OFweek smart home network news on the last day of June, the sun shines, artificial intelligence and this season, is the hottest industry in the first half of 2017. As a cutting-edge technology media, IT Ear has interviewed more than 20 companies in the field of artificial intelligence, and introduced many of the AI's applications. At the recent “2017 China Voice Valley Investment Promotion Conference and Robotics & Artificial Intelligence Industry Development Forum” sponsored by Grape Ventures, we were fortunate to have interviewed Yang Yongcheng, Vice President of Audio Product Line from Xiaomi.
As Vice President of Xiaomi's audio product line, Mr. Yang has a range of product managers. However, this time our interview on artificial intelligence is not based on technology but on the cultural differences between the East and the West.

In his humorous manner, Yang always said that in the mythological system of China, the distinction between immortals and monsters is an interesting phenomenon. It has nothing to do with the process of spiritual practice and the curriculum of the practice. It is determined only by the origin of the practitioner and people practice can be immortal, animal, Plant cultivation is demon. Even the legendary Monkey King with powerful magical power can only be a “monkey monkey”. In the cultural cognition of China, the boundary between animals and people is very clear and difficult to be treated equally. The western myths are more humane, with the presence of many half-human and half-animal gods, and more human nature. This may partly explain that western users have more patience with a speaker for frequent, longer conversations. The acceptance of “a talking speaker” by foreign markets is just as natural as receiving a “pinocchio,” a small puppet that grows up every day and sometimes inevitably.
Therefore, comparing the current situation of the domestic speaker voice intelligent function market, in addition to the concerted efforts of companies dedicated to the speaker, voice, and artificial intelligence related to the various aspects of the speaker to do a good job, to do a good voice interaction experience, user habits The cultivation is also a factor to be considered.
Why Amazon Echo can fire
We know that there are currently several main directions for artificial intelligence applications where voice interaction technology is at the core: mobile voice input (such as Apple's siri), voice input method (HKUST flight), robot voice interaction, smart speaker (such as Google Google home , Amazon Echo). Smart speakers even called "the beginning of artificial intelligence"
In 2007, Amazon's first smart hardware was the famous e-book kindle, Kindle, which was undoubtedly successful and undoubtedly established Amazon's monopoly in the book market. The success of Kindle made Amazon determined to get involved in more intelligent hardware. In 2014, Amazon launched the Fire Phone and smart speaker Echo. In Amazon's plan, the left-hand Fire Phone is a competitive product with the iPhone, and the right hand is the smart speaker Echo, aiming at the smart home's voice interaction entrance, preparing for the future of artificial intelligence.
Unfortunately, this time, the Fire Phone suffered from Waterloo. Although its naked eye 3D function was extremely cool with four cameras, it was very poor. From the initial 9 (need to contract), it later fell to only 99 cents. The failure of mobile phone products in 2014 caused Amazon's book value to be reduced to US0 million, and even plunged into a temporary crisis. Therefore, for Echo, Amazon is a product that has been regaining momentum.
From a sales perspective, Amazon Echo sold 4 million units in 2015, and sold 8 million units in 2016. In 2017, the sales target was 10 million units. These data are sufficient proof of how successful Echo is. Yang Yongcheng believes that Echo's success does not depend entirely on his AI voice interaction. In addition to voice, Echo is a good speaker first: sound quality is good, technology is in place, appearance is simple, generous; followed by its high غير مجاز مي باشدt, for foreign speakers $ 399 more than the speaker product, $ 199 (now a promotional price of 179 US dollars) The price is extremely lethal; in the end, it is Amazon's sparing no effort to promote, and generous marketing and advertising investment.

"Smart" or "sound quality", Xiaomi's choice
The time was also 2014. When Xiaomi decided to make an audio product, he first chose to develop a super-sounding “millet Bluetooth speaker” rather than a smart speaker.
Yang Zong’s judgment at that time was that Internet speakers, as a new category, would take some time to mature whether it was technology construction or market incubation and popularity. Xiaomi just used this precious time to make product definitions, technical frameworks, and user experience. it is good. In a word, practice your internal skills well. For example, the integration of network music content that is crucial for Internet (smart) speakers requires a lot of patience and even creative business work to do.
Speaking of the technical framework, Yang Yongcheng shared an opinion with us. He said: to assess the technical difficulty of speakers can not just look at the speaker's complexity is lower than the smart phone, which is derived from doing the Internet speaker is relatively simple and easy to do, this will come to a very one-sided conclusion. In fact, we discuss a technical issue, not only to see the absolute difficulty of this issue, but also to see its relative difficulty. For example, the mobile phone, its software system is indeed complex, but if you are on the Android operating system to do applications, it is equivalent to stand on the shoulders of Google this giant. If you build a set of OS and UI for speakers on Linux's simple kernel, and Google and Android are missing, the difficulty you face is not increased several times. Simply understand that the relative difficulty of technology is the gap between the technical issues you are trying to accomplish and the reference designs that the industry provides to you.

Millet smart speaker
Yang’s judgment is undoubtedly accurate. From the year of 2014 to now, apart from Amazon’s Echo, whether it is the Google home abroad or many smart speaker products that support speech recognition in China, it has not yet been able to interact with Amazon. Comparable sales performance comparable to the United States.
In fact, Xiaomi also released a millet network audio in November 2015 for 9. Obviously this time, Xiaomi also started his first attempt at smart speakers. In addition to providing relatively powerful features and a smooth interactive experience, this Xiaomi Internet Speaker also claims to have 20 million online music libraries.
Interestingly, some netizens discovered a hidden “colored egg” of Xiaomi’s network audio: When using voice-on-demand audio, shouting “Lei Jun” to the speaker, Lei Jun’s classic Divine Comedy “Are You OK” appeared. Reebs's black humor has already penetrated into the product.

Regarding the landing of artificial intelligence products, Li Haibo, general manager and vice president of Himalayan Hardware, once gave us an example to verify the cruelty of smart speaker competition: “There are 112 companies within a kilometer of Shenzhen Nanshan District to do voice intelligence, but when I experienced all During the product, I found that they were all very painful. They were spelling out modules, spelling out scenarios, fighting scenes, fighting IOT (Internet of Things). All of these scenarios didn't spell users and experience because they didn't know where the market was, where the users were, Only knowing that the trend is coming, I don't hurry to keep up. They always ask a question, can you give me your massive content?"
Therefore, just as Yang pointed out, the future of voice speakers still needs a long way to go. Finally, Yang Yongcheng said to me: As a product manager, I am not only confident that the AI voice service will give the speaker industry a boost in the future, it will even have a revolutionary effect. I also care about how AI voice can be used in the next product cycle. The better combination of speakers gives the user a smooth and refreshing experience. After all, rice is a bite to eat, perfect product upgrades also rely on multiple rounds of continuous upgrading, iterative implementation.
How to develop artificial intelligence, how to do a good speaker, how to do smart speakers, this is every artificial intelligence, speaker practitioners need to continue to think and practice.
See Through Display
Kindwin Technology (H.K.) Limited , https://www.ktl-led.com
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