Casio has set its sights on pocket learning machines.

AI education hardware has been a booming track for years. At this moment, traditional education hardware brands are also trying to tap into segmented scenarios with more vertical products.

Take Casio for example.

Casio, a brand well-known to Chinese consumers for its watches, calculators and electronic dictionaries, is expanding its business territory to AI education hardware.

Duozhi Observation found that Casio China's official website has set up a "Smart Education Section", on which a portable pocket device product "AI Smart Listening & Speaking Learning Machine LT-C1" is listed.

Let's take a quick look at the key product information from the official website and e-commerce platforms:

1. It is a pocket-style device weighing 145g in total, equipped with a 2.83-inch screen and 128G memory.

2. The official price of the product is 1098 yuan, and the preferential price on e-commerce platforms ranges from 800 yuan to 1000 yuan.

3. The LT-C1 is designed for preschool and K12 users, with pre-set English and Chinese subject resources, high-quality courses and a series of application functions.

4. For the English subject, the LT-C1 currently includes resources such as graded listening, English question banks, phonics courses, oral assessment, and situational dialogues.

5. For the Chinese subject, the LT-C1 currently includes content such as character dictation, Chinese character learning, and sinology recitation, with interactive designs in multiple sections. For example, the Chinese character learning module has Chinese character riddle guessing, and the Chinese learning section has fun knowledge designs.

6. In terms of high-quality courses, the LT-C1 includes special video courses for transitions from primary to junior high, junior high to senior high, and the national college entrance examination; formulas for three subjects of mathematics, physics and chemistry for junior and senior high schools; literacy content such as Chinese characters, children's songs, audio stories, and picture book encyclopedias; as well as resources like AI Q&A.

6. There are also independent applications such as real exam questions and simulation systems for the high school entrance examination and college entrance examination, Chinese-English translation, mental arithmetic practice for grade 1 to 6, and new word books.

Before the launch of this product, Casio is best known to consumers in the Chinese market for its calculators and electronic dictionaries.

Take the electronic dictionary business as an example:

Casio launched the world's first electronic dictionary TR-2000 in 1981, and after launching the EX-word series in 1996, it has long ranked first in the Japanese market.

In 2005, after entering the Chinese market, Casio's electronic dictionary continued to carry out localized adaptation.

In terms of functional forms: Casio's dictionary added real human pronunciation in 2007, was equipped with recording and listening functions in 2014, supported sentence pronunciation evaluation in 2017, aligned with the new senior high school English curriculum standard in 2018, and added the Oxford iSpeaker dictionary to the E-XA series in 2020, covering the "listening, speaking, reading, viewing and writing" modes...

In terms of content resources, Casio's electronic dictionary has long held copyrights with Oxford and other publishers, and connected with Chinese teaching scenarios: it was once awarded the "Designated Product of the Translators Association of China", authorized as the designated dictionary by the China Japanese Language Teaching Research Association, and has long held the "Casio Cup" English speech contest, set up education reward funds, and organized activities such as the Casio Education Alliance.

In terms of attempts in education hardware, in addition to electronic dictionaries, Casio also launched the English learning device Lesson Pod overseas.

This 310g egg-shaped small robot provides functions such as oral English dialogue practice, pronunciation correction, and English resource expansion. Although it has not been launched in the Chinese mainland market, it is Casio's first attempt at intelligent oral practice, to verify its hardware definition capability for voice interactive products.

Therefore, when Casio develops the listening and speaking device product, much of its past experience can be directly reused, for example:

1. The productization experience of listening and speaking functions is readily available.

Casio's dictionaries have iterated pronunciation evaluation and oral training dictionaries. The "word repeat, situational dialogue, graded listening" functions of the LT-C1 are essentially extracting the functions from the E-XA series and rebuilding them.

2. The content assets of "dictionary + synchronized teaching materials" can be reused.

With its inherent endorsement, it is suitable for targeting the rigid demand scenario of "exam-oriented listening and speaking" (the listening and speaking test in the high school entrance examination and college entrance examination).

3. The brand perception of "closed and focused".

Mobile apps are easy to cause addiction, tablets are easy to be used for entertainment, and no-name products are usually of poor quality. Casio's previous products all focused on specific functions, and this new product has no entertainment functions, highlighting the concept of "dedicated learning device".

However, these advantages are far from enough in the current domestic market.

In February 2025, Casio announced that it would stop the R&D of new electronic dictionary products and carry out structural reform on the relevant department: the shipment volume of electronic dictionaries in the Japanese market in 2023 was only 385,000 units, less than one seventh of the peak in 2007.

An industry insider pointed out to Duozhi: "The launch of the LT-C1 is not a icing on the cake for Casio, but a successor to the dictionary business, that is, migrating the dictionary content, education channels and brand to a category with growth potential."

What's more, the market that Casio enters is not a blank market at all.

An industry insider pointed out, "For other players in the same track, what Casio is doing now is no longer the mainstream way of operation in the market."

In the past few years, two clear factions of hardware with built-in English listening and speaking functions have emerged, plus a group of no-name products priced at only 200 to 300 yuan.

The first mainstream faction is brands that started with content audio immersion, represented by Tinger, Niu Tingting and Listening Bear, which control the household end entry, with strengths in content matrix, user scale and operation.

Among them, Yuan Lin, CEO of Listening Bear (Teeni.AI), entered the listening device track in 2021 after the "double reduction" policy. After the GPT boom in 2023, he resolutely "turned all businesses to AI", cooperated with Alibaba Cloud Tongyi to independently develop the youth large model TeeniGPT; in early 2025, it accessed the DeepSeek large model, and invited Zhang Chi, founder of the AGI Laboratory of Westlake University, to serve as the chief scientist and CTO.

At present, its product line has extended to multiple forms of products such as listening devices, AI portable agents, and AI learning companion phones.

The second faction is the "technology tool faction", represented by Youdao and iFlytek, which have long accumulated core AI technology and exam assessment capabilities.

In July 2023, Youdao launched "Ziyue", a vertical education large model in China, which was then applied to the virtual character oral coach of the dictionary pen X6 Pro and the AI oral coach of the listening treasure, with the dictionary pen and listening treasure businesses developing in parallel.

Up to now, Youdao has been promoting the professionalism and tool attributes of the dictionary pen business line on the one hand, and launching problem-solving hardware to meet more demands on the other hand.

Casio is positioned outside these two development paths.

It faces no lack of both opportunities and challenges.

The LT-C1 is a new entrant with accumulated brand value, channels and dictionary content assets. For Casio itself, this is more like a migration experiment of stock assets: the decline of the dictionary business is a foregone conclusion. Whether the listening and speaking device can carry the "Casio Education" brand depends not on the hardware, but on whether it can make up for the new lesson of content operation.

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "Duozhiwang" (ID: duozhiwang), written by Feng Wei, and republished with authorization from 36Kr.