Remedy for IoT blind spots: Create a small and popular Tmall Genie BOOM hands-on experience

With the rise of AIoT, smart speakers have gradually entered our lives. No matter how big the home environment is, they always have a place on the table, and we use them to "ask about the well-being" in our spare time. Although we always make fun of artificial intelligence, from the communication of words to achieve various functions, it is not difficult for us to imagine the future intelligent life landscape where technology and humanity are intertwined.

Although the smart speaker market is a big cake worth more than 200 billion yuan, under the trend of the Matthew effect, the top manufacturers are fighting fiercely and there are obvious signs of a red ocean. According to AVC's omni-channel data, Tmall Genie ranked first in the Chinese market with a sales share of 35% in the first half of this year.

An e-commerce giant, a long-established Internet company, and a large-scale mobile phone manufacturer, although they have different corporate genes, the competition among the three companies will inevitably become more intense in 2019. In April this year, Canalys also released the corresponding forecast results, predicting that Tmall Genie will occupy 39% of the overall market share in 2019. Xiaoai and Xiaodu are expected to occupy 25% and 24% respectively. From the trend point of view, Tmall Genie will continue to occupy a leading position in the smart speaker market this year.

In the fierce battle, the single smart speaker category is obviously insufficient as a "fighting platform". With the trend of product homogeneity, from subsidy wars to subdivided categories and then to subdivided scenarios, the speaker market will inevitably undergo changes if it wants to continue to develop.

The Tmall Genie BOOM is aimed at the portable scene, which is in line with the trend of mobility. Compared with the traditional Tmall Genie products, the compact Tmall Genie BOOM is obviously designed to make up for the blind spots of intelligent scenes, thus promoting the overall formation of a complete product pattern of Tmall Genie.

Now let’s take a look at what this product is like and whether it can live up to its name and make a splash in the Bluetooth speaker market.

Simple and light enough to hold in the palm of your hand

Small and exquisite, you can feel the biggest feature of Tmall Genie BOOM from the moment you get it. The official weight is 78g, so you don't have to worry about its lightness. In terms of appearance design, Tmall Genie BOOM continues the family-style "square arc" treatment, and the front is a polka-dot sound hole. The color scheme is white, and the overall look is simple and generous. In addition, Tmall Genie BOOM is also available in red to meet your personalized needs.

In terms of size, the Tmall Genie BOOM is smaller than the palm of your hand. As a smart speaker that cuts into mobile scenarios, the Tmall Genie BOOM is also equipped with a lanyard for easy carrying. It can be carried close to the body. In terms of portability, the Tmall Genie BOOM is quite good.

In terms of interfaces, Tmall Genie BOOM uses a Micro USB interface with a power of 5V-0.5A. Although it cannot be a C port, Micro USB is still much better than a DC round head. This time, Tmall Genie BOOM is equipped with a 500mAh capacity battery, which can achieve the sound of the amplifier even without an external power supply. In terms of battery life, Tmall Genie BOOM can support more than 4 hours of music playback, which is enough for take-out use. Even if there is no power, you can quickly "recharge" by charging with a small current from a power bank.

On the side, Tmall Genie BOOM has a microphone port, voice button and indicator light. The microphone port can realize Bluetooth hands-free calls, and the voice button can be used to wake up the Tmall Genie. However, it should be noted here that since Tmall Genie BOOM itself does not have its own resource system, it is essentially a Bluetooth speaker product. To achieve "smartness", you also need to download the Tmall Genie APP on your mobile phone to use it with it. The indicator light is very simple, including the identification of the device offline and team status.

"Team up" stereo sound quality is surging, you can have fun whenever you want

As a Bluetooth speaker product, the main function of Tmall Genie BOOM is to connect to Bluetooth for external playback, so it is no problem to connect to mobile phones and computers. The main application scenario of Tmall Genie BOOM is when you are on the move. Not only that, Tmall Genie BOOM has more functions than other Bluetooth speakers on the market.

One is that they can be paired for stereo sound. When you purchase two Tmall Genie BOOMs, you can pair them for dual-channel sound by pressing the power button twice. One on the left and one on the right, enhancing your music experience.

