Behind the topping of Zuoyebang Learning Machine: Accelerating the Return of Educational Products to Their Original Intentions.

In the just-passed 2024, there is a category in the consumer electronics field that is quietly taking off against the trend: the smart learning machine.

Ruotuo Technology predicts that the domestic annual shipment of learning machines in 2024 will reach 5.88 million units, with a year-on-year growth of about 25%. The market potential in the next few years is huge.

Obviously, AI has truly entered the application stage in the education industry. AI education applications and large-scale models in the education industry have borne fruit on learning machines, breaking the barrier between the physical world and digital knowledge, and turning learning machines from an educational hardware into a rich and colorful terminal ecosystem.

Thanks to the arrival of the era of smart learning machines, the market pattern of learning machines also underwent a huge change last year.

The market analysis report of Shangpu Consulting points out that the Homework Help learning machine ranked first in the domestic omni-channel sales (excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan regions) throughout the year of 2024;

The research results of iiMedia Research show that the Homework Help learning machine ranked first in the national (online + offline) and online sales from January 1 to December 31, 2024;

The "2024 China Learning Tablet Market Analysis Report" of Ruotuo Technology shows that Homework Help's cumulative sales from January to December 2024 ranked first in the country;

The data of Aowei Ruiwo shows that the online sales share of Homework Help learning machine in December 2024 is as high as 33%, significantly ahead of other brands.

Compared with the long "growth history" of educational hardware in China, Homework Help, which entered the market in April 2023, is still a newcomer. But in this short period of nearly two years, the Homework Help learning machine has witnessed a miraculous growth.

Why Does the Learning Machine Grow Against the Trend?

The hardware iteration wave of smart learning machines not only boosts the spirit of the sluggish learning machine market in the past few years, but also finds a new milestone for the AI application wave.

In the Top 10 list of learning machine sales in Q3 of 2024, educational technology manufacturers firmly occupy the top five, and the original leading traditional brands have disappeared.

An unavoidable fact is that in the face of transformative technologies, the first-mover advantage seems not to exist.

Whether it is an Internet technology giant that is good at technology integration or an educational technology manufacturer that is good at the educational content ecosystem, they are all eyeing the learning machine, this educational gem. Judging from the market penetration rate and sales growth, the products launched by educational technology manufacturers have basically replaced the traditional educational hardware brands.

The extremely cost-effective learning machine today is also the result of the "participation" of multiple parties. From NetEase Youdao, ByteDance, iFLYTEK to Homework Help, Yuanfudao, and Xueersi, educational technology manufacturers seem to have flooded into the learning machine market at the same time point.

And this time window is the golden moment when AI can quickly transform educational resources into applications.

Traditional manufacturers are more familiar with hardware manufacturing, while the core barrier of educational technology manufacturers is that they are more familiar with education and AI.

This is why, even in the present when mobile applications and tablet productivity are so mature, the education industry generally believes that educational hardware represented by learning machines is irreplaceable.

Looking back at the iteration of the entire industry from the perspective of Homework Help, we will find that at the beginning of entering the game in 2023, the downturn in the educational hardware market and the lack of ability and effect of traditional products may instead make the manufacturers' willingness to "focus and restructure" more intense.

And educational technology manufacturers represented by Homework Help also need business restructuring. Under the circumstance of online traffic dividends, they should root the growth curve in the learning scenarios that are closer to front-line teaching. In terms of hardware, although the learning machine is a consumer electronic product, it is not a category that overly competes in hardware performance. The mature consumer electronics supply chain in China enables new entrants to quickly catch up with the hardware capabilities.

The "fall" of the traditional learning machine is because many brands have good hardware, but have no accumulation in the content ecosystem, and do not understand the educational needs in the long-term user analysis like Homework Help and Youdao. Naturally, it is difficult to focus on the educational scenarios.

Only in a well-established content ecosystem can the pain points of the traditional learning machine become highlights.

Therefore, the first reason for the counter-trend growth of educational hardware is that the business logic, thinking mode, and technical capabilities of the "dominant role" in the industry have obviously leaped along with the general environment of the education system.

The second reason is the charm of AI.

After AI education became the earliest intelligent application direction, educational hardware finally has a "soul". This is also reflected in the value of Homework Help's self-developed educational large model.

In September of the previous year, Homework Help demonstrated the application results of its Homework Help large model in intelligent problem-solving, knowledge Q&A, bilingual writing, AI companion learning and other aspects at the 2023 China International Fair for Trade in Services, attracting a large number of audiences for interactive experience.

In the two authoritative evaluations of C-Eval and CMMLU, the Homework Help large model performed outstandingly and became the first educational large model to rank first in the average score in both lists simultaneously.

The characteristics of the Homework Help large model well prove in which educational scenarios AI education will explode and how it will act on individualized learning and growth. The learning machine is an essential "experience container" that can maximize the release of the single-point application ability of the educational large model through the localization of hardware and cloud calling.

Third, under the influence of the general environment, although many consumer electronic products have become "electronic toys", parents' confidence in investing in education has not been frustrated. Instead, it has increased with the fierce competition for talents.

The educational concept of individualized teaching and individualized learning has become possible under the joint action of emerging technologies and parents' concepts.

The Key to Homework Help Learning Machine's Topping

However, in the white-hot competition and market education, there are also many chaos in the smart learning machine market.

Throughout last year, the situation of "harvesting leeks" with AI applications was not uncommon. For example, in the field of learning machines, many people bought the hardware and scene functions, but the built-in large model capabilities and performances were vastly different.

However, a very valuable point in the educational hardware industry is that neither manufacturers nor consumers give up because of the excessive expectations for AI applications. Instead, they begin to conduct long-term evaluations to choose a smarter learning machine with a better and more accurate experience.

