Smart speaker, a modern factory, affected by loss

When the number of planners in Nanshan District of Shenzhen soared to hundreds, the savvy digger realized that the startup had become a supporting role in the story.

Yes, BATJ, Xiaomi, and Lenovo have all arrived, and they have a big fanfare. The conference will be one after another, which is quite lively. Do traffic portals, build an ecological platform, become a home terminal, smart speakers are placed on the public.

In the consumer market, this is destined to be a game of squad and smashing. So, the veteran who started the smart speaker three years ago, took the team and changed his face to become a technical solution company.

At the supply chain end, in order to make a profit for the orders, the foundries will fight for me, and even pay a million yuan to make a sale. "In the end, I was working for a big company. Anyway, I decided to give up this wave." The old week in the supply chain market in Shenzhen has been frustrated for five years.

"The domestic and foreign users have different habits, and the domestic market demand is not rigid. I am more pessimistic about the domestic market." Zhao Nan, executive director of Xiangfeng Investment, talked about the cool attitude of smart speakers, which is also a typical response from investors.

Based on the tracking survey of online Taobao (including Tmall) sales data, the overall monthly sales volume of smart speaker categories is less than 20,000 units. I don’t believe that the investment market for painting cakes says, “Market data shows everything, and it’s meaningless to talk on paper.”

Influx of big players, the capital market is cooling down, the supply chain is passive, entrepreneurs are looking for a way out, and sales data is bleak. This "speaker dream" that has been artificially sensitized by artificial intelligence, who will finally decide?

First, the Great Leap Forward

Three years ago, the Amazon smart speaker Echo released, the integrated voice assistant system Alexa's smart speaker market began to ferment. Until last year, Echo's sales data began to make a qualitative leap, breaking through 5 million units in one fell swoop, becoming the sales leader of small speakers in the United States.

A year ago, Google launched a similar product, Google Home. In May of this year, Apple released HomePod on WWDC. At the same time, a large wave of Internet vendors Xiaomi, Lenovo, Ali, Baidu, Tencent are not willing to show weakness, enthusiasm is high, according to the gourd painting scoop to launch a smart speaker with almost the same shape.

In addition, Himalayan, cool dogs, cheetahs and other peripheral players enter in different postures; Haier, Midea and other home appliance brands urgently need to test new technologies in small-sized home appliances; and more than 20 entrepreneurial teams.

The official rise of the domestic smart speaker market began in the second half of 2016, and this is the ripple effect brought about by the steep increase in Amazon Echo sales.

Echo 2015 sales data trend

According to the online statistics of Slice Intelligence, Echo's sales have ushered in a blowout since October 2015 and reached a climax in November.

Of course, the shape of the speakers is not the key. Attracting many players, especially the big players, is that Amazon has opened up the smart voice system. 7000 manufacturers have been connected for half a year, and there is almost no pervasiveness in the US CES booth. Up to now, the skills of Alexa have exceeded 15,000. The emergence of successful precedents shows that the platform behind the smart speakers has a huge imagination.

The giants have entered the market and the small and medium-sized manufacturers have swarmed up, which once increased the possibility that the smart speaker market will become a popular outlet.
Second, the powerless data is 100,000 units. This is the overall sales volume of the smart speaker in 2016. The data comes from the “2016 Annual Report of HKUSTXunfei Co., Ltd.”.

Linglong Technology, which belongs to the 叮咚 叮咚, was jointly established by Keda Xunfei and Jingdong. Whether it is behind the voice technology support, or the e-commerce platform's ability to conduct flow, the 叮咚 speaker is a rare combination of boxing in the domestic smart speakers.

According to the staff of the 叮咚 市场 市场 market, as of the end of June this year, 叮咚 speakers increased by 130% compared with 2016. However, with 100,000 units of annual sales as the base, this data is still not ideal.

In the Jingdong e-commerce platform, search for "smart speakers", among the top 15 sales rankings, 13 are 叮咚 speakers, 2 of which are cool dog speakers. This result does not actually have a reference value. It can only be said that "100,000 units" and "130% growth" are not easy.

According to Taobao (including Tmall) e-commerce platform, "smart speaker" as a search category, a 30-day sales data survey. More than 21 stores with monthly sales exceeding 100 units cover a total of 15 brands (including OEM OEMs are not included), with an overall sales volume of 17,645 units.

Smart speaker online sales ranking

1) In the sales ranking distribution, the top ranked Xiaomi Internet speakers, Chi S1 Bluetooth speakers, and cool dog Pandora speakers are all concentrated in the 150-400 yuan range; the fourth-ranked music pots are mostly OEM, the price Below 150 yuan, the uniqueness of its form and function wins.

2) In terms of product intelligence, it mainly refers to the realization of voice interaction function. Among the 15 brands that sold more than 100 units a month, only two Xiaomi Internet speakers, Philips aw6005/Xiaofei Ali smart speakers realized the voice interaction function, and were limited to use in some scenes.

To a certain extent, this also proves the chicken ribs of the current voice interaction function.

3) From the price side, it is not difficult to see that SONOS PLay5 and SONOS PLay1 occupy the head space, and their main functions are still focused on sound quality and experience.

Intelligent speaker online market share distribution

4) Based on the monthly sales data of Taobao (including Tmall) e-commerce platform, the total number is 17,645 units, which is used as the base to obtain the sales volume of each brand. Xiaomi's Internet sales accounted for 26%, and the top three had more than half of the total. The remaining brands have lower market participation.

