20 19 Baidu uses "China speed" to accelerate AI into more people's lives.

At the opening moment of 20 19, when we tried to review the domestic smart speakers for the whole year &; When we predict the historical events of the voice intelligence industry and what will happen in the industry in the next new year, we call Baidu first.

Baidu's development this year can be described as "a sudden emergence of a new force", and it is very typical that it has developed from a verbally declared leading enterprise to a de facto "industry benchmark". Not only can it be used as a reference object for other Internet giants who have laid out their core competitiveness in their respective fields, but it can also be used as a reference object for many small and medium-sized enterprises that are developing along the direction of big ecological layout to seek differentiated development.

This year, we have seen many seemingly gorgeous events, but for the "initiator" of the events, the events must not be accidental. Behind it are Baidu's thinking about the status quo, its own competitiveness, market positioning, and its strategies and actions in hardware products, conversational AI system, upward skill application and downward industry application, and ecology.

Assess the situation and be determined to be the first.

Domestic smart speakers &; With the release of a series of platforms and products from 20 17 major manufacturers, the voice intelligence industry has gradually kicked off. Although before this, Amazon Alexa has become increasingly mature ecology, prompting many domestic small and medium-sized enterprises to follow up, but it has not formed a big ecological trend.

Because the domestic market is mainly the market of domestic players. After all, Amazon and Google have no plans to enter China in a short time. Developer ecology is not the focus of their global expansion, and it is of little significance to sell voice AI products in China. So for many domestic players who started almost at the same time, it is very meaningful to get the "first".

We can see that after nearly a whole year's "Hundred Box Wars" around 20 17, some changes have taken place in the voice intelligence market of 20 18: First, the pattern of head players in the smart speaker market began to appear; Second, voice AI is further developing in a diversified direction.

Regarding the first point, the most direct performance is that from the first quarter of 20 18, domestic Ali and Xiaomi ranked among the top five in the world for the first time, filling the gap of domestic brands in the global market in the past and maintaining a stable market position for three consecutive quarters. China has also become the second largest smart speaker market after the United States, with Ali and Xiaomi occupying the forefront for a long time and Ding Dong ranking third.

In the third quarter, this situation changed again: according to the China Smart Speaker Report 2065 438+2008 Q3 released by Konashe Company, Baidu, a "dark horse", entered the top three markets for the first time with strong market performance. Compared with Ali and Xiaomi, which are still in the top two (negative growth), Baidu, which has achieved 7 1 1% chain growth, appears to be full of stamina.

△ Konas Company 20 18 Q3 China Smart Speaker Report

In addition to its own brand products, Baidu's achievements in equipment empowerment are also very intriguing: in the third quarter of this year, IDC released a report saying that the shipments of DuerOS-enabled smart speakers ranked first in the country (65.438+0.54 million units, including small-scale own brands and other DuerOS-enabled smart speaker products).

△ Jing Kun, general manager of Baidu Smart Life Group (SLG), announced the latest business progress at Baidu World Congress 20 18.

According to Baidu's official happy news, as of 201811.500 million DuerOS smart devices have been activated, and voice interaction has exceeded 800 million times, basically achieving the rhythm of doubling data every quarter for seven consecutive quarters. DuerOS has become the largest, most active and prosperous interactive AI operating system in China.

This is not a person's achievement, but also the product line and business layout of "smart life".

On March 6, 20 18, Baidu announced the formal establishment of Smart Life Business Group (SLG). It consists of Secret Division, Hardware Ecological Channel Division and Raven Studio. On May 18, Baidu announced that Jing Kun, general manager of Secret Division, was the general manager of Smart Life Group (SLG), reporting directly to Li Yanhong. Among them, the Secret Division continues to focus on the construction and operation of DuerOS platform and ecology, and the Hardware Ecological Channel Division focuses on the mass production of first-party hardware, e-commerce construction and channel expansion.

This change actually reveals some mysteries: Baidu has raised conversational AI to the strategic focus of the company and promoted the development of DuerOS from the strategic level from top to bottom. First of all, it is reflected in the core technology needed for conversational AI. Baidu's research achievements in the field of artificial intelligence, as well as Baidu's brain, big data search and cloud capabilities, have given DuerOS the greatest support and continued to increase the layout of Baidu's intelligent hardware.

