If 2023 is the first year of AI triggered by ChatGPT, then 2024 can be called the first year of AI intelligent hardware.
By the end of 2023, beforeappleHumane, founded by the executive couple, launched Ai Pin. In 2024, ChuharaBaiduLv Cheng, general manager of smart home hardware, founded the company and launched Rabbit R1. In the novel form of "box", the two products have become the most concerned AI hardware devices with large models. Time magazine included Ai Pin in the list of "Best Inventions in 2023" before it was officially shipped.
But soon, the disillusionment of AI hardware came more quickly. Less than a month after the official delivery of Ai Pin and Rabbit R1 in early 2024, they were completely smashed by various media because of their own defects, and completely became the failed experiment of "debut is the peak".
Ray-Ban Meta, image source: Ray-Ban official website
Recently, AI glasses are rolling in with a new wave of AI hardware. Ray-Ban Meta, as the first hardware product with a sales volume of one million in the field of AI equipment, is leading the main battlefield including Solos, Li Wei Keke, Honeycomb Technology and Flash Pole rushing to AI glasses. Behind these companies, there are advanced layouts including Tencent, Byte and Xiaomi.
After half a year, from the failure and success of these AI hardware, we can already see some common points or trends, which may not be comprehensive enough, but I believe it has enough reference value.
Looking back at the beginning of AI hardware becoming a hot spot, we should start with the story of a star entrepreneur.
In November 2023, Humane, an American technology company, released a wearable smart device-AI PIN. Brand-new human-computer interaction scheme and GPT large model have quickly gained wide attention on the network.
Ai Pin, image source: Humane official website
As a pioneering product, Ai Pin abandoned the logic of screen+touch, which was the most common in consumer electronics for many years, and instead opened up a new interactive way of projection+voice. The product itself is worn on the user’s clothes in the form of magnetic attraction, and the information is displayed through projection. The user can operate the product through voice to make calls, play music, take photos and video. The price is $699 and the AI subscription fee is $24 per month.
After its release, Time magazine listed Ai Pin in the list of "Best Inventions in 2023". Behind this, Humane, as a start-up, can get such extensive attention, which is inseparable from the "star aura" of founders and investors. Chaudhry andBangjiHonore is a couple, both from Apple. Chaudhry was the design director of Apple’s human-computer interface team, and Banguio Nuo was the head of Apple’s operating system. The investors include Sam Altman, who is now a big hit, and the famous.Microsoft.
It can be said that before the listing, Ai Pin hung people’s appetite with its "high concept" at the product level. But soon, after the delivery began in March 2024, Ai Pin received a flood of questions.
Ai Pin looks like a beautiful projection, but it is difficult to achieve the effect in the publicity video in actual daily life. Image source: official video.
As the main function of hardware, the projection of Ai Pin bears the most important ability to display information to the outside world. But soon, both evaluation agencies and individual users found that the projection function of Ai Pin was practically unavailable. Because of its low brightness, users can’t see the projected information clearly in outdoor or even some indoor scenes.
In terms of AI performance, Ai Pin is also considered "too slow". The image recognition function that is very smooth in the official demonstration actually takes 10 seconds to complete, and sometimes after more than ten seconds, the user will get an obviously wrong answer.
The veteran technology media The Verge’s view of Ai Pin is, "This thing may not replace your mobile phone soon, maybe never."
A CEO of a startup company in the technology industry told Titanium Media APP: "It is not feasible to Ai Pin from the product level. What is the maximum brightness that can be achieved under the current technology and what is the actual brightness required for daily use? It is completely known through calculation, and everyone with a discerning eye knows that this is impossible."
Subsequently, the market quickly gave Humane the "face-slapping" it deserved. According to the latest data, the shipment of AI Pin is about 10,000 units, which is only one tenth of the Humane plan. According to The Verge, from May to August, 2024, except for the pre-sale and April, which was just on sale, the return volume of Ai Pin was about 1,000 units. This means that one in ten users choose to return Ai Pin, and the return volume is even higher than the sales volume in the same period.
