Smart Speakers are NO Longer Smart Speakers in 2022

Why did smart speakers with screens grow against the trend during the epidemic? On the surface, due to the outbreak of online education, smart speakers have become a dedicated terminal for many children to take online classes. On a deeper level, it is because smart speakers with screens provide intelligent interaction that combines "voice + vision + face + gestures". What people need is intelligent interaction, not voice interaction itself.

For the PC Internet driven by keyboard and mouse, the application scenarios are limited to the "online economy"; for the mobile Internet driven by touch screens, the application scenarios expand to offline life scenarios such as payment and travel; in the era of intelligent interaction, AI has penetrated into all walks of life and is even ubiquitous. Application scenarios will become more.

For example, after the Xiaodu smart speaker becomes a Xiaodu smart screen with a screen, the application scene in the home is no longer just a traditional intelligent assistant that provides information services like Siri, but can provide services similar to home entertainment, home care, family The application scenarios of family services such as education, family health, and family pension have become wider. These services cannot be achieved if they are based on the voice interaction of traditional smart speakers.

In other words, smart speakers with only voice interaction capabilities can only be transitional products, and are "Beta versions" of AI interactive devices. Because of this, the industry is no longer using screen smart speakers as smart speakers, but instead It is regarded as a "new species" of intelligent assistants different from smart speakers. After all, the name "smart speaker with screen" itself is rather awkward.

"Smart speakers with screens" have replaced "smart speakers" as the growth driver of the industry, and giants have also launched a new round of layout.

In the post-smart speaker era, giants start a new journey

Although there are still some players entering the smart speaker market, the top three smart speaker players occupying 96% of the market share, Xiaodu, Tmall Genie and Xiaomi Xiaoai, are already making a deep layout of intelligent interaction. For example, there are the following directions:

1. Bet on a smart speaker with a screen to do AI interaction instead of just voice interaction.

On March 26, 2018, Xiaodu was released at home and became the first smart speaker with a screen in China. At that time, it was positioned as a "video smart speaker for listening to songs, watching dramas, and making calls". Data from Canalys shows that in the first half of 2020, small The total shipment volume of all smart speakers in China ranks first in China, and it also ranks first in the history of total shipments of screen smart speakers in the world. In the future, smart speaker players can even extend to scenarios such as smart large screens, smart home control screens, and shopping mall smart screens. Now smart screens are less and less classified as smart speakers. I think that smart speaker players will pay more attention to "screen" and become "smart screen" players.

2. Go out of the living room and create a ubiquitous "ubiquitous smart device".

Although there is a certain sense of presence in scenes such as hotels, smart speakers are mainly oriented to the "home" scene, especially the "living room" and "bedroom" scenes. However, as mentioned above, smart speakers open up the era of intelligent human-machine dialogue. With the explosive growth of IoT devices, more intelligent human-computer interaction scenarios are emerging, such as people and vehicles, such as people and portable devices. Therefore, letting the smart assistant go out of the living room and creating a ubiquitous "ubiquitous smart device" has become a new focus for the giants.

In addition to smart devices for the "home" scene, Xiaodu has launched Xiaodu voice car mounts and Xiaodu true wireless smart headsets for in-vehicle interconnection scenarios, which are oriented towards in-vehicle and portable scenarios respectively. After independent financing at the end of September 2020, in the scene It has become very radical in breaking the circle; Tmall Genie has tried outside the "speaker" and launched a smart beauty lamp; Xiao Ai has crossed the three ends of Xiaomi mobile phone, speaker and TV, and is responsible for connecting the different ecosystems of Xiaomi Scenes. Overall, the three giants do not want to only do speakers, but to do more smart devices to cover the whole scene of smart interaction.

3. Build an intelligent interactive system, allowing more devices to have built-in "voice assistants".

Tmall Genie has established an AI alliance to jointly develop smart devices with ecological cooperative brands through the "Tmall Genie Joint Customization" model. Tmall Genie provides voice intelligent interaction technology. In October last year, Tmall Elf announced that the Tmall Elf AI assistant will be fully opened, entering more intelligent scenarios such as mobile phones and home appliances;

At the MIDC conference, Xiaomi announced that Xiao Ai 5.0 was officially launched, and Xiao Ai will be officially upgraded from a voice assistant to an "intelligent life assistant", which is not limited to voice. However, Xiao Ai is an intelligent assistant serving the Xiaomi ecological chain. It is unlikely to be opened to third-party devices in the short term;

In the matter of "entering third-party devices", Xiaodu's assistant, Xiaodu, is also very active. Before making smart speakers, the first thing to do is to open up. Xiaodu Assistant partners cover mobile phones, watches, children's story machines, headphones, TVs, vehicles and other scenarios.

In short, what everyone needs to do is an intelligent interactive operating system, and smart speakers are just one of the carriers or applications of this system. After all, smart speakers are only a transitional product form.