At the same time, in the past year or so, Baidu's strategic investment has also increased its investment in DuerOS from the group level. The performance is to increase or strategically invest in Netease Cloud Music, Baidu Video, Dragonfly FM, Pear Video and other content companies, and strategically invest in Xiaoyu Home, Jimmy Technology, Yunding Technology, BroadLink and other hardware and Internet of Things companies, further paving the way for DuerOS' hardware ecological development.

The most obvious performance in the consumer market is Baidu's subsidy policy for its own hardware products. Baidu's financial report shows that sales cost, comprehensive expenses and management expenses increased by 54% year-on-year, and Q3 increased by 565,438+0% year-on-year.

The support of the company's strategic layer, the inclination of resources and the stability of the team have laid an important foundation for DuerOS to rapidly enhance the core competence of conversational AI, deploy and land its own brand hardware products within one year, infiltrate the platform into third-party hardware, expand industry applications and establish a complete ecology.

Product Strategy: How Internet Companies Lead the Smart Speaker Consumer Market from Zero to One

This year, Baidu basically released a hardware product at the frequency of a press conference every two or three months, and finally * * * launched four kinds of smart hardware: Xiaodujia (599 yuan), Xiaodujia Smart Speaker (89 yuan), Xiaodujia Smart Speaker Pro( 169 yuan) and Xiaodujia Voice Car Bracket (from 69 yuan), forming a small family of "prosperous people".

The functional details of each product are not detailed here. For details, please check the previous reports of Shenzhen Bay. Here, we try to analyze Baidu's intelligent hardware product strategy from these products, and analyze the reasons for the best-selling products.

1, combined play

In addition to the four intelligent hardware mentioned above, Huawei's flat M5 (including bracket) jointly launched with Huawei at the end of 20 18 has also been included in the product system.

At present, the small family has covered the whole product form, and completed the full coverage from high, medium and low-end prices, including screen, no screen and medium, high and low-end speakers. Meet the purchase needs of geeks, early adopters and those who have requirements for the sound quality of smart speakers.

△ Small smart speaker: Mini smart speaker with high cost performance.

This combination is very similar to the Amazon Echo series:

In 20 17, Amazon introduced 1 1 pieces of hardware, such as Echo Plus with sound quality, Echo Show with screen, Dash Wand with voice shopping and Echo button for voice games.

In 20 18, Amazon continued to lead. In addition to the updating iteration of the original products, we have successively introduced 13 pieces of hardware, such as Echo Sub subwoofer, Echo Dot Kids Edition, and Echo Smart Plug.

2. Subdivide the coverage of user groups

Typical users in Xiao Di include a family of three, which runs in the family, two people, young people living alone and empty nesters. In addition to providing a wider range of product choices for users with different price sensitivities, Xiaojia has also achieved vertical coverage from subdivided scenes and users.

With the small smart speaker released in June, 2065438+2008, Baidu added "geek mode" and "children mode" to the smart speaker. The former shows Baidu's big data search, deep learning and multi-round dialogue capabilities, while the latter is the application of Baidu AI capabilities in children's scenes. Although the children's scene is not a new proposition, it is the first sub-user scene that Baidu has clearly captured and will focus on polishing except music.

Xiao Di, which originally had the advantage of audio-visual interaction, combined children's voice interaction with children's content after joining the children's mode, and became a weapon for children's companionship and learning. One device meets the needs of the elderly (video call) and children (companionship and study).

3. Full scene coverage from home to car

Although DuerOS has introduced the hardware solutions for in-vehicle machines and in-vehicle equipment for a long time, the landmark event is that Baidu launched a small voice car bracket in June 5438+065438+ 10, marking the first time DuerOS entered the car scene by installing in-vehicle products.

△ Small voice car bracket: standard version and wireless charging version. Combined with the small Bluetooth APP, it can provide a full-scene voice interaction experience in the car scene, including voice call navigation, music on demand, weather query, road conditions and other common services.