The learning machine is not a daily necessity like a mobile phone. If the experience is not good, it is easy to "collect dust". As a latecomer, Homework Help's ability to achieve the first position in sales last year is not only due to the pricing strategy and the matrix of the hardware end. The excellent performance of the Homework Help large model is one of the key differentiating advantages.

This also verifies from a commercial perspective that the next three to five years of AI application exploration period is the best time for all walks of life to reshuffle and widen the gap through domain data and business scenario understanding.

In addition to the natural fit of the AI application environment and the inclusiveness of the learning machine consumer market, there are three reasons why Homework Help learning machine can top the list.

First, in terms of product cost performance, Homework Help learning machine has currently achieved the ultimate. According to the mainstream data, the current core price range of the learning machine market is around 3,500 - 5,000 yuan, and the high-end market space is very small. It is by no means an easy task to refine the core educational scenarios into individual learning needs within a limited cost range.

While enriching the product matrix, Homework Help has also significantly reduced the price of the mainstream brand learning machines, making the "product + content + AI" ecosystem the core competitiveness and promoting technology inclusiveness.

Second, even without considering intelligence, the learning machine application ecosystem itself needs to rely on a large amount of content and data resources. High-quality educational resources have always been the differentiated foundation of learning machine products. In fact, long before the learning machine business "broke through the siege", Homework Help has already reached the domestic top in the scale and quality of educational data resources.

For example, in terms of practice resources alone, the Homework Help Practice Machine has built-in 5.47 million sets of real exam papers and supporting 296 textbook versions of in-school synchronous practice and teaching aid resources. Under the release of learning situation big data and AI capabilities, the Homework Help Practice Machine shows a delicate and flexible accuracy, and can achieve hierarchical practice according to students' learning situations.

This is why it is very difficult for mainstream large model manufacturers to do educational vertical applications, or other educational technology manufacturers that do not do self-developed large models to catch up with Homework Help in terms of intelligent performance by calling the underlying large model, because data is the most obvious barrier of the first-mover effect at present.

Third, and also a common trait of educational technology manufacturers: Homework Help's own business matrix has already formed an efficient learning ecosystem. From the Homework Help App, smart learning machines, smart books, including the digitalization of education in schools, the linkage and closed-loop ability of the online and offline ecosystem is very strong. The interactive experience of the end user at one end can be reflected in the entire ecosystem, and the learning mode for different growth systems and learning habits will accompany the growth of students consistently.

At present, Homework Help is also carrying out research and cooperation on topics such as the new curriculum standards to empower compulsory education with technological means.

The learning machine market is a field suitable for "seeing the big from the small": on the surface, it is only the consumption of smart hardware, but behind it is the long-term understanding and design of the education system.

AI, Making Educational Products "Accelerate" Back to the Original Intention

It can be predicted that the explosion of the learning machine market is just the beginning. In 2025, the field of educational technology will continue to shine, and the market pattern of educational hardware has not been solidified.

Because, in the trend that the entire AI industry is "looking for nails with a hammer", AI education has become a benchmark. Smart educational hardware is undoubtedly the key track that takes the large-scale model commercialization out of the innovator group and enables it to sink into ordinary families.

The explosion of Homework Help learning machine in e-commerce is a powerful proof of "AI inclusiveness". As early as August 2023, Homework Help, through a deep integration with the Kuaishou consumer electronics ecosystem, stimulated a large number of users' resonance for intelligent applications through the dissemination of educational content and the use of contextualized situations.

This is an effective path and also the inevitable direction of the education industry under the demand for cultivating new types of talents in the country.

Through the education industry, future talents can contact AI earlier and more deeply, experience the efficiency of intelligence, and thus have the ability to embrace and create new-quality productivity. Therefore, smart education is also the cornerstone for all walks of life to achieve industrial intelligent transformation in the future.

Driven by AI, the "sales takeoff" of learning machines is visible, so educational technology enterprises such as Homework Help have received more attention than ever before. But in fact, the segmented track that has set off against the trend is not only the learning machine, and the digitalization of education is also in full swing.

The entry of educational hardware into the era of large models is only the first step. In the next step, the inclusiveness of education under technology inclusiveness will become more and more obvious.

Educational inclusiveness is reflected in the ability and burden of liberating parents. In the user learning behavior report released by Homework Help in 2023, it can be seen that the learning situation diagnosis and learning task formulation functions of the learning machine save an average of more than 20 minutes per day for children and parents in organizing wrong questions.

In 2022, since the Ministry of Education launched and implemented the national education digitalization strategic action, intelligent educational equipment has begun to penetrate into classroom and after-school learning scenarios more quickly, and the learning resources of schools and online are also being integrated and shared.

According to the research of Beijing Normal University, among the groups using intelligent educational technology, the proportion of K12 exceeds 90%, mainly because the teaching in the early stage emphasizes the establishment of basic knowledge and the cultivation of subject interests, and intelligent educational technology can provide a more creative and interesting learning environment and learning content.

From the perspective of the global market, China's AI educational products are also very likely to become the new generation of domestic pride.

For example, Homework Help's overseas large model application Question AI has become a leading educational product in the North American and Southeast Asian markets, with nearly 2 million weekly active users in the North American market. As a Q&A and homework assistant, it solves homework problems in multiple disciplines for students.

Seemingly a hardware competition, what is hidden beneath the surface is a deeper understanding of the way of talent cultivation. The ultimate value of individualized teaching makes AI individualized education stand in the center of the stage. And educational technology manufacturers such as Homework Help are also constantly absorbing, creating and innovating technical value, bringing more possibilities and innovations to the traditional education methods.