For the latest report, a Humane spokesman responded that there were "inaccuracies" in these figures, but declined to give specific details. But from the personnel changes, it is not difficult to see that Humane is experiencing a crisis. According to the latest reports, Tori Geiken, director of customer experience, Jeremy Werner, former vice president, Patrick Gates, former chief technology officer and Ken Kocienda, director of product engineering, have all left the company.
A former wearable device R&D engineer told Titanium Media APP that in the consumer electronics industry, seemingly perfect stories often don’t have good results. Ai Pin itself has a good enough investment and team, but the product obviously has a large degree of "gambling".
Rabbit R1, image source: official website
Compared with Ai Pin, which is looking forward to stepping into the sky, Rabbit R1′ s story seems to be more realistic and grounded. Different from Ai Pin’s creative way through projection, Rabbit R1 seems to behave in a proper way, giving an AI box what it should look like.
On January 10th, 2024, Lv Cheng, former general manager of Baidu smart home hardware and founder of Raven Technology, released Rabbit R1. Rabbit R1 itself is as big as a music player. After binding Uber, Spotify and other accounts, users can play music, take a taxi, order food and plan a trip through voice operation.
Relying on the ability of large model, Rabbit R1 also has visual recognition function, which can identify the food in the refrigerator and plan low-calorie dinner practices for users. Using its own unique large-scale motion model (LAM), the machine learns and repeats the user’s operations on the PC side. The user only needs to give voice instructions, and Rabbit R1 can be like.robotUnderstand and repeat the user’s previous operations as well.
Formally, Rabbit R1 is not a wearable device hanging on the chest like an Ai Pin, but from its design concept, it is almost a "trial product" of wearable smart devices.
Lv Wei said in the previous video conversation that due to the limitation of current chip and motherboard technology, the size of Rabbit R1 can only reach "half the size of iPhone Pro Max", and the future rabbit product form may be smaller and can be integrated on TWS headphones, or in the form of smart watches.
Judging from the market feedback, the performance of Rabbit R1 when it was first listed can be said to be "mixed" with quotation marks.
Happiness means that Rabbit R1 is better than the higher-priced Ai Pin, and there is no serious injury of low projection brightness, at least it still leaves a little expectation of OTA improvement in the later period. Based on the comprehensive media feedback, Rabbit R1 has been able to answer standard questions, play music, take a taxi, order food, identify the types of food in front of users and give cooking suggestions. Worry means that the experience of Rabbit R1 is not enough to support the expectations of the outside world.
Marques Brownlee(MKBHD), a well-known evaluation blogger, commented on Rabbit R1: I spent $200, and I don’t know what to do with it. Some bloggers pointed out that Rabbit R1′ s battery life is only 4 hours, which is totally insufficient.
Mishaal Rahman, an expert in the field of Android operating system, admits that Rabbit R1 has almost nothing that Android phones can’t do: it can talk to LLM to get the answer to the question, take a photo of an object to get information about it, play music from Spotify, take a taxi from Uber, or order food from Doordash, but that’s basically it.
The content about Rabbit R1 Shell Android has been overwhelming.
To make matters worse, Rabbit R1 was soon pointed out by the outside world as an "Android case".
Before this, Lv Cheng once said that we are equipped with a brand-new operating system, Rabbit OS, which is several times better than Android. However, on May 1, 2024, Mishaal Rahman posted that Rabbit R1 runs the Android system internally, and its entire interface is supported by Android applications. He also successfully "ported" Rabbit R1 to Android, even running on Google Pixel 6a mobile phone.
Subsequently, a user reversed the operation and installed and successfully ran the Android application in Rabbit R1. Later, The Verge and other foreign media commented very sharply: This is "Android with a shell", and AI is in the era of Juicero (note: Juicero: an "IQ tax" juicer, which now refers to unnecessary complex technological innovation, high price and excessive hype).
Later, Lu Cheng responded that most non-iOS consumer devices run on the modified AOSP as the client, while R1 is modified with a very customized AOSP(Android Open Source Project) and a lower level firmware. However, the interface of Rabbit R1 is not an Android application, and it uses a large model (LLM) to run in the cloud.