From the family living room to the bedroom and car, among family members, the elderly, children and young people, small families have been able to provide users with corresponding high-frequency applications from different dimensions, realizing the deep excavation of subdivided scenes and applications.

4. Dimension reduction strike

Baidu is also a heavy participant in the era when big manufacturers spend money to subsidize the market. The most typical is that the first intelligent video speaker in China is at home. As soon as it went public, it negotiated for the industry at a price of 599 yuan. During the Double Eleven and Double Twelve periods, the group price of 299 was launched and the goal of "explosion" continued.

△ Small home: There is a small degree of voice and screen interaction at home, video content output, communication ability and machine vision ability ... In Baidu's view, this is a product that allows users to experience correctly and has the ability to let artificial intelligence enter thousands of households.

From the outside world, it is a small degree to seize the market opportunity of smart speakers with screens at home. In fact, Xiaodujia is not the same kind of product from beginning to end, but a screenless smart speaker with different dimensions. Or simply put, its purpose may be to directly kill the whole category of screenless smart speakers (see Shenzhen Bay's previous interpretation of the incident).

The effect of Baidu's doing this is also very obvious: in Baidu's "Double Eleven" good news, Xiao Di dominated the sales rankings of several e-commerce platforms at home. Baidu can come from behind and squeeze into the third place in the domestic smart speaker market, and it is indispensable at home.

5. Third-party hardware: Grasp the big head

In terms of eco-cooperative hardware, Baidu DuerOS focuses on the stock market and captures the "head" devices with tens of millions of sales such as mobile phones, living room set-top boxes and TV boxes in mobile scenes. , and has reached cooperation with "head" manufacturers.

Specifically, it was launched on 20 18: Skyworth mainstream model Q6/Q7 series, TCL mainstream model X/C/P series, and ultra-meter H2 screenless TV; Skyworth X 1 PRO Xiaopai TV intelligent audio, Gehua Xiaoguo set-top box, Skyworth π box; Vivo X2 1, vivo NEX, Huawei P20, Huawei P20 Pro, OPPO Find X；; ; Reading Lang Watch W7, Little Genius Watch Z3, Little Search Watch X 1, story machine the Fire Rabbit and so on.

Platform strategy: focus on user experience, strengthen core system capabilities, and create a closed-loop business.

For an Internet giant like Baidu, playing a beautiful set of smart hardware cards is not enough to show its business ambition or ambition. Behind the small hardware family, DuerOS is the trump card.

1, focusing on user experience

It used to be the "largest" platform, but now I prefer to say it is the "best user experience" platform. A very important aspect of human-computer interaction experience is the experience of content acquisition.

DuerOS 3.0 was released at the 2nd Baidu AI Developers Conference held in July 20 18. What kind of label does the newly upgraded DuerOS 3.0 want to label itself? When Shenzhen Bay asked this question, Jing Kun made the above answer.

Baidu's own intelligent hardware labeled "small" has a greater mission and carries the core capabilities of DuerOS conversational AI. Compared with peers, the actual selling price of these products is even lower than the BOM cost. Product experience is very important for users to really use it, use it well and pass it on from mouth to mouth, so that price subsidies can really play a planning role.

The device can't wake up, the conversation can't go on, and there is no desired content ... These are the main complaints of users about the "intelligent ability" of smart speakers, and they are also the original sin of smart speakers becoming "mentally retarded speakers". In order to solve these problems, Baidu is doing continuous iteration and optimization around "hearing clearly, understanding and listening satisfactorily" at the core system level.

2. Strengthen the core system capabilities.

It is DuerOS's mission to create a more natural intelligent interactive experience of "machine actively learning to adapt to human beings".

As the chief spokesperson of Xiao Di at home, Li Yanhong opened the Baidu World Congress at 20 18 1 1, which showed endless dialogue, that is, more natural and smooth continuous interaction in man-machine dialogue. This demonstration represents a comprehensive upgrade of the interactive experience of Xiao Di products.

△ Li Yanhong demonstrated the latest home conversation ability at the 20 18 Baidu World Congress.

