Dialogue with Sonos Wang Hanhua: What should be done for the 100 box smart speakers?

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Smart speakers have become standard with technology giants.

Starting from Amazon Echo, in the past two years, major technology giants have entered the field of smart speakers. Whether it is foreign Google Home, Microsoft's Invoke, Apple's HomePod (rumored Facebook is also developing smart speakers), or Baidu's DuerOS, Ali's Lynx, Millet's AI speakers, Tencent's smart speaker ears, and The Rocky Speaker developed by the startup company Rokid, the smart speaker that goes out to ask questions.....

According to Netease Intelligence, it was learned from industry sources that at present, almost all technology giants and AI startup companies in China have entered the smart speaker field in their own way. Some people predict that with the release of several major manufacturers' products, from the second half of this year to next year, the smart speaker market in China will usher in a big explosion, and the market capacity will far exceed our imagination.

However, according to Wang Hanhua, for any giant, smart speakers will not account for 1% of its business.

As president of the wireless audio brand Sonos China, Wang Hanhua explained the upcoming “100 Box Wars”. He said, "The involvement of technology giants is to explore the voice interaction market after the mobile era. The competition in the era of voice interaction can be either technology competition, industry competition, or home application scenario competition, but the pinnacle It is the competition of OS."

Wang Hanhua believes that the development of smart speakers is a natural path because we really need Hands Free scenes. "Who made OS, whoever has a great right to speak, these giants are directed at the Internet of Things's OS, not smart speakers." Wang Hanhua said.

Wang Hanhua further explained that there are too many connected products in the era of the Internet of Everything, and it is almost impossible to reach such an agreement through alliances. But Amazon Alex gives a good solution, that is, voice technology opens up an API interface and turns many technologies into Skills. This points everyone to a direction, but it also means that the skill vendors must give up some of their rights.

And why is a smart speaker, rather than a smart TV or other product carrying this voice interaction? In Wang Hanhua's view, smart speakers are ideal devices for home intelligence control, which can be deployed to all corners of the home. TV products are currently moving toward thin development, and it is difficult to design sound control in the far-field, let alone far-field voice interaction. Moreover, smart TVs cannot be ubiquitous because we cannot put a TV in every room. This is too costly.

Doing a part in the ecological chain, Sonos retreats to integrate service providers

For the people of the country, the Sonos brand does not seem to be known, but in the United States, Sonos is known as an innovator in the audio industry because of its outstanding wireless audio experience. Wang Hanhua said that Sonos's philosophy is to create a new home music system so that people can hear their favorite music at any place and any time in their home.

“Being a smart speaker must first open up a different music library, so that the choice of music is not limited. This is the content integration that Sonos has spared no effort to promote since its inception.” Wang Hanhua said, “After playing music library, smart speakers can learn users. The habit of listening to music, intelligently recommending and editing music based on the user's music preferences, and configuring different music for users in different scenarios."

This is the logic of Sonos doing wireless audio, and Sonos hopes to continue the advantages of smart speakers.

Although Sonos has access to all mainstream music service providers in China, how does Sonos solve the key content of voice interactive technologies and content services in smart speakers?

Wang Hanhua explained to Netease Intelligence that Sonos' position is to become a part of the intelligent speaker industry chain. It is mainly to do sound and sound design, audio quality, interconnection and other software and hardware experiences, and to carry content service OS, to domestic and foreign manufacturers. Cooperation, even open access to all platforms. Wang Hanhua said, “The content piece, once you become a platform, this positioning has value. For example, from the music point of view, both domestic and foreign are the same, the copyright competition is fierce. If you just use an ecosystem The service cannot meet all needs."

However, in the Chinese market, the competition for operating systems for dialogue is so fierce. How can we connect multiple OSs to a piece of hardware? This path can not go through?

Wang Hanhua believes that Sonos has the opportunity to get through. His reason is that, starting with Sonos as a WiFi speaker, all mainstream music service providers in China have already accessed. Currently, about 80 mainstream music service providers and audio-related companies in the world have access to Sonos. “We are used to the positioning of Sonos. Sonos does not do content or operating systems. I am part of the ecological chain. Any music must have a playback outlet. This outlet can be a headset or a computer. It is a speaker, we do the speaker ring. This positioning has been identified by some of the domestic voice-activated OS platform." Wang Hanhua said.

According to Wang Hanhua's logic, Sonos wants to integrate different voice-activated OSes. It may be based on different wake-up words. For example, if you say Alexa to the speakers, you call Amazon's service. If you say Hey! Siri, you call Apple's service. According to different wake-up calls, different service systems and cloud services are invoked to support multiple voice control platforms.

Even if the above path of integration can be achieved, Sonos still faces the struggle for dominance and the distribution of benefits. This is because content services generated by voice interactions in the future will generate traffic, and advertising revenues will be generated behind traffic, and voice-activated OS vendors cannot easily access a collective. Wang Hanhua does not seem to deny the existence of the problem, but it believes that the future of smart speakers will become very vertical, such as music speakers, shopping speakers and other vertical products in different scenarios to solve the problem of the distribution of benefits.

"The platform-level companies that will eventually be able to stay are two or three. The two or three OS above will gather a lot of application scenarios and hardware." Wang Hanhua believes, "And the phone is very similar, the future of smart speaker products will appear from 1000-6000 Yuan products with different price ranges."

In terms of landing products, Sonos has currently partnered with Amazon to develop smart speakers, and is also looking for partners in China, but according to Wang Hanhua, there will be no smart speakers with Chinese voice interaction available in the Chinese market during the year.

All in Voice, what kind of product can smart speaker make?

After Apple released HomePod, many people in the industry believe that the future of smart speakers will come out of two ways, one road is the main smart interaction, the price will be more and more cheap, there are many voice interactive features; another way is to focus on sound quality, oriented Music enthusiasts.

Wang Hanhua said to Netease Intelligence that Sonos is positioned in the middle of the above two roads, not only doing voice interactive functions, but also sound quality. “Sonos itself has high-end sound quality. In addition, we will be in voice control and ecological systems. I hope Integrate all voice technologies and content services. Just as we are now working with Amazon Alexa, we can also cooperate with Apple HomePod and Google Home in the future.” Wang Hanhua said, “Sonos is going to be Tesla in the audio industry.”

Regarding Sonos users, Wang Hanhua said, Sonos's user group will not be classified according to age, income, and occupation. “Our criterion is that this person should have two pursuits. The first is really like music, the second is There are some pursuits for the quality of life.” Wang Hanhua believes that the Chinese audio consumer market is still quite large, and he firmly believes that music is a person’s essential needs.

On content services, according to Wang Hanhua, Sonos only provides an entrance. What you can hear depends on your account relationship on this platform. Therefore, Sonos will not deal with music copyright issues.

When Netease Intelligence asked if Chinese Internet companies applied for customized smart speakers to Sonos, will Sonos take orders? Wang Hanhua said that depending on the amount of sales expected in the market, if the number is considerable, it will surely be done.

According to Wang Hanhua, currently, Sonos has three branches in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. Shanghai is mainly engaged in R&D and production. Shenzhen is mainly a supply chain and Beijing is mainly engaged in sales and marketing.

"Sonos's strategy in the future is All in Voice." Wang Hanhua said.

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