There may be some controversy about whether Rabbit R1 is sheathed or not. However, judging from the market feedback, Rabbit R1 has also fallen into a bottleneck like Ai Pin. According to the introduction of the press conference on April 24, 2024, within 24 hours of the launch, Rabbit R1 with a price of $199 sold 10,000 sets, and has sold more than 100,000 sets so far. But from May to early August, there was no more information about the sales of Rabbit R1.
Rabbit official said in the introduction video uploaded on August 8, 2024 that it had received opinions from various evaluations. In fact, before the opening of the market, Rabbit had already known that there would be these criticisms, and is now trying its best to solve these problems. To this end, Rabbit will solve some existing problems through OTA, including increasing the battery life from 4 hours to 1 whole day. However, it is a pity that this official video released by Rabbit is not "scientific and technological" in the pipeline, just like their previous official video.
It should be said that no matter whether it is Ai Pin or Rabbit R1, even if there is another chance to turn over in the future, their initial products can basically be considered as failures of AI hardware: the product experience is lame, the function does not exceed the existing mobile phone, and there is still a suspicion of "casing", which obviously failed to support the expectations of the outside world for its "smart phone". Even if Sam Altman and Microsoft have more money, they should not consider continuing to raise.
A technology industry investor told Titanium Media APP that both Ai Pin and Rabbit R1 can only partially replace the mobile phone in essence, but cannot completely replace it. And from the realization effect and sales volume, it is still unsatisfactory at present, and it can even be understood as a movable "smart speaker".
"Now the industry is more realistic, and tens of thousands of sales are not enough to listen. Without sales, everything is empty talk."
Francisco Jeronimo, vice president of IDC, also seems to confirm this statement. He said that whether users need a brand-new hardware when using AI is a controversial issue. "Although these ideas have their own advantages, the reality is that consumers don’t need these devices, they need smartphones."
Compared with the "AI box" like Ai Pin and Rabbit R1, which are highly anticipated but continuously overturned, another track is rapidly becoming the new main battlefield of AI hardware with the popularity of big explosive Ray-Ban Meta, that is, AI glasses.
As early as September 2021, Ray-Ban and Facebook (not renamed Meta at that time) jointly released the first generation of smart glasses Ray-Ban Stories. At that time, the product was very simple. The camera, microphone and speaker were added to the original sunglasses, which supported 30-second video recording, answering the phone and listening to music. The price remained at $299, which is not an exaggeration compared with Ray-Ban, and it became an ordinary smart glasses.
According to the Wall Street Journal, from September 2021 to February 2023, Ray-Ban Stories sold about 300,000 copies, but only 27,000 monthly active users, which is less than 10% of the total. Obviously, this is not a successful product.
Ray-Ban Meta, pay attention to the camera in the upper right corner. Image source: Ray-Ban official website.
But then, the launch of Ray-Ban Meta directly reversed the decline of the original products. In September 2023, Facebook, which had been renamed Meta, launched Ray-Ban Meta. The battery life is increased to 4-6 hours, and the audio experience is upgraded. The starting price is still $299.
Compared with the previous generation of Ray-Ban Stories, Ray-Ban Meta is obviously more ambitious and more cost-effective. The product is not only equipped withQualcommSnapdragon AR1 platform also provides completely free AI function (launched in April 2024). Combined with the camera, Ray-Ban Meta can answer users’ questions. For example, when the camera is aimed at a broken water pipe and the user asks "How to repair it", AI can immediately understand that this "it" refers to the broken water pipe and give a solution.
Judging from the feedback from the market, Ray-Ban Meta is not only good, but also breaks through people’s imagination of a pair of smart glasses. According to The Verge’s prediction, Ray-Ban Meta has sold 1 million copies in the first three quarters, which is the highest-selling AI hardware at present. Horizontal comparison is equivalent to twice the global sales of AR glasses in 2023, or twice the annual shipment of Apple Vision Pro.
In terms of cost, according to Wellsenn XR’s analysis, the comprehensive hardware cost of Ray Ban Meta is about $164, accounting for less than 60% of the selling price. Among them, SoC accounts for 34%, ROM+RAM accounts for 7%, OEM accounts for 9%, camera accounts for 5%, battery accounts for 4%, PCB accounts for 4%, and acoustic components account for 3%. Considering that Ray-Ban Meta is still a first-generation AI product, the profit margin in the future may be further improved.
