Huawei has finally made a move.

Huawei unveiled the AI Cube, a smart speaker with a router, at the IFA Consumer Electronics Show in Berlin, and plans to sell it in Europe by the end of this year, CNBC reported. However, huawei did not say whether it will be launched in the US or China, or how much it will cost.

This marks Huawei’s first official foray into the smart speaker market.

Huawei has enjoyed significant growth in other areas of consumer electronics, particularly in smartphones, where it recently overtook Apple to become the world’s second-largest manufacturer by market share.

The emerging smart speaker market is expected to grow from $4.4 billion in 2017 to $17.4 billion in 2022, according to IDC. Huawei’s move is self-evident.

What about AICube?Copy the code

The AI Cube looks very similar to Google’s Home speaker, with an integrated 4G modem, Home Wi-Fi router and high-end 360-degree wireless speaker, and Huawei is also trying to differentiate itself from the competition with a built-in 4G router.

In terms of design, the AI Cube is relatively regular cylindrical, narrow at the top and wide at the bottom. The bottom is wrapped in a material similar to the knitting surface, and the top side is equipped with a volume button and microphone mute button, as well as a breathing light for prompting. The top edge of the speaker lights up in a ring of blue light, similar to the Alexa Echo, when receiving a voice or thinking.

As a smart speaker, Huawei AICube supports 4G and Wi-Fi connectivity. After inserting the card, you can connect to the Internet anytime and anywhere, even when you go out, you don’t have to worry about becoming a “Bluetooth speaker”.

However, Huawei is not currently developing its own voice assistant technology. AICube is built into Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, which means users can use all of Alexa’s features, including many features or apps written for Alexa by developers.

Why did Huawei make smart speakers?Copy the code

Huawei’s previous attitude to smart speakers has been “resolutely not to do”. “You only need one phone to master home appliances,” Said Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei’s consumer business, in a speech at the launch of Mate 10 last year.

But recently, Yu revealed in his semi-annual earnings report that Huawei is working on a smart speaker that will be released soon. Some insiders speculate that Huawei smart speakers are expected to be launched in October at the earliest, with shipments exceeding 100,000.

This background lies in the Huawei Terminal Developer Conference on June 22, when Yu Chengdong released Huawei’s all-scene smart ecological strategy. However, Huawei HiLink’s main entry point is mobile phones, and auxiliary entry points are tablets, PCS, speakers and other devices. Paniot hardware is located at the last layer of the ecosystem.

In addition, the Internet of Things promotes the development of artificial intelligence, which is considered as the third wave after the mobile Internet. Smart speakers are also a very subdivided link between the Internet of Things and AI.

Therefore, In early 2018, Shigang, head of HUAWEI’s CONSUMER BG smart home product line, revealed that Huawei is also expected to launch smart speakers this year. Industry sources also reported that Huawei will release the speaker around October, and the first order will be around 3 million.

When talking about the relationship between smart speakers and mobile phones, Shao Yang, minister of Huawei strategic Marketing Department, said that in Huawei’s view, in the future family, mobile phones are still the main center, speakers, flat panel, TV may become the sub-center, the future family sub-center is diversified, the main center will drive other sub-centers. This shows that Huawei has made clear the positioning of smart speakers in huawei system in the future.

In addition to the above layout, Huawei is stimulated by Samsung’s entry into the game.

Not long ago, Samsung unveiled a smart speaker, Galaxy Home, at its Note 9 launch event on August 10, 2018. The Galaxy Home has six speakers, a subwoofer, and eight far-field microphones that detect voice input. It can play music, recognize voice in the far-field, and control smart Home appliances.

Despite its poor appearance and not a “pretty” debut, Samsung has caught up with the last of the high-end smart speakers. And before this, domestic Ali, Baidu, Tencent, millet, jingdong and large and small enterprises, have entered the intelligent speaker war.

It is inevitable that Huawei will enter the smart speaker war for its HiLink smart home platform to rival Apple’s Homekit and Samsung’s SmartThings control platform.

Previously, some industry insiders said that in order to layout smart speakers, Huawei pooped Tencent’s wall and borrowed a lot of people from it. Together with the technical personnel from Huawei’s front-line, the scale of Huawei’s smart speaker r&d team has exceeded 100 people. In addition, Huawei also launched the introduction of intelligent door locks, intelligent lamps and lanterns and intelligent cameras and other products, and released a new smart home App, now research and development of smart speakers, will also become an important part of Huawei smart home strategy.

In addition, there are also insiders revealed that Huawei’s ambition is not just smart speakers, but to develop a set of independent and unique system and voice system, so now Huawei will re-focus on smart speakers, natural.

Will phone makers join the smart speaker fray?Copy the code

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has touted intelligent voice interaction as the next big thing in computing, with voice control and artificial intelligence allowing the Internet to seamlessly interact with the real world.

In November 2014, Amazon launched Echo, a product that integrates intelligent voice interaction technology into traditional speakers, and immediately caused a strong response in the market. In May 2016, At Google I/O developer conference, Google followed suit with the official launch of Google Home, a counterpart to the Echo.

Since then, Apple, which has long been seen as a bellwether of tech trends, has not been left behind. As early as 2014, Apple started its smart speaker project. Earlier this year, apple’s HomePod was officially launched to compete with Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Google Home, after many hesitations, delays, delays and revivals.

Apple’s move later encouraged Samsung to launch a long-rumored smart speaker. For a time, intelligent sound box became magnate people conquer territory, rush to the beach “new continent”.

After all, the major giants are imagining that smart speakers will become the best traffic entry and the next best hardware product for smart home. And with Samsung and Apple, the “big brother” of android and iOS, mobile phone manufacturers also see the future prospects of this market.

The market could be worth as much as $23 billion in 2023, according to StrategyAnalytics. According to GlobalMarket Insights, the global smart speaker market could be worth as much as $30 billion by 2024.

Not surprisingly, Canalys forecasts that 100 million smart speakers will ship (up from less than 50 million at the end of 2017) and that the market will reach 225 million by 2020. It also predicts amazon’s market share will continue to decline, from 50 percent in 2018 to 34 percent in 2022.

As a result, Huawei, OPPO, Vivo, Smartisan and many other mobile phone manufacturers have rushed to the road of smart speakers. For example, The well-known Smartisan Technology, Luo Yonghao has said that he personally lead the team to research intelligent voice + touch intelligent interactive system, and Smartisan is developing a smart speaker.

In addition, OPPO’s smart speaker project has been set up in its research institute, and Vivo is currently recruiting developers for smart speakers, according to people familiar with the matter.

There is no doubt that Internet enterprises have a huge amount of data and information at the ToC end of the consumption level, which can support the continuous “learning” of artificial intelligence to achieve a virtuous cycle of interaction. And intelligent hardware (mobile phone) manufacturers, with mobile ecosystem based on LBS+ real-time demand, are the heavyweight entrance of Internet enterprises “unattainable”.

Mobile phone manufacturer does intelligent speaker to also become formally after following Internet giant, mobile operator, the 3rd wave enters bureau intelligent speaker important force.

I believe that with huawei’s entry into the smart speaker market, the domestic smart speaker market will be from Ali, Baidu, Tencent, Millet and other giants, to mobile Unicom and other operators, finally to the time for the major mobile phone manufacturers to shine, the future smart speaker market will become more lively.