AI can't save the TV industry that is currently in decline
AI is a good medicine for the TV industry, bringing gimmicks and selling points, but at least AI cannot save the declining TV industry at present.
An "old cannon" who has worked hard in the TV industry for more than ten years, has gone through the wave of traditional TV and Internet TV, and stood at the high point of the AI ​​era, telling us about the TV industry's road to "killing monsters and upgrading" over the years:
The first way is the evolution of the appearance of TVs, the size is getting bigger and bigger, from 32 inches to 40 inches, 49 inches, 55 inches, 65 inches, and then to more than 70 inches; the other end is that the body is getting thinner and thinner. , borderless and other concepts are emerging on more and more TVs. Although TVs are more and more like works of art, this road seems to have come to an end, and if you go further, you will increase a lot of costs.
The second path is the upgrade of display technology. The resolution of TVs has been continuously improved from standard definition to 720P, 1080P, 2K, and 4K. It is also difficult to go further in the industry.
The third way is the "Moore's Law" of chips. TV chips are also constantly iterating from single-core, dual-core, and quad-core, but more and more computing power seems to be unable to find a bigger solution except for the rising cost. The place to play.
The development of TV to this stage seems to be like an old man. In addition to the fact that the global TV market is becoming saturated and has already shown a decline, this wave of people in the TV circle cannot sit still and live in search of new differentiation and selling points. in anxiety.
At this time, artificial intelligence came and became the fourth path pursued by TV manufacturers. TV manufacturers are strongly embracing AI, especially voice interaction, and some manufacturers even go back to the old way of using mobile phone APP voice to control TV in order to avoid voice hotspots.
The four paths of TV have evolved to today, and they have become known as large-size, ultra-high-definition and artificial intelligence.
But today we're going to say that AI can't save TV! Although TVs that support voice control now account for nearly half of the shipments, this fact cannot be changed.
AI - the "Goddess of Dawn" for TV manufacturers
Since 2014, global TV shipments have remained basically stable, and the market has become saturated. From the growth curve, we can clearly see the decline of the TV industry. The data shows that 2017 is the trough of global TV shipments in recent years, reaching 220 million units, a year-on-year increase of -3.3%.
Against the backdrop of global TV decline, China is no exception. According to the Aowei Cloud report, the retail sales of color TVs in China in 2017 was 47.52 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 6.6%, the largest drop in the past 14 years.
The domestic market is still sluggish this year. In the first half of the year, the retail sales of color TVs was about 22.6 million units, a year-on-year increase of 3.6%, and the retail sales was 72.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 2%.
In recent years, with the rapid development of mobile terminals (mobile phones and tablets), the home entertainment functions originally belonging to TVs have been diverted, which makes the already saturated TV industry further decline. Coupled with the price war in the TV industry, TV manufacturers who have just experienced the Internet TV war are facing new anxiety.
Wang Chuan, the head of Xiaomi TV, once told reporters that today the hardware has reached a bottleneck period. Now the CPU is very powerful, the memory is also very powerful, and the screen has also reached a technical bottleneck period. The real difference comes from Internet services and AI. TV has developed from a hardware battle to a software battle and AI battle.
This coincides with the above-mentioned, the first three waves of TV dividends have been exhausted, and the new dividends of current TVs come from intelligence. The first stage of intelligence is Internetization. In the heyday, dozens of Internet TV brands emerged. Today, most of them have left the battlefield, and the remaining few players continue to fight with traditional TV manufacturers. According to CMM data, the penetration rate of Internet TV has exceeded 80% in 2016.
The second stage is the combination of current AI and TV. XGIMI CEO Zhong Bo once introduced that the XGIMI screenless TV has built-in Baidu DuerOS voice assistant in 2017. This year, it also cooperated with Baidu to set up an AI laboratory to explore the application of AI in screenless TV scenarios. A solution provider also mentioned that in the context of the overall decline of the TV industry, the biggest anxiety of TV manufacturers is to find new selling points and achieve new breakthroughs. And AI seems to be the easiest straw to catch, so the industry is playing the AI ​​card.
On the other hand, the entrance to the smart home gives TV manufacturers more room for imagination. If the TV, which has already occupied the living room of the family, can be included in the control entrance of the family, it will not only realize the breakthrough of the TV, but also detonate the future family.