At the institutional and technical level, it is reflected in:

The upgrading of comprehension, satisfaction and reaction speed. After disassembly, the user's composite intention can be understood in a small scope, and multiple rounds of clarification and guidance can be carried out according to the user's statement;

With the help of Baidu's powerful knowledge map and the accumulation of search data, DuerOS can carry out large-scale deep learning and build a semantic model with a larger "brain capacity", so that the more you use it, the more you understand it;

Through the improvement and optimization in DuerOS cloud, voice ASR and device side, we will build an industry-leading device response speed.

3. Create a closed-loop business.

In the final analysis, making products still needs to make money.

When talking about the essence of making money, Zhao Peng, who was hired by Baidu as the senior director of the Secret Division this year, always showed the calmness of businessmen.

This is a problem that SLG must think thoroughly before the top management of Baidu Group makes decisions such as subsidies. "If you don't give users data, it will grow rapidly and be highly active; Or make money for me. " This kind of sound is like an undercurrent, so DuerOS must be forward-looking.

The release of DuerOS 3.0 represents the birth of a new business model of voice AI platform enterprises represented by Baidu in China. The first step to realize this business model is to make the content and service resources and developers in the original PC and mobile era make money first in the voice interaction scenario, so that the platform has a complete closed-loop commercialization.

Taking skill developers as an example, we can get benefits from DuerOS in four ways: payment within skills, payment for skills, 1 100 million developer support plan and 20 18 dialogue AI skill competition. DuerOS's business sharing model, and will give back 100% skill income to developers within six months.

△ Age of the youngest developer who took the lead in developing conversational AI skills in DuerOS 12.

Content resources can quickly distribute content on DuerOS devices through DuerOS platform tools, and then make money in the form of "paying within skills" and "paying skills".

Let the partners on the platform make money, including equipment vendors, solution vendors, chip vendors, content vendors, developers and so on. In an open and active ecology, each role can get what he needs and achieve a win-win situation.

Ecological strategy: integrate content resources, cultivate skill developers and accelerate industrial empowerment.

In the consumer market, the huge content and service system can meet the changing needs of users, which constitutes the important competitiveness of DuerOS. In the industry market, promoting the commercialization of DuerOS capabilities, in turn, further promoted the prosperity of the consumer market.

1, integrating content resources:

The content resources on DuerOS mainly include self-owned content, content transformed by third-party content providers and newly developed conversational AI skills:

In terms of its own content and services, DuerOS internally integrates Baidu maps, iQiyi videos, Baidu apps, second-hand encyclopedias, and good-looking videos.

In terms of life service, we linked hot life services such as Meituan takeaway to realize full voice ordering and payment.

In terms of audio-visual content, we cooperated with QQ music to obtain a large number of genuine music resources; Establish cooperation with CITIC Academy to provide users with rich and high-quality audio books; Explore the small integration of massive video resources such as Discovery Channel, VIPKID and Yu Dou.

2. Cultivate skill developers

With the popularity of conversational AI hardware devices, users' demand for skills is increasing. The skill store on DuerOS provides a variety of skill types to meet the diverse needs of different users. At present, more than 800 skills have been released, covering news and information, leisure and entertainment, smart home, life service, parenting education, financial office and other types.

Baidu spares no effort to promote the ecological prosperity of conversational AI developers. On the one hand, DuerOS constantly iteratively optimizes the small-scale skill open platform to provide developers with a convenient development environment; On the other hand, the "Dialogue AI Skills Competition" was launched, and 750,000 cash and 250,000 bonuses were set up to recruit developers and guide development through a series of national developer activities such as "Wake-up Tour".

Wake-up trip: The offline technical salon for conversational AI developers has visited Shenzhen, Beijing, Chengdu, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing and other cities, and held 15 technical salons and development workshops, which attracted more than 6,000 software and hardware developers and industry professionals to sign up, and the event site was also packed.

With such rich developer feedback and intensive market education, no other platform in China can do it. Based on this, the number of DuerOS open platform developers has more than tripled in the past year. At present, there are more than 24,000 registered developers developing skills on the DuerOS platform.

