Baidu overtakes Google in global smart speaker market
Chinese search giant Baidu is now the world's second biggest vendor of smart speakers, according to a new report from Canalys. The research firm says Baidu overtook Google to capture 17.3 percent of the global market with 4.5 million shipments in the second quarter of 2019, representing staggering year-on-year growth of 3,700 percent. Amazon remains the overall leader with more than 25 percent share of the market and 6.6 million shipments.
Baidu's AI speakers run on an AI platform called DuerOS. The company initially targeted the high end of the market with the Teenage Engineering-designed Raven H speaker, but that product apparently sold poorly. More recently, Baidu has pushed sales of much less expensive models, with the basic Xiaodu speaker selling for as low as 89 yuan (~$12). Baidu overtook previous domestic leader Alibaba in the first quarter of this year in China, according to Canalys.
But the company has faced some trouble lately:
Baidu has lost over $60 billion in value since its peak — now earnings are expected to fall further
TikTok's Parent Pushes Into Search Business in Threat to Baidu
Baidu is facing an unlikely challenger in China's search market — TikTok owner ByteDance
Baidu: 'China's Google' Is Not Done Yet
Related: Baidu Launches 'AI-powered Digital Assistant' Duer to Take On Google Now, Siri
Amazon Dominates Voice-Controlled Speaker Market
Alibaba Challenges Google, Amazon With New Echo-Like Device
Baidu, "China's Google", Shows First Loss
Google Will Give 100,000 Home Minis to People With Paralysis
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Chinese search engine giant Baidu announced on Tuesday [Ed: Javascript required] the launch of a new digital assistant that will be integrated into its latest mobile search app and use artificial intelligence to tailor suggestions to a user's tastes.
Similar to Google Now or Apple's Siri, Baidu Duer processes voice requests to connect users with services such as food delivery or film ticket sales.
"In the past, only the privileged few – those in very senior positions in companies or other organisations – had personal assistants," said Baidu chairman and founder Robin Li Yanhong.
"With Duer, every ordinary person can now have a powerful personal assistant who can provide valuable life services – for free," he added at the company's 10th annual Baidu World conference in Beijing.
It's an article of faith that more competition produces better products and services.
Amazon is dominating the voice-controlled speaker market, according to a new forecast from eMarketer out this morning. The maker of the Echo-branded speakers will have 70.6 percent of all voice-enabled speaker users in the U.S. this year – well ahead of Google Home's 23.8 percent and other, smaller players like Lenovo, LG, Harmon Kardon, and Mattel, who combined only account for 5.6 percent of users.
The new report backs up another from VoiceLabs released in January, which also found that Amazon was leading the voice-first device market, thanks to Echo's popularity.
While the market itself is not expected to be a winner-take-all scenario, competitors like Amazon and Google will win entire homes, as most consumers have said they wouldn't consider buying a competing device once they already own one voice-controlled speaker.
Gee whiz!
Alibaba's version of the digital personal assistant will be available on August 8th only in China and without a display:
Alibaba's "Tmall Genie X1" will go for 499 yuan ($73) to the first 1,000 people during a one-month trial, coming in below Apple's $349 HomePod and the roughly $180 Echo. Its biggest competitor, Tencent Holdings Ltd., is developing a voice-activated digital speaker that could hit the market within months, Tencent President Martin Lau said in a May interview. And on Wednesday, Baidu Inc. showed off its own "DuerOS" personal assistant.
Taking a page from Amazon.com Inc. and Google, Hangzhou-based Alibaba's speaker offers voice-controlled services from music streaming to newscasts and calendar-booking, according to its website. Importantly, the gadget -- powered by the AliGenie system -- may eventually simplify shopping for the Chinese e-commerce giant's 450 million active buyers who turn to the website for everything from cherries to makeup.
Originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.
Related:
Amazon Rolls out Chatbot Tools in Race to Dominate Voice-Powered Tech
Amazon Dominates Voice-Controlled Speaker Market
China's leading internet search engine Baidu's stock price tumbled after its first quarter earnings year over year dropped 80% leading to its first quarterly loss since inception. Baidu posted a net loss of 327 million renminbi ($49 million), contrasted against 6.7 billion RMB profit a year earlier. Revenue increased 15% year over year.
