Who is hurt the most when Baidu and Huawei are together?

Following Qualcomm and Xiaomi, at the end of December, Baidu announced an in-depth cooperation with Huawei. In this cooperation, both companies showed a high level of sincerity:

Baidu sent Robin Li, founder, chairman and CEO of Baidu, Xiang Hailong, president of Baidu Search Company, Baidu AI Wang Haifeng, general manager of the Technology Platform System (AIG), while Huawei sent Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei Consumer Business, Zhang Pingan, President of Huawei Consumer Business Cloud Services, and Wang Chenglu, President of Huawei Consumer Business Software Engineering Department.

Although no specific cooperation details were announced at the press conference, according to the framework, the cooperation between the two parties mainly focuses on the following points:

First, cooperation in artificial intelligence: for example, Based on Huawei's HiAI platform and Baidu's PaddlePaddle deep learning framework, leveraging the advantages of Huawei's NPU, we will finally build an open ecosystem centered on Huawei's AI open platform and Baidu Brain; both parties will carry out in-depth voice and image cooperation on various smart terminals, etc.

The second is cooperation at the AR and VR levels. The two parties will jointly create an AR ecosystem in the form of "hardware and software integration" of "technological innovation and hardware implementation"

The third is Cooperation in content ecology: Since Baidu determined the strategic direction of "artificial intelligence information flow" as the main channel, the value and status of information flow have been mentioned to a very high position, and Baidu information flow has been in a very high position in the past year. It has also achieved very good results: not only has it achieved a growth rate of 200, but according to the official information released by Baidu in the Q3 financial report: it is expected that the revenue of information flow this year should be around 1 billion US dollars.

Baidu’s content ecosystem will be implemented on various smart terminals such as Huawei mobile phones, tablets, smart wearable devices, and smart home devices.

It can be seen that the cooperation between Huawei and Baidu is not just a cooperation between products, but a comprehensive embrace of the two giants at the ecological level. Baidu combines its most advantageous products, information flow, and artificial intelligence, and Huawei has brought out all its smart terminals. One is a giant in the field of hardware and communications, and the other is a dominant player in the field of search and artificial intelligence. The "ecological integration" of these two giants will give What new variables does the entire industry bring?

Let’s talk about the motivation first: learn from each other’s strengths

For enterprises, cooperation is naturally for the purpose of mutual benefit and win-win, but for giant companies like Baidu and Huawei, such For in-depth and comprehensive cooperation, the issues to be considered are obviously much more complex.

For Baidu, Baidu pays more attention to Huawei's advantages in smart terminals: from mobile phones, tablets, to smart hardware, including smart home equipment, Huawei has great advantages in this area, and of course Huawei’s technical strength.

According to the latest research report released by IDC in November, after the smartphone market experienced a rare contraction in the second quarter of this year, global smartphone shipments reached 373.1 million units in the third quarter of this year, which was the same as in 2016. Compared with the 363.4 million units in the third quarter, this was an increase of 2.7%.

In other words, Huawei’s global shipments rank only behind Apple and Samsung, ranking first among domestic mobile phones. This means that Baidu artificial intelligence and information flow have a large number of terminal devices that can be implemented.

Whether it is artificial intelligence or information flow, it requires a large number of occasions and equipment as support to achieve the purpose of "Internet of Everything". Baidu's ecological foundation, whether it is information flow or AR, , or artificial intelligence, both require huge smart devices as a prerequisite for implementation, and Huawei's current huge global shipments can exactly meet this requirement.

For Huawei, Baidu’s content ecological advantages and artificial intelligence technology are what they are most concerned about and interested in.

The integration of mobile phones and artificial intelligence is already a trend. It is not just a voice assistant, but artificial intelligence is used as a selling point. For example, the latest Honor V10 focuses on AI selfies and artificial intelligence services, including Technologies such as anti-eyes-closed unlocking and real-time identification of photographic objects. Apple has also launched Face ID technology in the new generation of iPhoneX. It can be seen that artificial intelligence technology has become the standard feature of the next generation of smartphones.

