OFweek smart home network news Recently, Apple has received much attention and expectations of the industry has finally joined the smart speaker war, that is, at the recent Apple WWDC released smart speakers HomePod, so far, in the smart speaker market, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and The apple arrived in full. So who will win the four giants in the smart speaker market? What strategies or strategies are different for each family? First of all, let's take a look at the original intentions of the above four smart speakers. According to Amazon CEO Bezos, when interviewed by the media, the purpose of Echo was to hope that users can encourage users to use Echo shopping, which means that Amazon is to use Echo as a tool to enhance its core business (electricity business). However, from the recent application of many smart speakers (mainly Echo), users using Echo shopping accounted for only 8%, and ranked only second to last in the top 12 applications. As for Apple, HomePod, which has just been released, pays more attention to the quality of the speakers themselves (mainly sound quality). Music or music is the main focus of HomePod. Before Google and Microsoft released smart speakers, they did not seem to reveal what the core purpose of the outside world, plus from the product itself, did not deliberately highlight or emphasize the innovation and design of a feature, so the outside world generally believe that Google and Microsoft is more to use the speaker this carrier to show, train and enhance the voice technology behind their respective, such as Google's Google Assistant and Microsoft's Cortana. This is also evidenced by the recent Stone Temple. In the statistics, Stone Temple attempted to ask the device about 5,000 questions. Google's Google Assistant responded with 68.1% of the respondents, and the accuracy rate was 90.6%; Microsoft's Cortana was 56.5% and 81.9% respectively; Amazon's Alexa respectively. It was 20.7% and 87%; Apple's Siri was 21.7% and 62.2% respectively. It can be seen that Google and Microsoft are more concerned about the versatility or technicality of smart speakers (related to the data that Google and Microsoft have long been engaged in the search business, which is why the industry has previously analyzed that in the final intelligent voice war Google is definitely the main reason to overcome the Amazon, and Apple and Amazon are more focused or more pragmatic. It also shows that in the overall intelligent voice technology (voice recognition and semantics, etc.), Google and Microsoft are higher than Apple and Amazon, and they belong to the technical flow camp, while Amazon and Apple are more like pragmatism (before the release of the product The purpose and the product itself are reflected.) It stands to reason that technology flow should be dominant in the smart speaker market now and in the future, but the fact is not as simple as we thought. According to a recent survey conducted by ComScore, a market research organization, 60% of smart speaker users in the United States do simple queries, 57% of users use it to inquire about weather conditions, 54% of users let it play songs, and 41% of users It will let it set the alarm, 39% of users will let it create a reminder or to-do list and other mainstream applications, technology flow in the category of intelligent speakers is difficult to play its own technical advantage or to convert this advantage into The selling point that users buy is called the "cannon to fight mosquitoes." Therefore, we believe that at least from the smart speaker category, focused or pragmatic Amazon and Apple's chances are even greater, and direct competition should also be between Apple and Amazon. Of course, we do not deny Google and Microsoft's strength in intelligent speech technology. However, in the smart speaker category, its advantages are difficult to realize. So what's next? Who will win the competition between Amazon and Apple in the smart speaker market? It is undeniable that Amazon’s Echo series currently accounts for approximately 70.6% of U.S. voice smart audio users due to its first-mover advantage, far ahead of Apple. However, as we have seen from the current user's use of smart speakers, Amazon did not realize its original purpose of releasing Echo, that is, to promote users to use Echo shopping. It is worth mentioning that, from the standpoint of the Echo product itself, it seems that Amazon does not reflect the design and function (except voice) of the differentiated experience that encourages users to use the device to purchase from the hardware level. This may also be the reason why Amazon later began to vigorously develop third-party applications (currently has reached 10,000), and even part of the reason why they have even pushed the screen version of the Echo Show at the expense of some voice features. Because from the point of view of mainstream applications, Amazon has realized that Echo will soon encounter growth bottlenecks and the limitations of Alexa technology. (From the perspective of commonly used voice applications, believe in the technical