IT vendors and host companies have no time to educate potential customers, so that most people still can't tell the difference between car networking and car networking. But it doesn't matter. What customers need is an intelligent system to do as much as possible. They just need to enjoy life. The more troublesome it is for customers, the less likely it is that the product will succeed.
BAT, which is "sitting big" in the stage of Internet and mobile Internet, has occupied the largest ecological niche. It is almost impossible for all other apps to create a new platform-level product. Not to mention BAT's own strong R&D strength, they can handle almost all startups by "buying and buying", while the latter always faces the dilemma of cashing in and wrestling with BAT.
In the era of car networking, the situation is a bit different. Although Pang Daru BAT is still keen to release "strategy" and "platform", startups may not necessarily praise the former when they see new opportunities.
TSP(Telematics Service Provider) occupies the core position in the three-tier architecture of the vehicle networking industry chain. TSP is connected with automobiles, vehicle-mounted equipment manufacturers and network operators, and then connected with content providers. Therefore, TSP has become the role that hosts, telecom operators and IT vendors strive for. In addition to being a platform, BAT chose to make products in person, which is why.
The Internet of Vehicles is not yet perfect, giving startups more opportunities.
Taber is an active start-up. In the past two years, it has cooperated with half of the car networking chains such as Baidu, United Electronics, Huawei and NXP. It can be seen from this road that although Taibo is the most active in cross-border cooperation, the cooperation with car companies is "peer-to-peer" and it is difficult to obtain strategic cooperation opportunities. Because a pure software company, it is inevitable that it cannot take into account the layout of the Internet of Vehicles.
Battle of speech recognition
At the beginning, voice interaction was only done by search engines such as Google Now, Microsoft, Baidu, etc., with the intention of breaking through the data barrier of different languages, realizing the whole network and full data coverage of users around the world and seeking greater advertising benefits. But soon, the whole chain of the car network realized the great application value of voice interaction in the car.
When driving is inconvenient, voice becomes the input control mode. However, voice interaction is considered to have the potential to become the common "entrance" of in-vehicle network, inter-vehicle network and in-vehicle Internet. Since he is a strategist, resources are rapidly assembled in the head office.
The competition of voice interactive platform in automobile field has entered a white-hot stage. The number of products has reached double digits, and all of them are mobile apps, hoping to influence users' usage habits. And we young users have mobile phones first, and then cars. It is an inevitable choice to cultivate customers from mobile phones.
A few years ago, the correct rate of speech recognition was not ideal. With the development of artificial intelligence technology, natural language processing (NLP) and natural language understanding (NLU) engines are becoming more and more mature, and the recognition rate claimed by each family is higher than 95%. Even so, customers are always worried about the unreliable 5%. The language expression in different contexts is too complicated, so it is necessary to constantly "feed" the training system with data to enhance the ability of autonomous learning. The competition of speech recognition has shifted to the competition of supercomputing and big data processing capabilities, and the first posture of startups has been weakened.
In 20 14, Amazon launched the smart speaker Echo based on Alexa platform, and opened the third-party development interface, resulting in thousands of applications. As a smart home product, it is easy to migrate to the vehicle environment. This is the first mature intelligent voice product.
Apple's HomePod came late and was not released until February this year. It was dubbed "the bottom of the box". Relying on the intelligent voice assistant represented by Siri, Apple aims at the intelligent interactive port in the Internet of Things (IoT) era, and the Internet of Vehicles is just one of the application scenarios.
During this period, American products such as Nuance, Iflytek, sogou Voice, Voice of the Cloud, and China Spirits laid out intelligent voice products one after another. Last year, the Nuance voice interactive system was adopted on the first internet car that Ali and SAIC cooperated. Iflytek signed a contract with Qichen yesterday, after signing a series of cooperation agreements with Chery, Changan and BAIC. Mobvoi and Volkswagen China set up a joint venture company.
When the products of startups land, BAT is no longer the only way. BAT, which is stuck everywhere on the internet, seems to no longer completely dominate the entrance of TSP. But BAT still tries to encircle its own territory through capital operation.
Voice is just a tool. What customers really need is an intelligent assistant. The assistant can't just search and push a bunch of messages, but make decisions for the customer, at least narrowing the options to a very small range. From this point of view, Siri is not a competent assistant.
With the advantage of speech recognition, Iflytek released the "Flying Fish Assistant" for smart cars, claiming that it can support real-time demand change, midway interruption and sleep wake-up. It seems to be more intelligent and can hold all the daily urban life scenes.
If the assistant is supported by the car company, he can control some unsafe matters through voice: air conditioning, stereo, telephone, window lifting and so on. Even if non-critical control rights are opened, car companies are hesitant and take small steps. So that speech recognition companies have not made much achievements in this respect.
Tencent started late and cooperated with its peers in the field of voice interaction, but the latter did not have the strength to challenge Iflytek. Tencent's AI in car ecosystem was launched at the Job Conference, but Tencent announced that it would not be an operating system and still sought to migrate to the social field and become a super APP.
To obtain automobile data, it must be BAT.