The second is answering the phone. Whenever you receive a call, you can use Tmall Genie BOOM as a "phone receiver". Press the voice button to answer, press again to hang up, and double-click to hang up.

The third is to take photos remotely. Want to take a group photo when you are out together? You only need to place your phone on a tripod, open the photo app, and press the voice button of Tmall Genie BOOM to take photos remotely. You no longer need to ask others to take photos for you.

The most important point is that Tmall Genie BOOM has a built-in full-range speaker, which makes the treble and bass levels more distinct in music playback. This will be more obvious when you use two Tmall Genie BOOMs as a team. The TWS Bluetooth stereo effect will be more differentiated on the left and right channels, bringing you a more realistic listening experience.

These functions are all new experiences brought by Tmall Genie BOOM hardware, and more rich functions can only be realized in combination with software. Using the mature Tmall Genie voice system of the APP, you can realize a variety of operations such as intelligent question and answer, voice skills, etc. There is a huge skill library pre-set in the Tmall Genie APP. For example, the keyword "soothe him to sleep" will trigger a series of pure music and bedtime stories to help children fall asleep.

Easy to use when going out or at home

From the perspective of portability, Tmall Genie BOOM is still the most suitable for friends who go out to play. I believe everyone has experienced this scene. When going out for an outing, you always have to play one or two of your favorite songs, but the sound of the mobile phone often seems very thin. Want to enhance the sound effect? ​​The speakers on the market are too large, which undoubtedly makes the luggage bag, which is already insufficient in volume, even worse. At this time, the advantages of Tmall Genie BOOM are revealed. It is small and easy to carry, and it also has a unique team stereo effect. It is indeed the best choice for exploring interests when going out.

On the other hand, Tmall Genie BOOM is also particularly suitable for being placed at home to expand voice interaction scenarios. Generally speaking, the common voice interaction devices at home are TVs and smart speakers, both of which have rich functions. However, in terms of the placement of scenes, both have a certain fixedness and it is difficult to cover all scenes at home. The small size of Tmall Genie BOOM makes it very flexible. We can freely mobilize it to fill the gaps in the smart scenes at home and control other smart devices anytime and anywhere.

To remedy the blind spots of IoT, portable speakers need to differentiate themselves

Tmall Genie BOOM has broadened the usage scenarios of smart life externally and filled the blind spots of home device interconnection internally. It is an exploration of the decoupling of software and hardware in the smart speaker category towards lightweightness.

At present, Xiao Ai is another smart speaker giant that is focusing on the portable speaker category. This time, Tmall Genie BOOM is superior to the former in terms of battery life, Bluetooth protocol and team matching. Without the intelligent voice assistant, Tmall Genie BOOM focuses on portability, sound quality and control functions, and participates in the market competition of smart speakers with different category advantages.

However, without the intelligent voice assistant, the portable speaker category can easily become just a "loudspeaker" for mobile phones. It is also difficult to truly combine the terminal with the platform to form user stickiness for intelligent voice interaction. Therefore, the terminal design itself needs to have stronger platform uniqueness and create a moat that is different from competing products in order to achieve differentiated competition in the category.

If you want to experience a complete smart interactive experience, the "big brother" products such as Tmall Genie Cube are definitely the first choice. However, if you focus on portability and just pursue the connection effect of Bluetooth speakers, then Tmall Genie BOOM, which is only priced at 49 yuan after the first release of coupons, will be the best choice for trying out smart life.

The smart speaker market will inevitably become more competitive in the future. With a product matrix that varies from lightweight to heavyweight, Tmall Genie will appear more flexible and proactive in the market. The smart speaker category is a hardware competition on the surface, but in essence it is a confrontation between software platform systems. This time, Tmall Genie is also lightweight enough to attract users to the platform and ultimately achieve the conversion of user demand for heavy products. Based on this, Tmall Genie has created a stable inner-ring core user base and expanded the interest of outer-ring users, which will be more advantageous in brand competition.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.