From near-field speech to far-field speech
The domestic TV industry embraced AI since the second half of 2015. The rise of smart speakers last year also pushed voice interaction to a high point. 2017 has also become a year of collective AI for TV manufacturers.
The concept of smart speakers replacing remote controls with voice and the concept of home entrance has made anxious TV manufacturers even more panic. They, who are trying to find new selling points, have also followed suit, taking AI and voice interaction as a new breakthrough for TV, and promoting the transformation and upgrading of the TV industry.
As AI enters the TV industry, the TV industry chain also changes. Liu Rufeng, the deputy general manager of the Spichi Marketing Center, is a "veteran" who has been rooted in the TV industry for many years. He told Wisdom that the most obvious change in the industry chain is the lengthening. For example, the influx of AI technology and solution companies, because traditional TV manufacturers do not have much accumulation in AI, they need to implement voice technology or visual technology into their products. AI companies such as iFlytek, Baidu, Spichi, Sound Intelligence Technology, and Sudden Cognitive are all representative players pouring into this field.
On the other hand, the entire industry chain has also begun to make more R&D reserves around AI. TV brand manufacturers (complete machine factories) have also successively added AI departments to explore the product form, software architecture, and combination with smart homes of voice technology. For another example, chip manufacturers will also launch chips with more computing power for AI, and optimize them for voice or vision.
In terms of AI applications, the core of TV manufacturers lies in voice interaction. With the help of AI technology companies and solution companies, they try to use voice interaction to change the key interaction in the TV industry. In the past two years, AI TV has shown a trend from near-field voice to far-field voice control, and from separation to integration of TV and control modules.
At the beginning, the combination of TV and the Internet produced a large amount of content resources, and the remote control using physical buttons seemed a bit stretched. With the relative maturity of AI technology, especially voice recognition technology, the industry has begun to try to introduce voice recognition into TV. In addition, due to the immature acoustic technology, the experience of far-field voice interaction was not good at the beginning. At this time, the voice remote control became an option.
For example, the Mi TV 4S launched by Xiaomi at the end of March 2017 still uses the remote control method of near-field voice interaction. In contrast, Baofeng TV is an early explorer of far-field voice TV. In May 2017, it launched far-field voice TV to get rid of the dependence on the remote control.
By 2018, far-field voice TV appeared more frequently in our field of vision. At the AWE (China Home Appliances and Consumer Electronics Expo) in March this year, Haier's fifth-generation TV also launched a far-field voice function, and its technical solution came from the Alibaba Machine Intelligence Technology Laboratory.
Moore Acoustics is the provider of Baofeng TV's far-field voice technology solutions. Its CEO Lv Yanhai told reporters that the far-field voice solutions for TVs are already mature. Although there will be some performance differences compared to the voice remote control, it does not affect the user's experience. , and can bring cost advantages.
Another industry insider also said that although the effect of the voice remote control is better, and manufacturers like Xiaomi insist on making voice remote control, traditional manufacturers think that the voice remote control is not new, "The industry's perception is that far Field voice is AI.†In addition, according to Zhishi, Xiaomi's next-generation smart TV will also support far-field voice functions.
Another trend is the integration of voice control modules with TVs. Initially, due to technical reasons, manufacturer factors, etc., the far-field voice TV will adopt a split design, and a module similar to a set-top box will specifically integrate the function of voice interaction. With the further polishing of the entire industry chain and the improvement of acoustic technology, integration is becoming the choice of more manufacturers.
Initially, the industry chose iFLYTEK's voice recognition technology for voice control of TVs, but with the development of the entire industry, some TV manufacturers have also begun to use the technologies of Baidu, Spichi, Yunzhisheng and other companies to conduct some differentiated products. explore.
According to Spichi Liu Rufeng, TVs with far-field voice interaction are expected to reach four or five million shipments this year. If the domestic TV sales of roughly 50 million are calculated, far-field voice TV will account for about 10% of this year's TV share.
If near-field voice interaction is added, Liu Rufeng believes that nearly half of the TVs this year will support voice interaction. It can be seen that voice interaction has penetrated into the TV industry and has become the standard for smart TVs.
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