Ali Billions Of Layout Aiot Track Home Appliances Intelligent Upgrading Speed Up

With the advent of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and IoT (Internet of things) era, IoT is gradually realizing the interconnection of devices. In this field, the giants are constantly upgrading.

In May 20th, Alibaba announced that it will invest 10 billion yuan this year in Tmall sprite spring new conference, focusing on Tmall's comprehensive layout of AIoT and content ecology. At the same time, it will launch 100 tens of millions of intelligent products with partners.

This is an important step taken by Alibaba in the AIoT circuit in January when Tmall elves upgraded to an independent business unit. The vice president of Alibaba group and the general manager of Tmall elves business department, in the twenty-first Century economic report and other media interviews, revealed that the 10 billion yuan investment is still technology based investment point, including 5G, new Bluetooth technology and other technologies. On the other hand, it will increase investment in intelligent hardware and IoT ecology in the future.

Industry analysts believe that in the domestic appliance industry suffered heavy losses after the epidemic, intelligent upgrading, digital transformation will usher in a new wave of dividends.

Alibaba will invest 10 billion yuan this year to comprehensively layout AIoT and content ecology. Figure IC photo

Upgrading intelligent ecology

With the rapid popularization of artificial intelligence and voice interaction, China's smart speaker market has experienced explosive development in the past year. The quarterly report on IDC China smart home equipment market shows that in 2019, the shipment of smart speakers market reached 45 million 890 thousand units, an increase of 109.7% over the same period last year.

On that day, Alibaba released Tmall smart smart speaker X5. In addition, the Tmall spirit has updated three other product lines, 10 inch family smart screen CC10, sugar cube 2 and smart makeup mirror. It can be seen that Tmall elves gradually expand from the field of smart speakers, and what they value more is the extension of intelligent ecology.

Take Tmall ELF's smart home sub brand "Tmall spirit wonderful things" as an example. This is a smart home brand that is open and cooperative for the whole industry. It will integrate the business capabilities, technical capabilities, product design capabilities, content ecology, and life service capabilities of the Ali economy to encourage partners to open to the outside world and attract brands to make joint customization.

After the introduction of Tmall elves, Tmall spirit will use Ali Genie system as a platform for AI based in 2020. With Tmall intelligent control device as an open ecosystem, we will create more smart home product matrix and create multi category central control equipment.

Tmall sprite has gradually upgraded to the interactive entry of smart home, and it has revealed that at present, more than 272 million smart devices can be connected to Tmall sprites. "Smart home does not simply connect home appliances to the Internet. We have incubated many intelligent" new species "with our partners. At present, on our platform, users can choose more than 80 categories of intelligent devices, more than 5000 different models, more than 1100 brands.

Matthew effect is more and more obvious in the market structure. Orville cloud network data show that in the first quarter of 2020, China's smart speaker market sales volume was 8 million 844 thousand, an increase of 23% over the same period. Market TOP3 brand market concentration further deepened to 93.7%, of which Tmall elves led by 35.5% of the market share.

From the perspective of shipments, Alibaba, Baidu and millet account for more than 9 of the market share of smart speakers. Tmall smart smart speakers ranked first in the 15 million 610 thousand shipments in the year, up 87.9% over the same period last year, while Baidu's small intelligent speakers ranked second, with 14 million 900 thousand shipments year-on-year, an increase of 278.5% over the same period last year, while Xiaomai's intelligent speakers were third.

IDC China Research Manager Pan Xuefei believes that both in voice interaction and visual interaction, smart speakers market and the entire smart home market need to continue to explore and upgrade for a long time. In 2020, the competition of China's smart speaker market will be transformed into a contest in the field of intelligent ecology based on interaction. Whether it is the ecology of the hardware or the ecology of software application, it will become an important weight for every head manufacturer to build its moat.

Digital evolution of household appliances industry

From the above actions, Tmall elves assume the pioneering task of Ali in the field of AIoT layout. At the beginning of this year, Ali adjusted the strategy of IoT field, upgraded the Tmall elf business, which belonged to Ali AI laboratory, to the independent business unit.

Generally speaking, its strategy is mainly divided into four aspects, one is to provide partners with AI+IoT as the core technology; the two is to create hundreds of millions of intelligent explosive products, and will focus on 3C, digital, home appliances, home furnishing and other industries; three is to build "elf wonderful" brand series, invest billion in product development and related resources, provide product definition, new products hatching, production. Product appearance ID definition, data learning feedback upgrade, consumption insight scene creation and so on; the four is global intelligence support.

This year, Tmall Elves will fully access the "Ali economies" including health, entertainment, shopping, education and other fields, and cooperate with the content industry to expand the ecosystem. This is undoubtedly an opportunity for upgrading the home appliance and home furnishing industry.

At present, Alibaba has deployed 4 IoT core nodes worldwide, 14 accelerated computing nodes, and 12 languages, covering more than 200 countries. As an important part of the new infrastructure, the Internet of things is advancing from the national level.

Zhang Yong, chairman and chief executive officer of Alibaba group's board of directors, said earlier that the digital infrastructure construction is the new capital construction. Then Ali Yun announced that it will invest 200 billion in the next three years, and will be used for the research and development of the core technologies such as cloud operating system, servers, chips and networks, and the construction of data center for the future.

On the AIoT track, Tmall elves focus on the C side of the field. Through integration with TO B's Ali cloud IoT technology capability, it will form a platform for Ali's technology empowerment, so as to expand content and services and upgrade AIoT ecosystem. According to Mr. cove, the goal of the future is to incubate and cooperate with the good things together and truly turn into a large scale smart home company. "We will not compete simply with product prices, nor will we directly subsidize the hardware. Instead, we can use Pratt & Whitney's price to enable users to enjoy a wider range of benefits from technological progress.

In recent years, although smart appliances are constantly innovating in hardware, the pain is the scene experience. The interconnection and interoperability of cross brand smart appliances urgently need to be broken through. According to Mr Cook, facing the future terminal products in the era of 5G and AIoT, there will be three main characteristics: intelligent interaction, cloud integration and ubiquitous intelligence.

An analysis of Securities believes that the first half of this year, the epidemic brought short-term business pressure, but also bring long-term change opportunities. The increasingly mature household appliance industry is facing changes in demand and channel mode. It is urgent to break the old thinking. In the new infrastructure, intelligent and comprehensive digitalization will become the core of the whole industry.

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