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Interface News Reporter | Wu Yangyu

Interface News Editor | Song Jianan

When facing investors, Xia Yongfeng, founder and CEO of Honeycomb Technology, often asks them two questions: "Do you believe that audio glasses will become the best hardware carrier for AI in the future? If so, can we win?"

No matter what response the investors give, Xia Yongfeng and his team will set a definite answer as their goal and have submitted their first "homework".

On August 8, Honeycomb Technology released its own brand "Jiehuan" and its first generation of AI audio glasses. This new product, which looks like ordinary glasses, adopts an open sound field structure, and the weight of the all-titanium frame without lenses is 30.7g. Its core selling point is the AI ​​function. Currently, it is equipped with three AI applications, including AI chat, AI version notification broadcast, and face-to-face translation.。

Among them, the AI ​​notification broadcast function is relatively special. It does not broadcast unread messages one by one in the screen-off state, but AI understands all the messages and summarizes and broadcasts their core content, which directly improves the efficiency of information use. For example, if the other party sends multiple details about the party, the user will finally hear concise and complete information such as time and place. This function currently covers QQ, WeChat, Feishu and other apps.

The AI ​​function of Jiehuan is supported by large models, and currently 14 large models are connected, including Baichuan, Tongyi Qianwen, etc. The team has its own evaluation system, that is, whoever performs better in a certain function will be matched with this large model and related applications in a targeted manner.

Since the token consumption of large models is a considerable expense, and the price of large model APIs is still constantly decreasing, the current decision of "Jiehuan" is that users who purchase the product before the end of this year will be able to use the AI ​​function for free forever, and users who purchase thereafter will be charged 19.9 yuan/month (or adjusted with the API price).

In terms of product prices (excluding lenses), the plate series starts at 799 yuan, the metal series starts at 999 yuan, the fashion series starts at 1099 yuan, and the titanium series starts at 1499 yuan. The initial launch prices have discounts ranging from 100 yuan to 200 yuan.

Founded in 2020, Honeycomb Technology mainly produces head-mounted smart hardware. Its core team comes from Microsoft, Alibaba, Xiaomi, Huawei and other companies. According to public information, the company has completed three rounds of financing, with investors including Tencent, Zhongyuan Capital, Xiaomi Technology, Shunwei Capital, Qiming Venture Partners and others.

Before the emergence of Jiehuan, Honeycomb Technology, as a Xiaomi ecological chain enterprise, produced smart glasses for Xiaomi. It had previously released two products, Mijia Glasses Camera and Mijia Audio Glasses. According to Jiemian News, the combined sales of these two Mijia products this year exceeded 100,000 units, with weekly sales increasing by 400% year-on-year. The team expects to increase this year by another 200% to 300%. For this track, Honeycomb Technology's goal is to make Jiehuan, like Huawei and Xiaomi, enter the top three in the industry.

Xia Yongfeng believes that launching the company's own brand "Jiehuan" at this time is "a bit late", which may be affected by macro factors such as the insufficiently active consumer market.

The reason why the third-generation product was chosen as the first product of its own brand is not only because it is judged to be of certain value to the general public, but also because of two R&D factors. First, the audio glasses that the company wants to make have high requirements for personalization. The first product of "Jiehuan" is equipped with 8 frames and 14 styles, which is a great challenge for suppliers. Secondly, this pair of glasses is positioned as AI audio glasses, and the development of all AI applications involved relies on its own team. Launching products under its own brand is more conducive to the coordination of software and hardware.

After smartphones, many startups are looking for opportunities to create the next generation of computing platforms, and head-mounted AI smart devices that can free your hands are considered an important direction. At the same time, after the large language model promoted the development of the AI ​​application layer, AI smart hardware became its important landing scenario. The combination of the two is expected to bring it into the mass consumer market.

Although AI glasses are still a niche product in China, in overseas markets, Meta and Ray-Ban have taken the lead in creating a million-level sales product - Ray-Ban Meta.

This is a pair of smart glasses with a 12-megapixel wide-angle camera that supports shooting. The Wayfarer model weighs about 49 grams. The product can use Meta AI to perform AI image recognition and generative AI dialogue through Meta View, and is priced from US$299. Guojin Securities has predicted that its annual sales will reach 2 million units in 2024, which is twice the global shipment volume of smart glasses in 2023 according to IDC statistics.

Considering the general users' acceptance of installing cameras on glasses, AI audio glasses are the product form chosen by Honeycomb Technology at this stage.

In this field, in addition to the most basic technical challenges such as batteries, chips, and wireless communications, the core difficulty of the product is the integrated user experience of hardware and software, which is defined by Honeycomb Technology as VUI (Voice UI/voice interaction experience), that is, how to provide users with content and services in the most natural and smooth way while reducing the use of mobile phones.

AI is indeed an important tool to achieve this goal. Honeycomb Technology started researching and preparing for the AI ​​project about a year ago, and has been thinking about whether to integrate the big model, and based on its own product form, whether AI should be reflected in the application or UI.

Xia Yongfeng's understanding of AI is that it cannot create demand, and its value lies in "better meeting existing needs" and making users feel that AI is "more useful." The first step to being more useful is to get a lot of feedback through simple or even fool-proof operations, which is also the idea of ​​the team in developing AI applications.

Although there have been some “small hits” like the Ray-Ban Meta, the entire AR/VR industry has yet to see the real dawn.

In the past year, two things have hit Xia Yongfeng hard. The first thing is the release of Apple Vision Pro. Unlike the "excitement" and "amazing" feeling of the general consumers, this product has made him and some of his peers feel disappointed in terms of effect and sales, because Apple is already one of the world's best technology companies at R&D and innovation, and has invested huge funds and manpower, but it can only achieve this level in the first generation of products. The other thing is the news of declining sales from the leading domestic brands.

The combination of these two factors has created a sense of "fragmentation" in the industry, where R&D is difficult and costly, and years of sales are still not enough to support a larger market, but startups and even technology giants continue to make huge investments.

In Xia Yongfeng's view, the reality is that the small and medium-sized companies that have survived are all those with strong financing capabilities. As for the more fundamental reason, "It's mainly because everyone is thinking about the same question, from computers to mobile phones, and then what's the next step? I think this thing is too big." He believes that this industry may make 100 mistakes if it invests 100 times, but if it succeeds once, there will be completely different results.

These situations also made him realize that his previous estimate that he would have a chance to make a product that sells well in three to five years was too optimistic. "I thought it was a Fragrant Mountain before, but in fact it might be Mount Everest," Xia Yongfeng said.

After adjusting its expectations, Honeycomb Technology’s strategy was not to climb Mount Everest directly, but to find a base camp at the foot of Mount Everest and set up camp first - switching from AR glasses to smart audio glasses, and becoming "the first smart glasses company to break even or even make money."

Given the current lack of AI implementation capabilities, startups still have a window of opportunity. Once large companies decide to enter the market, their living space will be rapidly compressed.

Xia Yongfeng believes that there are only two possibilities in the future. Either the startup company has already gone far enough when the big company decides to do it and can engage in local competition with it, or it is not moving fast enough, and when they enter the market, "they will kill you in a week."

Either way, it is not an easy task for startups including Honeycomb Technologies.