At this time, BAT can stand up. The "small car system" launched by Baidu World Congress last year is a typical AI interactive system. Xiao Di has built-in intelligent voice assistant, face recognition, fatigue monitoring, AR navigation, HMI, car home interconnection, intelligent security and many other functions. Small degree is more like the common entrance of Baidu products in various business groups.
Ali offered his Zebra Zhixing Company and AliOS system, emphasizing that the latter is a cloud-based system. OTA can be updated like a mobile phone system, and it can also achieve a long life like a car. The secret is that the computing and storage capacity on the cloud can greatly reduce the pressure on the car side and extend the life cycle of the car hardware.
The problem is that intelligent scenes such as making decisions for users and controlling unsafe equipment in cars all need the assistance of car companies. In this way, whoever can get the data of car companies can access TSP smoothly. Whereby the curve occupies the TSP port.
Zebra has reached an agreement with SAIC that Zebra does not seek to obtain the underlying data of the car, but the big data generated by users using AliOS cars will be uploaded to the Ali server. The driving map source data is deployed at both ends of the car and the cloud, and Gaode can obtain "interactive information" in the background.
Ali has a stronger bargaining chip and reached a strategic agreement with SAIC, which is impossible for a startup company. Moreover, tear a hole in the data packet that car companies regard as taboo. Implement "offset strategy" for Tencent's strong social advantages.
It is worth mentioning that Ali intends to use this as a model to talk about data cooperation with car companies one after another. For new energy startups, in order to obtain all the data, BAT intends to "charge more". However, no car startups have entered the market yet.
The essence of the Internet of Vehicles is to abandon the way that mobile phones map cars. The realization of intelligent scenes must be sent directly from the internet of vehicles, and mobile phones are no longer used as process nodes. This will not only be more seamless, but also train users to turn to the Internet of Vehicles era, and then turn to the Internet of Everything era, when mobile phones will come to an end.
Tencent is a leading social service provider. It is hoped that the car-linked product AI in Car will move Tencent's social network to the car and highlight its own advantages. However, Tencent's AI in Car should not only point to what it is good at, but should build a purer TSP architecture and develop more decision-making assistance functions in the in-vehicle environment, instead of simply putting WeChat in the car and reaching closer cooperation with car companies, trying to get the latter to adopt Tencent's front-end platform on a series of products.
Investing in AI is investing in car networking.
How to kill a mobile phone? BAT has come up with its own platform-level products. Baidu chose Carlife, a mobile phone interconnection solution similar to Apple Carplay; Alibaba chooses the native App route based on Yun OS; With a huge user base, Tencent hopes to divide Applications into channels, control the user experience, and move towards the road of super app.
Baidu's layout was earlier and more comprehensive, and it invested heavily in AI, trying to promote two open platforms, DuerOS and Apollo, and cooperate with all car developers. Baidu claims to have more than 70 partners. Although most first-tier car companies are on the list, they all avoid in-depth cooperation. Although Baidu is determined to be a universal operating system+development platform for car networking, it has also invested a lot of publicity, but up to now, it has not made a breakthrough. This is not directly related to Baidu's AI progress, and car companies are hesitant because of doubts about the dominance.
AliOS developed by Ali has its own platform attributes, and cooperates with SAIC, Changan and Shenlong in AI, application, socialization and information security.
Whether it is the super entrance of speech recognition, the platform or the data exchange between the cloud and the car, it depends on the development of AI technology. The algorithm training of AI provides a path for intelligent vehicles and more humanized scene recommendation services. The more you know about users' car networking, the more you will be favored and relied on by users.
Cloud computing is the foundation of AI computing power. Ali focuses on making car owners get smarter services, while Baidu Apollo focuses on making cars smarter on the road in the field of autonomous driving; Baidu DuerOS is to make the voice interaction in the car smarter.
In the field of AI, Ali and Baidu will compete directly. If Google can return to China, it will also become an important competitor. For Tencent, the way of content and TSP dual drive and content light platform is more competitive.
It is worth mentioning that in the "National New Generation Artificial Intelligence Open Innovation Platform" published by the Ministry of Science and Technology last year, Baidu's intelligent driving platform, Alibaba Cloud's smart city platform and Iflytek's intelligent voice platform are all directly related to the Internet of Vehicles, but Tencent is the only one that has obtained the medical imaging AI platform, which is incompatible with the first three platforms. It reveals that Tencent needs to adjust its AI strategy (light assets+heavy investment).
With the development of AI, human-computer interaction will inevitably tend to be simplified (reducing the cost of user learning and use). The connection between cars and people, cars and cars, and cars and various services will be promoted by AI. The super entry position of intelligent voice will be consolidated to a greater extent.
At present, the total annual plate of the global automobile industry is about 2 trillion US dollars. In the future, the personal travel market combining car networking with autonomous driving and new energy technologies will reach the level of 10 trillion US dollars. Although the cake will continue to grow bigger, it depends on who can control the "entrance" and "path" whether the competition between products and strategies of the future car networking will lead to oligopoly like the Internet era.
Article source: Tencent Auto