In addition, Baidu's advantages in content ecology and technology accumulation in the search era can also "empower" Huawei terminal equipment. It’s not just information, but a series of content ecological matrix including pictures, short videos, questions and answers, live broadcasts, and dynamics.

When giants build an ecosystem, why do they say that the past gameplay is no longer feasible?

Why this cooperation between Baidu and Huawei is of great significance is because it is now a common form of cooperation in the industry. Most of them are concentrated on a certain product or business line, which is a vertical and horizontal alliance between single points. However, this time Baidu and Huawei are the first to build an ecosystem, which is equivalent to both parties bringing out their respective ecological advantages. The two countries have jointly formed a new ecological alliance, which is unique in the past.

The combination of powerful forces on the one hand determines that the barriers to this ecosystem are high enough: it is difficult for outsiders to surpass and imitate in a short time. On the other hand, it also gives pure technology companies such as iFlytek and Queshi Technology a Warning: If you don’t open it up, you may be left behind by the times.

In the previous article "Defending iFlytek", we mentioned this: Huawei mobile phones were one of the first major customers that iFlytek won. In October this year, Huawei’s annual flagship phone Mate 10 was still equipped with iFlytek’s voice assistant. However, since the battle for BAT began, some Huawei models have also been equipped with Baidu’s free voice technology.

iFlytek has decades of accumulation in voice technology. Their business model is mainly based on authorized patents. The in-depth cooperation between Huawei and Baidu will undoubtedly enhance iFlytek’s decades of technological advantages. pose more serious challenges and threats.

Whether it is iFlytek or Queshi Technology, selling technology patents as a means of profit is no longer suitable for the modern business model. The giants pay more attention to the advantages of ecology and the chemical reactions generated by cooperation with each other. This time, the cooperation between Huawei and Baidu is a very obvious signal.

From another perspective, what kind of company will be under great pressure from the combination of software manufacturers and hardware manufacturers? The answer is today’s headlines.

The secret of Toutiao’s rise is that in the early years, a large number of users were acquired through pre-installed purchases, and mobile phones are updated and replaced almost once a year on average, and every An update means that new users will be lost. Toutiao can only acquire new users by buying volume and recommendation positions. ?

But now more and more mobile phone manufacturers are beginning to build their own content ecology, such as information, videos, music on the negative screen...mostly through content cooperation, such as video and love. Qiyi, Information, Baijiahao, etc., and this cooperation between Baidu and Huawei is ecological access, which means integration at the overall level, from content, to short videos, to AR, to technology, and hardware Integration and making content become part of the hardware itself is a trend that is actually very stressful for many software companies. ?

In fact, in the early years, mobile phone manufacturers were busy comparing shipments and did not pay enough attention to software. Markets such as app stores, application tools, and UI were all taken away by software developers. A few years ago, mobile phone manufacturers even formed a "hardcore alliance" to jointly fight against third-party app stores.

As is the application, so is the content. If the functions and technology of the native information flow are powerful enough, it is obvious that users will not be motivated to go to the next Toutiao.

Summary

Looking at this cooperation from another angle, we can actually see Baidu’s ability and vision to plan ahead in the era of artificial intelligence.

For example, in the previous cooperation between Baidu and Qualcomm, the two parties will jointly launch a complete set of artificial intelligence voice and intelligent assistant solutions for global smartphones and IoT terminals, which are based on artificial intelligence at the chip level. Smart solutions.

For example, the previous cooperation with Xiaomi was based on Xiaomi’s advantages in the smart home field: Mijia has more than 10 million daily active devices, more than 85 million platform networked devices, and more than 500 users of 2-5 devices. Wan, it is a good direction to realize the rapid implementation of voice assistant products and services through smart home.

This cooperation with Huawei shows Baidu’s greater openness: it will open its two core products, information flow and artificial intelligence, to partners to achieve platform-level and With deep integration between platform levels, it is foreseeable that as Baidu moves towards openness as a whole, Baidu's technology and products will be everywhere.

Just as Intel’s biggest innovation in the past few decades has been to create the brand Intel Inside, thereby turning chips that are not perceived by users into a guarantee of brand and reputation throughout the PC era, Baidu is also doing the same. Things like that, and maybe a little faster than we think.