Guojin securitiesAccording to the released research report, the annual sales volume of Ray-Ban Meta may reach 2 million units in 2024. Considering that the current AI function is only used by users in the United States and Canada, if the region and language are promoted to the whole world in the future, the corresponding annual sales volume may exceed 6 million units. As the most portable wearable device and the closest device to the human eye, glasses are expected to exceed 10 million sales in the future with AI bonus.
In the face of the hot break of Ray-Ban Meta, the technology industry that has been trapped in the continuous downturn of mobile phones, PCs and the meta-universe in recent years will obviously not miss this opportunity to make a comeback with AI.
Thanks to the existing Ray-Ban Meta path, Li Wei Ke, the former general manager of Tmall Elf products, Honeycomb Technology, the partner of Mijia Smart Glasses, Solos of Hong Kong, China, and the famous charging brand Flash Pole have all released AI glasses with large model function. Behind these companies, only the announced investment news shows that Ali, Tencent, Xiaomi, Byte and other big companies have already entered the AI glasses track.
As for other manufacturers, Huawei already has two generations of audio glasses. Considering the habits of manufacturers and its own Pangu model as a reserve, it should only be a matter of time before it enters the AI glasses track. In addition, it is reported that Luo Yonghao, the former founder of Hammer Mobile, and his newly-founded Fine Red Line Company also have plans to launch AI glasses products.
Li Wei ke metallens chatal glasses
According to the timeline, in April 2024, Li Wei can launch the first Al glasses equipped with AI model in China: Metallens Chatal glasses. The price of the product is 699 yuan, and the weight is only 38g. In addition to listening to songs on the phone, users can use voice interaction to ask AI assistants to help solve the work-schedule, and open encyclopedia question and answer, study assistance, English translation, voice navigation and music entertainment.
It is worth mentioning that the founder of Li Wei Ke, Ru Yi, was the head of intelligent terminal of Ali AI Lab and the general manager of Tmall Elf hardware & products. Most of the technical team also came from Tmall Elf team, and the company won financing from ByteDance only three months after its establishment. In terms of channels, Li Wei has cooperated with some domestic glasses chain stores, and recently opened up the business of B-end cultural tourism, with a single shipment of more than 50,000 sets (not a single category).
In June 2024, Solos launched Solos AirGo Vision, priced at $249, becoming the first smart glasses equipped with GPT-4o technology in the industry. Like Ray-Ban Meta, the product has a camera. Prior to this, Solos also had glasses without a camera version, including a frame designed for sports. Diversified design is an important feature.
Jiehuan AI audio glasses
In August 2024, Honeycomb Technology, the partner of Mijia glasses camera and Mijia audio glasses previously launched by Xiaomi, launched the first self-owned brand product, smart glasses with AI function-Jiehuan AI audio glasses, starting at 699 yuan. Compared with other products, Jiehuan AI audio glasses have gone through the iteration of the previous Mijia brand’s second generation products. The lightest all-titanium pilot model (without lenses) weighs only 30.7g, and has the option of "8 frames and 14 colors". From the actual experience of titanium media APP, it feels better to wear. In terms of AI, the main functions of Jiehuan AI audio glasses include AI chat, face-to-face translation and AI notification broadcast. A number of large models are used behind it, which can be called according to different functions, including products from big manufacturers such as Baichuan and Tongyi Qianwen.
In addition, the brand Flash Pole, which was previously known for its charging products, also launched Flash Pole Smart Shooting Glasses A1, which has a camera to support shooting function and multi-modal AI, and has not yet been sold, with a pre-sale price of 999 yuan.
Image source: Guojin Securities Research Report
According to the research report of Guojin Securities Research Institute, a large number of companies are pouring into AI glasses track. Xia Yongfeng, founder, chairman and CEO of Honeycomb Technology, had previously told Titanium Media APP that there are now more than 20 projects similar to Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses in China, and then the smart hardware industry is likely to have a "hundred mirrors war".
Based on the previous understanding from the industry, Titanium Media APP believes that the popularity of Ray-Ban Meta and even AI glasses have become a new hot spot in the intelligent hardware industry, which is essentially due to the following reasons.
