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Text | Xiao Yi
Smart speakers have become a standard feature among tech giants.
Starting with Amazon Echo, over the last couple of years, major tech giants have jumped into the smart speaker market. Whether it's Google Home from Google, Invoke from Microsoft, Apple's rumored HomePod, Facebook's rumored entry, Baidu's DuerOS, Alibaba's Tmall Genie, Xiaomi's AI speaker, Tencent's smart speaker, or Rokid's Rocky Speaker, smart speakers are making waves everywhere...
According to NetEase Intelligence, industry insiders reveal that at present, almost all tech giants and AI startups in China have entered the smart speaker market in their own unique ways. Some predict that with the release of several major manufacturers' products, from the second half of this year to next year, the smart speaker market in China will see a significant boom, with market potential far exceeding expectations.
However, Wang Hanhua, President of the wireless audio brand Sonos China, has a different perspective. For any giant, smart speakers will not constitute more than 1% of their overall business.
Wang Hanhua explained the impending “100 Box Wars†at Sonos China. He said, "The involvement of tech giants is to explore the voice interaction market post-mobile era. The competition in the voice interaction era could be a technology race, an industry battle, or even a home application scenario competition, but the ultimate peak is the competition of OS."
Wang Hanhua believes that the development of smart speakers is a natural progression because we truly need hands-free scenarios. "Whoever creates the OS will have a significant say, as these giants are targeting the IoT OS, not just smart speakers," Wang Hanhua stated.
Wang Hanhua further elaborated that with the rise of everything-connected products, reaching agreements through alliances is nearly impossible. Amazon Alexa offers a good solution—opening up an API interface and turning various technologies into Skills. This points everyone in a certain direction, but it also implies that Skill vendors must relinquish some of their rights.
Why a smart speaker, instead of a smart TV or other device to carry voice interaction? In Wang Hanhua's view, smart speakers are ideal devices for home intelligence control, deployable throughout the home. TV products are currently trending towards slimmer designs, making it difficult to incorporate far-field sound control, let alone far-field voice interaction. Additionally, smart TVs cannot be ubiquitous because we cannot place a TV in every room—it would be too costly.
Focusing on its role in the ecosystem, Sonos retreats to integrate service providers.
To most people in the country, the Sonos brand may not be well-known, but in the U.S., Sonos is renowned as an innovator in the audio industry due to its excellent wireless audio experience. Wang Hanhua said that Sonos' philosophy is to create a new home music system so that people can listen to their favorite music anytime and anywhere in their homes.
“To be a smart speaker, you must first offer a diverse music library so that music choices aren’t limited. This is the content integration Sonos has been striving for since its inception,†Wang Hanhua said. “After building a music library, smart speakers can learn user music listening habits, intelligently recommend and edit music based on preferences, and configure different music for users in different scenarios.â€
This is the logic behind Sonos’ wireless audio approach, and Sonos aims to continue its edge in smart speakers.
Despite having access to all mainstream music service providers in China, how does Sonos address the key challenges of voice interactive technologies and content services in smart speakers?
Wang Hanhua explained to NetEase Intelligence that Sonos positions itself as a part of the smart speaker industry chain. Its primary focus is on sound design, audio quality, connectivity, and other hardware and software experiences while providing content service OS solutions to domestic and international manufacturers. Wang Hanhua added, “The content piece, once you become a platform, this positioning has value. For instance, from the music perspective, domestically and internationally, the competition for copyrights is fierce. If you rely solely on one ecosystem, it cannot meet all needs.â€
However, in the Chinese market, the competition for dialogue operating systems is fierce. How can one connect multiple OSs to a single piece of hardware? Is this path viable?
Wang Hanhua believes that Sonos has the opportunity to succeed. His reasoning is that, starting with Sonos as a WiFi speaker, all major music service providers in China have already integrated with it. Currently, about 80 major music service providers and audio-related companies globally have integrated with Sonos. “We maintain our positioning as Sonos. We don’t handle content or operating systems; we’re part of the ecosystem. Any music must have a playback outlet, whether it’s a headset, computer, or speaker—we do the speaker rings. This positioning has been acknowledged by some domestic voice-activated OS platforms,†Wang Hanhua said.
According to Wang Hanhua’s logic, Sonos wants to integrate different voice-activated OSs. It might be based on different wake-up words. For example, saying "Alexa" to the speakers invokes Amazon’s service, while saying "Hey! Siri" invokes Apple’s service. Depending on different wake-up commands, different service systems and cloud services are called upon to support multiple voice control platforms.
Even if the above path of integration can be achieved, Sonos still faces struggles for dominance and benefit distribution. This is because voice interaction-generated content services will generate traffic, and behind that traffic lies advertising revenue. Voice-activated OS vendors cannot easily access such a collective. Wang Hanhua doesn’t deny the existence of this problem, but he believes the future of smart speakers will become highly specialized, with different scenarios leading to products like music speakers, shopping speakers, and other vertical products solving the issue of benefit distribution.
“The platform-level companies that will eventually remain will be two or three. The two or three OSs above will gather a lot of application scenarios and hardware,†Wang Hanhua believes. “And the phone market is similar; the future of smart speaker products will range from 1000-6000 Yuan, catering to different price points.â€
In terms of product launches, Sonos has partnered with Amazon to develop smart speakers and is also exploring partnerships in China. However, according to Wang Hanhua, there will be no smart speakers with Chinese voice interaction available in the Chinese market this year.
All in Voice, what kind of product can smart speakers make?
After Apple released HomePod, many in the industry believe that the future of smart speakers will emerge in two ways: one path focusing on main smart interaction with increasingly affordable prices and many voice interactive features; another path focusing on sound quality for music enthusiasts.
Wang Hanhua told NetEase Intelligence that Sonos is positioned between these two paths, not only offering voice interactive functions but also emphasizing sound quality. “Sonos itself has high-end sound quality. Additionally, we aim to integrate all voice technologies and content services within our ecosystem. Just as we are now working with Amazon Alexa, we can also collaborate with Apple HomePod and Google Home in the future,†Wang Hanhua said. “Sonos is aiming to be the Tesla of the audio industry.â€
Regarding Sonos users, Wang Hanhua said that Sonos’ user base won’t be categorized by age, income, or occupation. “Our criterion is that this person should have two pursuits. First, they genuinely love music, and second, they have aspirations for a higher quality of life,†Wang Hanhua believes that the Chinese audio consumer market remains substantial, and he is confident that music is a fundamental human need.
On content services, according to Wang Hanhua, Sonos only provides an entry point. What you can hear depends on your account relationships on these platforms. Therefore, Sonos won’t deal with music copyright issues.
When NetEase Intelligence asked if Chinese internet companies requested custom smart speakers from Sonos, would Sonos accept orders? Wang Hanhua said that depending on the expected market sales volume, if the numbers are significant, they would certainly take the order.
According to Wang Hanhua, currently, Sonos has three branches in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. Shanghai focuses on R&D and production. Shenzhen handles the supply chain, while Beijing focuses on sales and marketing.
“Sonos’ future strategy is ‘All in Voice,’†Wang Hanhua said.
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