Baidu stated that strong demand for ads in the education, retail, and business services markets failed to offset "less vibrant" demand from the healthcare, online gaming, and financial sectors. Baidu also stopped disclosing its growth in active online customers, and Hailong Xiang, the senior VP of its search unit, abruptly resigned.
Meanwhile, TAC (traffic acquisition costs) rose 41% annually and accounted for 13% of its total revenue and 18% of its marketing revenue. Those percentages were in line with previous quarters, and indicates that Baidu isn't spending too much money to lock in advertisers.
For comparison, Google and Sogou (one of several competitors in the Chinese market) spent 2-4x as much on TAC as a percentage of revenue.
Instead, Baidu is heavily investing in various Google-alike alternative technologies including smart speakers in
its virtual assistant DuerOS, its short video app Haokan, its autonomous driving platform Apollo, Mini Programs for the Baidu App, cloud services, and other ecosystem expansion efforts.
Baidu competes against Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance in the Chinese market. Bytedance also suffered some from the slowdown in the past year. Alibaba and Tencent which also compete with Baidu in the online advertising and streaming video spaces, both posted significant gains.
The search giant has promoted Dou Shen, previously over its mobile products, to senior vice president to replace Xiang, and interestingly, has also rebranded its search business as its mobile business.
Whether these adjustments and investments will pay off in the long run remains to be seen.
Some previous Baidu related Articles
Baidu Entering The Driverless Car Race
Baidu's Web Browser Eliminates Privacy
Alibaba Challenges Google, Amazon With New Echo-Like Device
Baidu Launches 'AI-powered Digital Assistant' Duer to Take On Google Now, Siri
Computer Scientists are Astir After Baidu Team is Barred From A.I. Competition
Submitted via IRC for AnonymousLuser
Google will give 100,000 Home Minis to people with paralysis
Smart speakers aren't just cool gadgets to play with for some differently abled people, such as those dealing with mobility issues or vision loss. For them, a smart speaker could be an important tool that can help them become more independent in their day-to-day lives. According to Google's Nest team, they receive a lot of emails from people with disabilities, telling them how the Home speakers are giving them more independence. That's why the tech giant has teamed up with the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation to give away 100,000 Home Minis to people living with paralysis and their caregivers.
[...] Redd said the Home Mini gives him a way to control his lights and thermostat easily, and it can make sure he can call family and friends if he needs help. The speaker's ability to set alarms, play music and trivia and make lists could be especially useful to people with quadriplegia, as well. Those interested can check out the official partnership page to find out if they're eligible and to sign up for a free Home Mini.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday August 26 2019, @02:15PM (15 children)
What is "smart" about these speakers? Oh, they trigger when you talk to them. That's not smart, that's interactive.
Do the speakers analyze your command and do what you ask? Oh, they mostly relay that info to some other system that processes the query? That's not smart, that's a remote terminal.
Does that remote unit actually understand the query you ask using nothing but neuroprocessing methodology to comprehend your query and formulate the reply, and does not make mistakes in comprehension/reaction at a rate as good as a human? That's not smart, that's artificial simulation of intelligence.
Does it complete this query in a very rapid cycle? That's not smart, that's fast.
Does it help the person to be more independent? For some disabilities, perhaps, but generally it causes one to be more reliant on a particular technology to do actions one should be able to do oneself. That's not smart, that's dependency. [although this one is somewhat arguable in a lot of cases since it may save time if it gets what you wanted right and you need it so you can spend those seconds better.]
"Smart" devices are complete marketing bullshit.
What we have here is an artificial interactive remote terminal. But that's not nearly as sexy to sell or buy, is it?
But what are we gonna do. I just have a case of the Mondays.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 26 2019, @02:24PM
You don't understand. With all these things the smart part is always in the cloud. At home stays the dumb part, you.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 26 2019, @02:55PM (8 children)
Thin Client, Voice Interface - same thing that's been in the phones for years, but with a different package.
89 yuan explains a lot, I paid $25 for my TCVI connected to the evil overlords, and have never seen it for less but often for $49 - pretty clear choice for the Chinese speaking population when their native language box also costs less than half of the "competition."
