Under the background of enterprises relying more on technology, all enterprises are seeking new development opportunities. As one of the most important new technological revolutions in human history, the industry has given positive comments on the incremental dividend and innovation space it has brought to the industry. So when the concept of intelligent hardware rose, a large number of enterprises sprang up one after another, and the manufacturing of intelligent hardware became a trend.
Up to now, many players have flooded into the domestic smart hardware circuit, and many domestic Internet enterprises have joined the army of grabbing the smart hardware market. Among them, the search field, known as the “hotbed of artificial intelligence”, is particularly concerned by the industry.
Software giants also have a hardware dream
(Picture from Canva can be drawn)
Baidu with “multiple measures”
Looking at the players in the entire intelligent hardware market, Baidu can definitely rank the first in this field, which is not unrelated to its strategy of “taking multiple measures at the same time”. Over the years, Baidu has continued to focus on living rooms, cars, individuals and even education, and has developed a variety of intelligent hardware products, such as small at home, small smart speakers, small voice car support, and formed a complete intelligent hardware product line.
And intelligent hardware has also accelerated the rapid landing of Baidu AI technology. Baidu has been deeply engaged in the field of artificial intelligence for many years, and its technical strength in the field of intelligent hardware has always been in the leading position in the industry due to its years of technical investment and improved layout. Baidu has made its software and hardware technology highly integrated by developing intelligent hardware, not only expanding the intelligent voice interaction market, but also helping its AI technology to accelerate the implementation, which is of great benefit to its building a prosperous AI ecosystem.
In addition, Baidu attaches great importance to smart hardware because the traffic dividend has peaked, and smart hardware can help it open up new space for user growth. Since the development of the Internet, online dividends have almost disappeared. With the increasing cost of customer acquisition and the limited diversion ability of other products, Baidu’s advantage as a search engine has been shrinking. As the form of intelligent hardware becomes more and more abundant, more and more scenarios are targeted, and more and more users are covered. Baidu can make its software services extend to the user level with the help of hardware and further enhance the user stickiness by developing hardware.
In addition, Baidu Fali intelligent hardware has the purpose of seizing the entrance of the Internet of Things. In the Internet war, the most mentioned thing is “entrance”, and preempting the entrance is equivalent to preempting the user. Baidu first made a difference in the field of intelligent hardware, also out of the consideration of preempting the entrance. After all, every intelligent hardware product corresponds to a new life scenario. In this enclosure movement, Baidu can only have a greater voice in the future competition by covering more application scenarios.
Stick to the “original intention” of 360
In addition to Baidu, there are 360 who also bet on the treasure here. As an Internet security service provider that has worked in the Internet industry for many years, 360’s advantages are self-evident. Powerful smart hardware is also an active attempt by 360 to transfer the concept of “security” from online to offline.
On the one hand, developing the new business of intelligent hardware can achieve the goal of “supporting software with hardware”. With the overall search advertising market shrinking, the main source of 360’s revenue – Internet advertising and service revenue also continued to suffer. Therefore, 360 urgently needs to develop new businesses in order to support the steady growth of its performance. With the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, it has become an inevitable trend for search engines to become intelligent. Therefore, the smart hardware has become the most suitable choice for 360.
Nowadays, when selling hardware products, many hardware companies often bind many free software to increase the application of software with the help of hardware. This approach is also applicable to software companies. 360 can also build its own service ecosystem by producing intelligent hardware and binding self-developed software.
On the other hand, intelligent hardware can also accelerate the construction of 360 intelligent scenes. Thanks to its deep accumulation in software and reasonable layout in hardware, the ecosystem of 360 software and hardware has been successfully built. With the accelerated integration of 360 in software and hardware, 360 will form more powerful computing power, acquire more sufficient data, give more possibilities to intelligent scenes, and bring more imagination space for its scenarioization.
Sogou focusing on “voice”
With the rapid development of artificial intelligence, Sogou also has to accelerate the pace of layout on intelligent hardware. However, compared with Baidu and 360, the layout of Sogou is particularly “focused”. Thanks to its years of voice and text accumulation, Sogou seems to have launched “voice” intelligent hardware products.
First, smart hardware is an important part of Sogou’s future strategic layout. The speech recognition system supported by powerful database and algorithm capabilities has given Sogou great confidence in intelligent hardware manufacturing. For example, intelligent hardware products such as travel translation treasure and recording translation pen produced by Sogou Collection Technology Dacheng have not only been widely recognized by users, but also accumulated certain public praise in the market.
It is with this accumulation that Sogou can form advantages in intelligent interaction and service experience. With this as a breakthrough, the subsequent smart hardware products launched by Sogou with “language” as the core can reproduce the previous success again and expand its strategic territory.
Second, Sogou’s revenue has been declining continuously. It needs to find a new growth curve, and Fali smart hardware can help it improve its “revenue generation” ability. According to Sogou’s recently released financial report for the first quarter of 2021, its revenue fell 47% year on year. Before that, Sogou’s revenue has dropped sharply for several consecutive fiscal quarters, so it is necessary to shift its business focus, so it is particularly important to switch to intelligent hardware at this time.
AI ecosystem with software and hardware
The vision of the giants is always amazingly similar. Just as the Internet giants have arranged community group purchase in succession earlier, the search engine giants have also taken the road of intelligent hardware. However, behind the busy layout of intelligent hardware by search engine enterprises, it has nothing to do with their intention to build an AI ecosystem that combines software and hardware.
First of all, creating an AI ecosystem that combines software and hardware will accelerate the commercialization of enterprises’ technology. With the development of the Internet entering a mature period, the traditional Internet profit model has reached the bottleneck, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to explore new profit models. If Internet services are integrated into hardware, its value can be further explored. In addition, with the development of science and technology and the upgrading of consumption, the upgrading of hardware products will be faster and faster, and the profits of the intelligent hardware market will be considerable, while the combination of software and hardware will help enterprises to maximize their profits.
Secondly, building an AI ecosystem that combines software and hardware will help enterprises form stronger competition barriers. Both single hardware and software are easy to be copied. A large number of homogeneous products on the market today are a powerful manifestation of the development dilemma of the entire industry. The integration of software and hardware involves a more complex industrial chain, requires a longer production cycle, and it is relatively more difficult to copy. Therefore, the combination of software and hardware will have higher technical barriers than the single business. This invisible barrier will also help enterprises block many competitors who want to enter this field.
Today, with the rapid development of science and technology, giants from all walks of life are accelerating the construction of their own enterprise moat. With more and more players competing for entry, the competition in the field of intelligent hardware will only become more intense. For a number of Internet enterprises, how to combine their own advantages to stand out from the fierce competition has become a difficult problem to be solved in front of each enterprise. From this perspective, the search giants may provide a good new perspective for them to enter the industry through the layout of intelligent hardware.