Overall, the online data of smart speakers based on the domestic market is not optimistic. At least, the stock market with less than 20,000 monthly sales and annual sales of less than one million units is difficult to support the large-scale investment mentioned above.

If you put it two years ago, the data in the smart speaker market may be even more tragic. It is not difficult for us to understand the situation of the Laowang company that entered the market at the end of 2015, and why it later switched to a technology solution provider.

At that time, Pharaoh and his team portrayed the smart speakers as robots on the stage. When the smart home was in control, the face was full of confidence and impassion.

“In the past few years, until now, smart speakers haven’t really started in the consumer market,” Pharaoh said frankly. He predicted that the current stock market will be within one million units, and the actual amount may start in the next year.

“There is a real change in this market. The size of the volume is an important indicator. In China, at least millions to tens of millions can be proved that the market is recognized, and at the same time, it needs to maintain a high level of activity.” The company's voice-providing solution for Symbian.
Third, the helplessness of the foundry "112 companies in Shenzhen Nanshan District within one kilometer to do voice intelligence", this is the general manager and vice president of Himalayan hardware, Li Haibo's eyes on the supply chain.

"But this is a plan that can be accepted by factories with a background and a beautiful water flow." Lao Zhou said that he did not want to catch up with the smart speaker outlet this year.

"There have been few Internet companies in the past few years! I was stunned by LeTV before. Last year, VR was smashed by the storm." Lao Zhou has already seen the Internet hurdles "routing" changed this year, calm and cautious. A lot.

As soon as the market reached the market, orders were coming, but once the market became cold, a large number of overcapacity and pipeline resources invested in the early stage could only be digested by the supply chain.

According to Lao Zhou, due to the layout of major Internet companies, the current domestic OEM factories have received tasks from all over the country. However, compared with the production capacity of the foundry, the order quantity is “still a business with a lot of people, and the last pit is an ordinary manufacturing and processing enterprise”.

At its core, it is tied to big companies, and the supply chain has been in a passive state for a long time. “The gross profit is low, and even the loss of the book is for sale. Most factories with backgrounds only need to be beautiful.”

In this process, the supply chain is being squeezed, and the slow return of funds often occurs.

Xiao Yang, a marketing department of a mature program, told Sina Technology that "the current smart speaker program competition has been fierce. Because the program is relatively mature, the market has begun to take low prices, and some customers mainly look at prices when comparing."

According to Xiao Yang, it is common for large customers to change their account period, which leads to a slow return of company funds. “In general, we need to pay 70% of the order amount, and the customer pays 30% in advance. If we encounter orders larger than 10K, we will pay more than one million.” This is one of the reasons why Lao Zhou is not willing to “play” with big companies.

"If Ali loses a smart speaker order, month MOQ (minimum order quanTIty, minimum order quantity) 100k, the account period is 6 months, there is no advance payment, do you think anyone has answered?" Lao Zhou asked himself, "There must be! But we can't take it. In fact, the billing period is not a problem, there will be a third party advance. But the key is that the product has no profit. Basically, it is also white work."

This is the helplessness of the foundry. But the brand is not risk-free. "Amazon Echo, the domestic Tmall Elf just adjust the price, do you know how big the shock is for the solution provider?"
4. Who will make a final decision?
In May of this year, Amazon Echo has experienced a total price cut, including Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Tap, which are reduced by 30-40 US dollars, and the 499 yuan Tmall Elf released this month, which is not small for the foundry. Impact means that the cost of this solution will be overturned.

As mentioned above, the current market stock of less than one million units in China simply cannot support the influx of giants and entrepreneurs. If this bubble bursts, who will pay for it? What are the stop loss patterns?

"Now there are a large number of influxes, there will be many failure cases in the future. But for large companies, it is not a big deal to make a speaker's R&D investment amortization; small companies do not recommend a platform, front-end microphone array, back-end Semantics are very good cuts," said Liu Wei, partner of Xinghe Internet, to Sina Technology.

There is no need for voice interaction in Chinese living habits. “This is the biggest market threshold.” The interviewed investors maintain a consistent view on market thresholds or versatility prerequisites. “The domestic market does not have rigid demand” .

Regarding whether the Internet traffic entrants are expected to improve the market, Zhongke Chuangda’s Paul said that it will not. The improvement of ecology is indeed inseparable from Internet vendors. But looking at the history of BAT hardware development, without exception, there is no scale.

“The main reason is that Internet companies lack hardware genes, lack of supply chain capabilities, hardware design capabilities, and sales channel capabilities for consumer electronics.”

As far as the existing players are concerned, Ali and Tencent, which have complete ecology, are optimistic, especially watching the opening of the WeChat portal. "But they are not necessarily appearing as hardware brand manufacturers, but more optimistic about branded speakers and consumer electronics manufacturers."

In addition, the improvement of supply chain capabilities is also an important condition, "the supply of chip Ready and memory is sufficient to support the explosion of sales in 2018."
Five, waiting for the tide to recede

In the face of Gartner's technology maturity curve, the ups and downs between the ups and downs have already been doomed to the final fate and trend of the industry. But despite this, every turn and rise still touches people's hearts.

In fact, in addition to following the hurdles, above the capital turmoil, the practitioners will still have a little insistence and determination.

As the old Zhou said, this road is suitable for walking slowly.

(It should be requested by the interviewer that Lao Zhou, Lao Wang and Xiao Yang mentioned in this article all use pseudonyms.)

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