ByteDance Doubao has launched an AI headset. Can the curse of poor hardware performance be broken this time?

Text | Lan Jie

Editor | Qiao Qian

On October 10, ByteDance launched its first AI hardware product - the headset Ola Friend. According to official information, this headset is connected to the Doubao large model and needs to be used in conjunction with the Doubao APP.

The Ola Friend headset maintains the technical characteristics of the previous generation Oladance. It is an open headset, namely an OWS headset (Open Wearable Stereo open wearable wireless headset), which can be generally understood as a highly integrated miniaturization of a home theater. In addition, the usage scenarios emphasized by Ola Friend are different from other AI headsets on the market, highlighting functions such as English practice partner, travel guide, and music DJ.

The price of this Ola Friend is 1199 yuan, which is significantly lower than the 1599 yuan price of the previous generation Oladance. However, even so, there are still some disputes about the price being too high.

According to a person close to ByteDance, the Doubao team hopes that AI can break through the traditional limitations of devices and scenarios and further explore the possibilities of more spaces. They believe that headphones are close to people's living scenarios and are also Doubao's exploration and attempt in the AI scenario, and other capabilities of Doubao will be continuously iterated in the future.

The launch of this AI headset was previously announced. At the end of last year, ByteDance acquired the smart headset brand Oladance.

This is a startup with a certain reputation in the headset circle. It was founded by Li Haoqian, the former product head of the Bose Consumer Electronics Division, in 2019. In 2022, the first-generation Oladance headset was launched, which is the predecessor of Ola Friend. In August 2023, 36Kr reported on the financing situation of Dash Future. At that time, the company had completed an angel round financing of tens of millions of US dollars. According to Li Haoqian at that time, under the cold start situation, the company expected its revenue to exceed 1 billion yuan in 2024.

However, the pure hardware headset business is not that easy to do. Oladance faces fierce price competition, and the more well-known and larger sales volume headset brand Shokz also entered the OWS headset track last year. For Oladance, ByteDance Doubao can be regarded as a good buyer that can complement each other's advantages and enhance the premium ability. According to the VR industry research institution Wellsenn XR information, the acquisition price is between 300 million and 500 million yuan.

The application of Doubao is accelerating, and AI hardware has become a contested area

During the pre-sale process, OlaFriend has already brought traffic to Doubao. According to Diandian Data, after the release of Ola Friend on the 10th, on the AppStore in mainland China, Doubao's ranking in the free list has risen by two places, ranking third.

For AI large models with large upfront investments and long return cycles, demonstrating their commercialization capabilities to the market is becoming an increasingly urgent matter. Before the launch of this AI hardware, the commercialization process of Doubao has significantly accelerated.

In the recent two months, Doubao has successively launched the AI teaching APP Doubao Aixue, the music generation model Seed-Music, and the video generation large models PixelDance and Seaweed, etc.

In May this year, ByteDance released the Doubao large model and joined the price war of large models with an extremely strong attitude. At that time, Tan Dai, the president of Volcano Engine, said that C-end users can use the Doubao APP for free. In addition, the pricing of the product for B-end users is much lower than other competitors - "The main model of Doubao (less than or equal to 32K) is priced at only 0.0008 yuan per thousand Tokens in the enterprise market. 0.8 cents can process more than 1500 Chinese characters, which is 99.3% cheaper than the industry."

Until now, ByteDance has once again launched an AI headset based on the Doubao large model.

Looking back at the current product matrix of Flow, including AI intelligent assistant Doubao, AI intelligent agent development platform Kouzi, image generation APP Xinghui, image and video generation APP Jimeng, character conversation software Maoxiang, and AI teaching product Doubao Aixue, etc., ByteDance's products in AI software are already very rich.

Among them, Doubao is the leader among a group of AI software products - According to Quest Mobile data, the monthly active users of the Doubao APP built based on the Doubao large model have reached 27.52 million in the first half of the year, which is 2.43 times that of the second place, becoming the most active AIGC application product in China.

