Last week, after reading about the experience of Google Home and Amazon Echo written by Wang Junxi, who read the pea pod, I suddenly saw KGI analyst Guo Mingqi bursting out that Apple will release a smart speaker at WWDC this year, and its Siri will become the first Apple. AI smart products.
Since the launch of Amazon Echo speakers in 2014, relying on Amazon's voice assistant Alexa and the open source Echo platform, access to major apps, Echo speakers to help people open the door to smart homes with voice commands.
Amazon uses Android to reproduce the Bluetooth speaker field and can recreate an Android platform. In the past 2016, Echo sold 6.5 million. Last year, Google also released its first Google Home smart home product with Google Now. At this year's CES conference, Echo was the only one, and its Alexa assistant was also widely quoted to other brands, including Lenovo and Huawei in China.
Why does Apple Homekit only smell it and don't know its name?
It is reasonable to say that Apple laid out a smart home as early as 2014, released the Homekit system, and distributed a family app for users to use in iOS. I thought that Apple will continue the past style and lead people to smart home. In the era, I never thought that Apple would encounter the attack of Xiaomi in China. In the United States, Amazon curved the road in a different way, and opened the desire for smart home with Echo speakers.
Users who know the concept of Apple products understand that Apple’s chances of missing smart homes are not unexpected at all. The Apple empire built with the iPhone as its core, when Cook released the Homekit system, it was just to give the iPhone a more use scenario. 14 years to control Apple Watch with iPhone, use iPhone to control smart home equipped with Homekit, has always been in line with Apple's product concept! When the Echo speaker is not born, no one can imagine the speaker is equipped with voice assistant, plus its skill command It is possible to open people's jealousy about smart homes.
When Apple released the vision of Homekit, it attracted the attention of Xiaomi Leijun. He followed the Xiaomi of Apple's route. In the field of smart home, Lei Jun dug a different gold mine! In 2014, the smart home at that time The field is basically divided into two groups "Apple Pie" and "Little Rice School".
Apple's Homekit seems to be the biggest problem in the author's view. It is only for Apple's stop sign, and it doesn't have much power on Homekit. Even so far, Homekit's smart home is supported on the market. There are still a handful of products. A few of the few products are also very expensive. For example, the smart light Hue of Philips is priced at 799 yuan.
Unlike Apple, Xiaomi’s Lei Jun has always been very convinced of the concept of affordable products, and its price/performance ratio in 1999 has made Xiaomi’s mobile phone a hit. Xiaomi's smart home meter home from the millet box, to the patch panel, to the camera and last year's IH rice cooker, can be said to have everything. Xiaomi relies on the MIUI system to carry the home smart ecosystem, which is more reliable than the Apple iPhone and closer to the mass line.
As soon as the various smart home products of Xiaomi were launched, they broke the market and became the leader in the market segmentation! The simple product design + the price of civilians is the biggest reason why it can go to the user's family, compared to the pricing of Apple Homekit products. Xiaomi's products are simply cheap to the bad street, and the quality of its products is also guaranteed by the brand. In the contribution of popularizing smart homes into the user's family, Xiaomi is more respectable than Apple!
Editor in charge: Yi Chengshuang
Why do apples make smart speakers?
Echo's popularity has caught Apple's attention. iOS based on the Homekit platform urgently needs a piece of hardware to support the smart home scene. In the wave of smart home, Google went to the sea, Amazon led, and Apple was unwilling to be a bystander. The biggest reason why Apple is a smart speaker is that it is afraid of being replaced by the artificial intelligence wave. Apple is the biggest winner of the mobile Internet. Apple's empire ecology is all around the iPhone. Apple's strategy of doing Homekit is correct. Kevin Kelly once said that subversion often comes from competitors outside the industry rather than within the industry. Apple has never thought of the way Amazon will be an e-commerce company in the smart home field, and the way Echo breaks out. It is so incredible.
The most terrible thing about Echo is that it broke the way people used smartphone app + screen + mobile phone, and built a new human-computer interaction with smart speaker + voice assistant + skill command. Its core is no longer a mobile phone, but a voice assistant. People start to use their mouths to control everything around their lives. After all, it is easier and lazy to use their mouths than to control them by hand. Behind the voice assistant is the big competition of the Internet giant AI big data. Apple's Siri has been released for many years, and it has been criticized by users. It is a fool, unable to understand the normal meaning of people. If you don't understand humans, Siri is also the biggest problem of universal voice assistants. .
Microsoft's Cortana, Google's Google Now, Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa's four voice assistants, Microsoft's Cortana is the most "smart", Apple's acquisition of Siri's bottom many years ago, basically become a plaything. Apple's technology accumulation in AI voice is obviously behind the other three.
So it is not difficult to explain why Apple wants to make smart speakers, let alone AI voice, even if the current people VR, Apple can not miss, because the Apple ecosystem based on the iPhone, the most clear about their lifeline Where? When people no longer need the iPhone, the entire huge Apple Empire will collapse!
What are the advantages of Apple as a smart speaker?
Apple's user experience will still be its "magic weapon." Compared with some smart home systems already on the market, Apple's system based on HomeKit components and "family" apps does not have much difference in technology. It is remotely implemented by WiFi module on smart home appliances. management.
But in terms of user experience, Apple is still very advantageous compared to Google Home and Echo. First of all, it is very difficult to get started, and it is unified in the user interface of the "family" app, and can perform voice operations on many types of devices such as iPhone, iPad and even Apple Watch through Siri, and the sense of technology has improved a lot.
In terms of security, Apple is also quite outstanding. In the current management mode, users' personal privacy information will be stored on the local iPad or Apple TV as a smart home control hub, and will not be uploaded to the cloud. It can effectively eliminate the risk of being remotely hacked by hackers; in addition, it is the matching of third-party smart devices. As long as it is a third-party peripheral that has passed Apple HomeKit authentication, it can be easily scanned or manually input 8-digit pairing code. The way to make it easy to add is quite convenient.
In addition, Apple's "family" app launched in iOS 10 is also quite easy to use. It has built-in four modules of equipment, scene, room and automation, which can scientifically and efficiently manage the added smart devices in different ways. The automation module allows the user to perform scene management of multiple smart devices through some preset conditions. Therefore, these factors can still be expected.
Apple hardware entry, is it promoting the development of smart home?
In the past hardware field, Apple has been changing people's lifestyles. Starting from ipod, a small change has brought people from the MP3 era into the ipod era, changing people's traditional way of listening to songs, and then to later ipads. It has set off a wave of tablet PCs; today's Apple Watch has become a trend indicator in the field of smart watches. So how will the smart speakers that will be launched this time change people's lives?
According to Apple's public data, more than 100 home automation products have adopted the HomeKit standard this year, bringing support for "home" apps for thermostats, lighting, curtains, door locks, cameras and other products. In order to speed up the development of HomeKit, Apple sells accessories online or on the official website. In the face of the average consumer, they want to try new smart homes, as long as they buy the corresponding products, without too complicated installation, etc. This smart speaker is also designed to match the development of HomeKit.
In fact, strictly speaking, Apple is only a platform builder, the hardware is not produced by itself, and Apple's hardware entry is undoubtedly a challenge for Apple, which has a strong desire to control.
For Apple's own influence, Apple's hardware into the smart home field will inevitably have a certain impact on its field, but before the Google Home, there is Echo, want to easily draw conclusions, we have to look at the future Apple Performance on smart speakers.
Editor in charge: Yi Chengshuang
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