3. Industry empowerment starts with chips.

In order to expand the installation and activation of DuerOS on the device side, Baidu focuses on empowering third-party applications on almost all household appliances and smart devices commonly used in life, such as mobile phones, televisions, speakers, headphones, and car machines, and joins hands with upstream manufacturers.

For OEMs, as early as the end of 20 17 at Qualcomm Snapdragon Annual Technology Summit, DuerOS announced that it would join hands with Qualcomm to deeply support and jointly optimize Baidu DuerOS's artificial intelligence solutions on mobile platforms including Snapdragon 845.

On 20 18, DuerOS once again increased chip-level cooperation and made efforts on Bluetooth audio, as shown in the following figure:

Join hands with Qualcomm again to create a Bluetooth audio product solution with mini Bluetooth APP and DuerOS version. This scheme is based on Qualcomm QCC5 100 series low-power Bluetooth System-on-Chip (SoC), which will support the design of wireless Bluetooth headsets with a series of artificial intelligence functions.

We have reached a chip-level cooperation with Knowles House Electronics. Based on Knowles House electronic IA6 10 smart microphone, the reference design scheme of wearable devices such as headphones, earplugs and true wireless earplugs is jointly developed, which supports the lowest power consumption in the industry and can realize continuous wake-up.

△ At the beginning of 2065438+09, Baidu will hold a small Bluetooth Alliance Summit in Shenzhen.

4. This solution has blossomed.

Based on the core competence of DuerOS 3.0, Baidu provides more than 20 cross-scene and cross-device solutions, including screen device solutions, Bluetooth device solutions and industry solutions.

DuerOS has never deviated from the main battlefield of "interactive dialogue with the screen". The on-screen device solution is Baidu's "industry first" solution, which extends DuerOS to the battlefield of everything, from smart speakers to smart TVs, smart phones, children's smart devices, cars or automobile products.

△ Jing Kun introduced the DMA Bluetooth device solution at the 20 18 Baidu AI Developers Conference.

For the huge Bluetooth devices, Baidu launched a DMA Bluetooth device solution (DuerOS mobile phone accessories). Applicable devices include Bluetooth speakers, headphones, smart watches, etc. , support devices to seamlessly connect with small Bluetooth apps, and obtain DuerOS cloud services through voice interaction.

In the field of industry, DuerOS is a typical application case of hotel industry solutions. In July this year, Xiao Di stayed at Intercontinental Hotel (Hotel Edition) in Tongying Center, Sanlitun, Beijing. He can not only control the lights, curtains, etc. You can also wake up the artificial intelligence assistant with voice and call the reservation service.

In terms of hotel industry application, DuerOS industry solutions have been applied in more than 10 domestic and foreign hotels and real estate groups such as Intercontinental, Zhu Hua, Shimao and OCT, and more than 5,000 small smart rooms have been built.

△ Figure: In cooperation with Shimao Hotel & Resort, every room of Shanghai Sheshan Shimao Intercontinental Hotel is connected to DuerOS system, and the room price per night is not less than 4,643 yuan.

20 19: Let AI enter more people's lives and lead the outbreak of conversational AI.

DuerOS has grown very rapidly. It is predicted that this rapid growth will last until 20 19, and it will be commercialized in 2020.

At the third quarter financial report meeting of Baidu 20 18 held on June 3 10, Li Yanhong made clear the commercialization time of DuerOS when answering an analyst's question.

20 19-2065 438+09 On New Year's Eve, Baidu National Video and Baidu APP fired the first shot of 2065 438+09 on the stage of Zhejiang Satellite TV's New Year's Eve party. Li Yanhong boarded the CCTV New Year's Eve party at home with a small degree, reappearing Baidu's AI dialogue ability, and letting "small degree" further enter thousands of households.

△ Li Yanhong made a small appearance at CCTV New Year's Eve party at home.

Baidu is using "China speed" to accelerate AI to enter more people's lives, and the accelerated growth of DuerOS is worth looking forward to!

This expectation comes not only from Baidu, but also from practitioners and related people in the voice intelligence ecosystem. They have always been full of yearning for technology to change their lives. They used to be troubled by the flying black technology, but now they inadvertently find that AI has entered their lives and will subtly change their future lifestyle.