The meaning of the giant is not in the light.
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “world network operators” (ID: txws_txws), Author: Ding Bo, Editor: Guo hill.
Recently, Bytedance has encountered a storm.
Some netizens posted that a powerful smart table lamp for children actually implicitly recommends the “people nearby” function: if the user is a boy, the system will recommend the girl’s video on the smart lamp screen. Many parents worry that the lamp they bought may have children’s social tendency. Will their children write homework and make friends through videos?
However, Dali Smart Desk Lamp quickly responded through official channels and said that this function has not been launched, and these videos are just displays of excellent learning works. “Based on different learning content and subjects, with the authorization of parents, relevant learning videos will be released to let children feel the learning atmosphere.”
The response gave the parents a sigh of relief. This turmoil has also pushed Dali’s smart lights, the educational hardware under the Byte Beat, into the spotlight.
Socializing is false, and education is true. Dali Smart Desk Lamp, a product that has been on the market for less than a year, has a monthly sales of nearly 10 million on the Tmall platform, which has become a new cut for ByteDance to enter the education field.
In addition to the byte beating, the current education giants such as Job Gang, Good Future, New Oriental, which are good at software or offline scenes, have become more and more “hard”, and they have deployed hardware, and smart lights have become the competition for various companies. Important categories. Among them, Job Gang plans to launch the first smart table lamp around August 2021, and also launched the tablet project at the same time.
The Thousand Lights War is about to start, and a new round of competition for students is about to begin.
What is the origin of the smart desk lamp that sells tens of millions a month?
This smart lamp, which makes the outside world curious, was only put on the shelves of the Dali Smart Tmall flagship store last year.
Different from traditional desk lamps that emphasize functions such as voice control, lighting changes, and eye protection, Dali smart desk lamps are equipped with cameras and screens, and their main selling points are tutoring, remote reading, and sitting posture correction.
Compared with traditional desk lamps, Dali’s product is more like a learning machine with lighting function, which corresponds to a scene where parents tutor their children to do homework. The screen on the desk lamp can enter the “Dali Ai Tutoring App” to replace the parent company, complete the steps of handing in homework, checking homework, and answering wrong questions.
Compared with ordinary table lamps, the price of Dali smart table lamps is higher. The basic T5 is priced at 749 yuan, and the T5 Pro version with sitting posture correction is priced at 1,099 yuan.
Because of solving many pain points, the Dali smart lamp quickly became a favorite of parents and quickly became popular on the Internet.
Some parents concluded after using, “This is a desk lamp plus a smartphone, and the library of textbooks and other materials is updated from time to time.” “This desk lamp is suitable for children under the fifth grade, who don’t know English words and Chinese words. Textbooks can be read, and mathematics can also be searched, because there are no games in it, so you can rest assured that children can use it.”
Within less than a year on the market, Dali Smart Lamp has become a dark horse in the lamp category. On Tmall, the monthly sales of the two table lamps T5 and T5 Pro exceeded 12,000, with total sales approaching 10 million.
Liu Shida, Tmall’s home improvement teacher, said that in the field of desk lamps, the sales volume of Dali Smart Educational Lamps is already at the middle and upper reaches of the industry.
ByteDance also affirmed the performance of Dali’s intelligence. On March 30, at the 9th anniversary of ByteDance, Zhang Yiming mentioned the company’s seven progressing businesses, among which Vigorous Intelligence was among them.
The giant behind the desk lamp and the 4.5 trillion education market
The giants who cut from the educational track to the hardware track are more than ByteDance. As early as 2017, Tencent released a smart desk lamp with functions such as sitting posture correction and homework, but without a screen. This experiment by Tencent quickly set off a smart lamp war.
Currently, domestic leading online education companies such as Homework Help, Good Future, New Oriental, and Yuanjiao are all using their own advantages to collectively deploy hardware.
Jobbang will launch the first smart table lamp around August 2021, and has also launched a tablet project; Good Future has set up a hardware department, and the smart table lamp is in preparation; New Oriental’s smart table lamp project is also looking for a solution ; Yuanjiao has signed a contract with the factoryOrder for smart writing board, and set up a hardware team in Shenzhen……
The hardware layout of the homework helpers does not stop there. In addition to the tablet and desk lamp, the wrong question printer has also become a sweet potato. As early as September 2019, Homework Group strategically invested in Miaobao Technology, and connected Meiaomiao Machine to the homework group online question bank which claims to have 250 million questions.
Of course, when the giants end up, what they want is not the market size of the hardware itself, but the broader education market.
The report of the Prospective Industry Research Institute shows that the market size of China’s education industry will reach about 4.5 trillion yuan in 2025. Among them, there are many opportunities in the K12 (5-18 years old) field. By 2025, the scale of China’s K12 education market will reach around 946.8 billion yuan.