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday August 26 2019, @03:11PM (7 children)
Aww, man. You countered my snark with truth. No fair! :) And someone wants to use it (knowing it isn't smart but a TCVI), great! I might decide to catch up with the technology sometime in the next 50 years. But first, I just installed this thing at home that lets me have water actually run into my home so I don't have to take buckets to the stream anymore, and next week I think I might look into getting one of these porcelain constructions that allows me to no longer have to walk out to my outhouse - they call it a Water Closet.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 26 2019, @04:28PM (6 children)
I've literally got to do this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IWTZTWarsw [youtube.com] so the kids will start taking showers again...
But, so much easier to buy a $25 widget at Lowes and marvel at how well it can hear and understand you even while it's playing music (self-echo-cancellation algorithm working really well...)
Having had it installed for a month now, all we do is bark at it to turn lights on and off, and ask it for reassurance every night that the alarm is still set for the morning... Although, I do occasionally bark a "When does Store X Open/Close" at it instead of my phone, because... who can be bothered to pull a phone out of your pocket and tap on a microphone icon when you can just install a creepy always on microphone in your bedroom instead? If you pay a little extra, you can get a cloud connected camera to go with it, too.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 26 2019, @05:07PM
But as you know with these cloud connected cameras unless you register your pornhub account won't get your cash share only the votes.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Monday August 26 2019, @08:00PM (4 children)
Honest question... How is asking a speaker to turn your lights on/off better than using a switch on the wall.
All these people at work have the smart lights so they can turn things on/off with their phone or whatever. To me, the switch on the wall seems more convenient.
... But these people love their smart lights for some reason.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 26 2019, @08:54PM (2 children)
Honestly: we've got three lamps in the living room, one on either side of the couch and one across the room on the piano, and it would take all of 30 seconds to walk around the room and get to the switches to switch them off - plus a pretty deep lean over the sofa to reach one of them, or... "Hey Google, living room lights off" from anywhere the thing can hear you. I thought we didn't need a relay on the lamp that's right by the stairs, easily switched, but as long as the other two are on relays...
For the low voltage outside lights, those are switched by relays in the garage and under the stairs - $10 for a WiFi relay, whereas installation of a "real" switch anywhere I could reach it inside the house would be over $100 (worth of my labor, or anyone else's) for the under-stairs location, and just impractical for the one in the garage. Same deal: voice command for on/off, plus you can set automatic timers.
Am I crushed when the system is down for whatever reason? Not at all... I don't think I'd trust it with anything critical, but it is convenient.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Snow on Monday August 26 2019, @09:08PM (1 child)
Ahh, I never thought about lamps. That makes sense.
Also, the outdoor lighting sounds cool. Maybe I'll try something similar out next spring.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 26 2019, @09:25PM
When the school bus arrives at 5:30AM, the outdoor lights aren't just cool...
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday August 26 2019, @11:00PM
You are supposed to avoid all kinds of movement, so that you build up an excuse to go see the routine of the fair sized titties blonde in the gym, duh.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Monday August 26 2019, @04:45PM (2 children)
“Smart” means it’s got a microphone inside.
(Score: 3, Touché) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday August 26 2019, @04:54PM
That does it.... I just swallowed ten microphones just now.
I can already feel my IQ rising! Or is that my stomach acidity and the oncoming ER bill?
This sig for rent.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Bot on Monday August 26 2019, @06:50PM
No no this is China.
Here, from the product support page:
Q: i hear no sound from the speakers what must i do to activate
A: thank you for buying our smart speakers. As you should have guessed, being silent is the smart thing to do for any Chinese speaker. However if you put your ear very close to the speaker, you can hear it whispering.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday August 26 2019, @08:58PM
Compared to the people who buy them, anything seems smart.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Monday August 26 2019, @11:14PM
Smart is the new stupid.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 3, Funny) by srobert on Monday August 26 2019, @07:59PM (1 child)
Perhaps Baidu is overtaking Google because of the way Google products are reported to spy on their users.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday August 26 2019, @11:02PM
best trolls are subtle.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 26 2019, @08:02PM
I hear nothing but stupid shit everywhere.