First, consumers have a higher degree of acceptance of products. Among them, the first is that the price will not be much more expensive than traditional sunglasses. The price of Ray-Ban Meta is $299, and the price of an ordinary Ray-Ban sunglasses starts at around $250. Domestically, Li Wei Kehe Jiehuan AI glasses are sold at a price of 699 yuan, which is basically the same as or slightly higher than the non-intelligent products in optical shops such as LOHO and JINS, which are common in shopping malls.
For many consumers, choosing AI sunglasses or glasses, whether you can shoot a video from the first-person perspective with an extra lens, or you can play music and brush videos, most people agree that you can "return the ticket price", which will be more tolerant for the AI function.
On the other hand, Ai Pin and Rabbit R1 can’t do anything but AI, and users will try their best to challenge its "AI". At the current level of technology, even the top AI can’t fully meet the demanding requirements of users in the short term.
Solos also has a style designed for sports.
In addition, whether it is Ray-Ban Meta or domestic brand products, the brand value, shape design and wearing experience of the products are also crucial. Some manufacturers told Titanium Media APP that AR glasses are not made at present, which is largely because the display effect, weight and price of AR glasses are not up to expectations. AI glasses themselves are closer to ordinary glasses used in daily life from the product level, and the learning cost of users is very low.
In addition, the consensus obtained by Titanium Media APP from the industry is that whether sunglasses or glasses are added or not, becoming a good pair of glasses first is a prerequisite for making smart glasses.
Second, the combination of AI+ glasses itself has a high ceiling. According to the user survey data provided by Honeycomb Technology, the average daily wearing time of users of their own audio glasses was as high as 7 hours, and the use time reached 4.2 hours. The average daily wearing time of the most active 5,000 users was 10.7 hours, and their media usage time exceeded 7.7 hours. Compared with any consumer electronic device, smart glasses have a higher proportion of heavy users, which is the premise that many people in the industry think that AI devices can be established.
On top of this, the user base of their own glasses is also large enough. According to the data of WHO and National Health Commission, there are about 2.6 billion and 700 million people wearing glasses in the world and at home, and some non-myopic users will choose to wear plain glasses as blue light protection devices. It should be said that at least in the short term, the ceiling of the "glasses population" is still high enough.
In addition, of course, the development of AI has no foreseeable end yet. Previously, Honeycomb Technology once told Titanium Media APP that a lot can be done on AI glasses in the future, and the ultimate goal is to "liberate users’ hands with mobile phones". The functions that can be seen before and can be realized in the near future include proactive AI services: similar to presetting the price of a stock, notifying users immediately when the price arrives and collecting analysts’ opinions for reference, all of which are not difficult to realize.
Prior to this, Zuckerberg and Bill Gates all expressed their optimism about the future of smart glasses. Mark zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta, said that smart glasses will be an important form of computer development in the future and will become the mobile phone version of the next generation computing platform.
Bill Gates said that the spread of artificial intelligence technology will profoundly change our way of life and work, and headphones and smart glasses will become two key areas of artificial intelligence hardware.
He believes that headphones are not only audio playback devices, because they will increase audio functions, eliminate noise and improve sound quality, and become an important medium for human-computer interaction; Smart glasses can project video content into the user’s field of vision and open up a new form of human-computer interaction. The development of these devices will enable personal intelligent agents to surpass traditional human assistants, because they can track and read what users are interested in and provide continuous help.
"Although we have disclosed a lot of personal information in the digital system, if the artificial intelligence assistant can summarize the meeting or assist in the follow-up matters, then the value of the artificial intelligence assistant will be enormous."
However, it should be pointed out that there are some potential problems in AI glasses, mainly the possible low-price competition. At present, on the e-commerce platform, audio glasses of 100 yuan level can even add AI tags to keywords, which shows that if they are just pursuing or not, the industry threshold of AI glasses is obviously not high enough. If manufacturers want to develop better, they still have to cultivate their AI internal strength and achieve differentiation as soon as possible.(This article was first published in Titanium Media APP, by Wu Honglei, edited by Zhong Yi)