In recent years, players such as Homework Help, Good Future, Ape Guidance, Bytedance, and NetEase have been investing heavily in the market and frequently deploying them. Last year, Bytedance announced that it would recruit more than 10,000 people in the education business. In the next three years, Bytedance will continue to invest heavily in education and has no profit expectations.
In this market, there are many parents who are willing to spend money to report classes and buy learning machines for their children.
In the product review area of Dali Smart Lamps, there are a group of parents who are eager to find a cure. “Will this smart lamp develop the inertia of learning? Ask for help whenever you have a problem, do you not concentrate on homework, and just think about playing with the lamp.” “Does the child often hurt his eyes when I watch it? Can I play games or watch? Video?” “Can it replace half a tutor?”
Whoever wins the favor of children and solves the pain points of parents in raising babies will have a place in the education market in the future.
The big idea is not in the light
The reason why the major education giants rushed to join the smart lamp battle also reflects their anxiety about customer acquisition.
According to media estimates, the cost of acquiring customers for Xueersi, Yuanjiao, GSX, and Homework Help is as high as RMB 400, RMB 555, and RMB 333.,500 yuan. This is still the previous data, now it will only be higher.
Sponsoring variety shows, placing short video advertisements, and occupying elevator advertising spaces are the main ways for educational institutions to gain customers, costing hundreds of millions of dollars. Recently, there have been rumors that the advertisements of off-campus training institutions in official media will be subject to stricter supervision. At the same time, the traffic cost of social media continues to rise, not to mention, the conversion rate is also decreasing. A person in the online education industry said that after comprehensive calculations, new customers brought from social media will lose one by one registration, and the organization can only expect to maintain it through the renewal of new customers.
In March of this year, GSX’s financial report showed that for the whole year of 2020, sales expenses accounted for 80% of operating expenses, increasing from 1.041 billion yuan in the same period last year to 5.816 billion yuan, an increase of 458.7%.
In order to broaden customer acquisition channels and reduce marketing costs, educational institutions have also poured into Taobao and Tmall to open stores as a new field for acquiring traffic. According to official data from Taobao Education, an average of 1,300 educational institutions have settled in each month in the past year.
For educational institutions, hardware such as smart desk lamps may become new traffic entrances and ways to break through.
In 2020, the registered users of Jiaxingbang’s educational intelligent hardware “Miaomiaoji” have exceeded 7.5 million, with a market share of over 60%. “Miaomiao Machine” not only brings new users to the homework help, but also activates more content demand scenarios, enhancing user activity and stickiness.
And products such as smart table lamps and tablets have more room for imagination.
In the Dali Smart Tmall flagship store, the monthly sales volume of T5 desk lamps is close to 7,000. This means that in addition to selling desk lamps, there are 7,000 more opportunities for precise reach and customer acquisition.
An industry insider said that many institutions have invested very high in hardware, and they were spending money at a loss in the initial stage. But in the long run, as the user scale increases, the marginal cost of the product will decrease, and the efficiency of customer acquisition and user stickiness will increase. For educational institutions, this investment couldn’t be more cost-effective.
So, on the surface, the giants are selling lamps. In fact, lamps are not only lamps, but also Trojan horses that enter users’ homes, waiting for children to discover a new world of education.
Hardware PK has just begun
The War of Thousand Lights is about to start.
Liu Shida, Tmall’s home improvement teacher, said that the desk lamp launched by Dali Smart belongsThe lamp category still belongs to cultural and educational electronic products, and there is no final conclusion. But what is certain is that similar products will have very rapid growth in the future.
“Dali is a cross-border player who has entered the education industry. It has an early start and a fast layout. When traditional table lamp brands are still using voice control as an intelligent selling point, Dali has entered the education scene to solve the problem of users in lighting. Other pain points. This has indeed brought a lot of impact to the industry.”
Before Vigorous Intelligence launches new products, the traditional table lamp industry is easy to encounter many ceilings. Intelligent design also stays at the level of appearance, lighting, etc., and there are few revolutionary subversions. On the Tmall platform, the mainstream reading lamp price band also stays between 150-300.
However, the demand and scenario of Dali smart table lamp are very clear, and its appearance has increased the customer unit price of the industry. “This also provides new thinking for traditional brands, cutting into content and educational scenes, which is a very good direction to enhance the added value of the brand.” Liu Shida said.
Although ByteDance’s Dali Intelligence has gained the first-mover advantage, what will be the competitive landscape of the education hardware market in the future?
Liu Shida also believes that although the product has bright spots, compared with veteran players such as Philips, Dalizhi’s technical precipitation in table lamps is still lacking, and there are also shortcomings in the supply chain. This gives competitors the opportunity to catch up and overtake in corners.
“Next, we will also promote some head brands to develop some new products in the direction of learning and education. If possible, we can even do some product and content linkage with Tmall Elf. Let’s work together. The supply of products in this line of smart table lamps is more abundant.” Liu Shida said.
This Thousand Lights War is not just a war of “lights”, but a war of content, gameplay and competition for children.