aspects of voice, Alexa of Amazon and Apple’s Siri phase. The ratio will not show any advantage, although the industry is always talking about Echo, its technology is leading the book.) But according to the latest research from Voice Labs, 97% of users will lose interest in Alexa's new features and use it less than two weeks; at the same time, less than one-third of Alexa's 10,000 features Has won repeat customers. It can be seen that the role of pulling Echo with more applications is quite limited, or that the user's application of smart speakers is then the most commonly used mainstream applications. That being the case, finding mainstream applications that are more mainstream or killer is critical to the continued availability of smart speakers. From the perspective of mainstream applications, playing music is only the second type of application that is ranked in time, and the reuse rate is ranked first, that is, comprehensive (use and reuse), I am afraid that playing music is just the need of smart speakers ( Compared to other applications, and limited to the category of smart speakers, "listening" is the key to this experience. Of course, for smart speakers (mainly voice interaction methods), this “hearing†has two meanings. One is the ability to listen to and recognize the speaker's own voice “listening†capability, and the other “listening†refers to the speaker giving the user “ Listen to the experience. However, whether Google, Microsoft, or the pragmatic Amazon, technology flow, almost all focused on the first "listening" from the reports of all parties, that is, who can identify faster and better. The user's voice. But as people have seen, the current smart speakers are just a few mainstream applications. In this “listeningâ€, we believe that Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple are very difficult to demonstrate the advantages of differentiation between each other, precisely in addition. The "listening" of a client should be the difference. Unfortunately, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have all neglected this "listening" effort. From Apple's newly released Home Echo, Apple has automatic bass for its seven beam-shaped controllable tweeters. Balancing functions, providing dynamic trajectories of sounds, and even introducing the Apple A8 processor to be implemented and released. Apple CEO Cooke said that Apple's focus is on developing a "breakthrough speaker" designed to provide a high-quality audio experience; music It's part of our DNA that goes back to iTunes and iPod, and we want to create something that sounds incredible. When people are listening to music, they will be shocked by the sound quality. Apple is the manufacturer that most pays attention to the “listening†experience of the smart speaker user terminal among the aforementioned manufacturers. According to the latest data from the market analysis company Verto, according to the latest data from the market analysis company Verto, in February 2017, the number of independent active users of Apple Music in the US market reached 40.7 million, ranking first in streaming music services, compared with second place and second. The number of active users of Pandora and Spotify was only 32.6 million and 30.4 million. In addition, Apple Music subscribers have reached 27 million. In terms of satisfaction with streaming media music services, the survey conducted by JD Powers, a market research organization, at the end of last year showed that Apple Music users have the highest degree of satisfaction in all streaming media music services. Users chose Apple Music to some extent, thanks to them. Equipment ecosystem. In surveys concerning loyalty to streaming music service providers, Apple Music users had the highest rate of 'strongly agree', reaching 35%, and the service gap with second-ranked service was very large. Visible, compared with Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple's advantage in music applications is quite obvious, that is to say in the smart speaker user side, Apple has already had inherent "soft" advantage, and this release Home Echo has also made a hard time on "hard" (other opponents ignore it), so the combination of soft and hard Home Echo in the smart speaker market can not be underestimated. In summary, we believe that in the smart speaker market, it is limited to the category of smart speakers, because the technical school of Google and Microsoft overemphasized the versatility and it is difficult to achieve sustained growth in this category, while the pragmatic Amazon due to Prior to the introduction of Echo, the purpose has not been realized, but it has also begun to move toward pan-technology and versatility. More importantly, for smart speakers this category, they either intentionally or unintentionally neglected their efforts to "listen" on the user end. Only in this respect, Apple has both accumulated “soft†and focused on “hard†this time, achieving a combination of hardware and software. Therefore, in the competition of the smart speaker market in the future, the possibility of the last laugh is the greatest.