(Original caption: Contradiction and pressure: Amazon's push to change the risk of touch screen Echo?)
Recently, a report from eMarketer, a market consulting company, showed that Amazon is dominant in the voice control market, that is, Amazon uses Echo smart speakers to occupy approximately 70.6% of U.S. voice intelligent audio users, far ahead of Google, which only accounts for 23.8%. Other companies together account for 5.6% of the market, including Lenovo, LG, Harman-Cardon, and Mattel.
This seems to once again prove that Echo (exactly Alexa speech recognition technology used) smart speaker's leading position, and the rumored release of the touch screen Echo, but also by the majority of the industry has always sought Amazon Echo (in fact, essentially Alexa) media It is said by industry insiders that Echo will expand its leading position in the smart speaker market.
Is the fact really as simple as it looks?
First of all, from the sales of Echo, statistics are varied, because Amazon itself has never announced its own actual sales of Echo (presumably as the world's largest e-commerce platform, statistics Echo's sales should be easy), all from third-party statistics data.
For example, Voice Labs estimates that household customers in January already have more than 7 million Echo devices; CIRP gives a figure of 8.2 million; Morgan Stanley said that the total number will exceed 11 million before the 2017 holiday. Judging from the statistics of these third parties, the biggest difference is about 4 million units.
Do not underestimate the gap of this 4 million units, which already accounted for 57% of the more than 700 million units estimated by VoiceLabs and 36% of 11 million units made by Morgan Stanley. So in the end since Echo was released in 2014, how much Echo has actually sold does not say the real number, that is, the estimated figures are all very different.
It should be noted that the Echo has been developed so far, which includes Dot, Tap, Echo and other series of different positioning and pricing (50 US dollars, 130 US dollars and 180 US dollars) smart speaker.
According to CIRP, a market research company, since its launch, Echo Dot has accounted for half of the total sales of Amazon smart speakers (about 10.7 million), and since the release of the second-generation Echo Dot in October 2016, it has definitely helped promote Echo. Overall sales rose, and discounts were offered during the shopping season. The idea of ​​buying multiple gifts, as well as selling Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet, was a low price and promotion that was the main driver of Echo's growth.
Then the next question is why users choose the lowest price, the same Alex using Alexa technology? This involves Alexa or the most commonly used feature when users use Echo.
According to survey data provided by market research firm Statista, timing, playing music, reading news, alarms, viewing time, etc., it can be said that the function Alexa supports most frequently used by users is quite simple.
There are only two reasons for this: either there are too few applications supported by Alexa; or the speakers (such as the lack of a touch screen) itself restrict the further development of Alexa technology and experience.
Fortunately, Amazon seems to be aware of this. The number of applications supporting Alexa from 135 in the first quarter of 2016 to 10,000 in the first quarter of this year and industry rumors are evidence of its upcoming touch screen Echo.
However, according to a new study by 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 After winning repeat customers, the increase in the number of applications supported by Alexa has not been recognized by users or it has been very limited in boosting Echo's future market competitiveness.
What are the reasons? There are also two possibilities here.
One is that Alexa's experience in supporting these applications is poor (at least compared with the above-mentioned current user's most used Echo function), and the other is that these applications lack the support or assistance of an alternative usage mode (such as a touch screen). In response, Phil Schiller, Apple’s vice president of global marketing, recently stated publicly that, in many cases, the lack of display screens for some dedicated intelligent voice devices is an obstacle.
However, for whatever reason, we believe that Echo has fallen into a conflict and pressure, that is, in the face of Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc. have already and will soon enter this market.
With regard to the above-mentioned most commonly used functions, the technology and experience of using Google Assistant's Google Home, Cortana's Microsoft Invoke, and Siri's Apple Smart Speaker can easily achieve the same level as Amazon Echo, but Amazon attempts to demonstrate Alexa by the number of applications. Technical advantages have not been able to get the market and users to buy and then converted into their own competitiveness.
This is why industry analysts believe that with Google, Microsoft and Apple, and other companies entering the smart speaker market, Amazon Echo sales will be the main reason for the future decline.
Perhaps based on the above pressures and contradictions, Amazon decided to launch the touchscreen version of Echo, in order to exert its current advantage in the number of applications. Then comes the contradiction that if the release of the touchscreen version of Echo, Amazon's Alexa value as the only input method (voice) will be greatly reduced?
This kind of discount is reflected in the user's end, that is, the user's reduction in some applications, and even give up Alexa's use of direct touch instead; the second is on the developer side, because of the support of touch, it was only Developers who target voice applications will be diverted to touch control, and may not even rule out the possibility of directly adapting the use of tablets and smartphones directly to Echo.
And given that Echo is using Amazon's own Fire OS system similar to the Kindle Fire tablet computer, has Echo recreated the tablet ecosystem of the Amazon App Store based on the Fire OS system? That is, Echo smart speakers have been transformed into the product form and application mode of a tablet-like computer.
Of course, this is only from Amazon's own narrow product and application model. If placed on the entire tablet market, if the touch version Echo really confuses the application mode of voice and touch, even with touch control, Echo will Inadvertently being introduced into the competition with iOS and Android Ecology and no advantage, here we have to doubt that Phil Schiller, Apple's vice president of global marketing mentioned earlier, has publicly stated that in some cases, some dedicated intelligence The lack of display of voice devices (referred to as Echo) is a stumbling block to Apple's strategic misdirection or routine of Amazon Echo.
In summary, we believe that behind Amazon’s push of the Echo touchscreen, the market for smart speakers based on speech recognition technology has rapidly developed to a certain stage, causing its own contradictions and external competitive pressures to appear gradually. And pressure, Echo may face the danger of "denaturation."
So how Amazon balances the danger of this "denaturation" is not only related to the touch screen version of Echo, but also closely related to the future of the entire Echo. It is far from what the industry has said that it is easy to easily expand Echo's leading edge.
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