At the same time, the combination of AI and hardware is becoming a new arena, and hardware is also regarded as one of the important paths for the application and commercialization of large models.

Before the launch of Ola Friend, iFLYTEK has launched AI conference headsets Pro2, iFlybuds2, and Kit2, with functions such as audio recording and transcription, and language translation. In addition, Meta, Philips Audio and Video, and Meizu have all made layouts in AI headphones. According to the report of the technology market research institution IDC, the shipment of AI mobile phones is expected to reach 223 million units in 2024, with a year-on-year increase of 364%. The AI hardware market is becoming a contested area. And ByteDance's entry into the hardware track with its best AI products will inevitably bring new impacts to this track.

In addition, AI headphones are only part of ByteDance's layout in AI hardware. In June this year, ByteDance officially stated, "The Doubao business is committed to exploring the combination with smart wearable devices, aiming to provide users with a more natural and convenient interaction experience."

In addition to acquiring Dash Future, ByteDance also invested in the AI and smart glasses R & D manufacturer "Li Weike" at the end of 2021. The latest development is that Li Weike reached a cooperation with Dr. Glasses in July this year and will launch the MetaLensChatAI glasses in the latter's national stores for the first time.

ByteDance's ambition in AI hardware is already known to everyone, but the success or failure has not yet been determined.

Will ByteDance's repeatedly failing hardware business succeed?

The pricing of Ola Friend is not expensive among AI headphones. For example, the price of iFLYTEK's AI conference headset Pro2 is close to 1500 yuan.

However, nearly two days have passed since the release of Ola Friend. According to incomplete statistics by 36Kr, in Douyin, JD.com, and Taobao, the pre-sale quantities of this product are 500+, 380+, and 500+ respectively. A person who has been paying close attention to the consumer electronics industry for a long time said that this result is somewhat lower than the industry's expectations.

In fact, ByteDance's expansion in the hardware market has not been smooth. ByteDance, which is dominant in software, seems to have difficulty adapting to the hardware development with a long development time, a long iteration cycle, and a high upfront cost.

Now, in the comment area of ByteDance's AI headset-related reports, there are still netizens asking, what happened to the Smartisan phone?

In 2019, some patents and teams of the smart phone manufacturer Smartisan Technology were acquired by ByteDance at a price of 300 million yuan, and later merged into the Dali Intelligent team, focusing on the research and development of educational hardware products. Among them, the Dali Intelligent Lamp is its main product and the only physical product currently for sale on the official website of Dali Education.

In 2021, ByteDance once again made a big move to acquire the head-mounted display brand PICO at a price of several billion yuan and heavily invested in marketing. However, the great effort did not bring a miracle, the product sales were lower than expected, and layoffs followed. In November last year, Pico carried out a significant organizational structure adjustment, and the team size was reduced from the original more than 2000 people to about 1000 people.

Can ByteDance, which has repeatedly failed in the hardware field, recover in this new AI track? Judging from the current situation, there is still hope.

Compared to the traditional in-ear TWS (True Wireless Stereo) headphones, OWS headphones are becoming the new mainstream, and their market potential has also been verified. The fact that Dash Future itself can obtain a high amount of first-round financing is already a proof. In addition, according to IDC data, in the first half of 2024, OWS headphones showed a high-speed growth trend, with shipments reaching 11.84 million units, a year-on-year increase of 303.6%.

On the other hand, the positioning of this OlaFriend as similar to a "friend" is in line with the relatively younger style of Doubao, while having the advantage of differentiated competition with other AI headphones. Moreover, this product integrates AI functions, but the pricing is nearly one-third lower than the previous generation product, already showing a certain trend of low-price competition.

Not to mention that before OlaFriend, Oladance was already a relatively mature product. The contents emphasized in the marketing of this new product, such as the weight of 6.6 grams and the use of the ENC intelligent noise reduction algorithm, are also aimed at the pain points of OWS headphones.

However, whether a product is good or not should be evaluated by consumers with practical experience, including how the latency of the headset's AI function is and whether its battery life can support the positioning of "companionship", etc.