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If 2023 isChatGPTIf 2024 is the first year of AI, then 2024 can be called the first year of AI smart hardware.

At the end of 2023, Humane, a company founded by a former Apple executive couple, launched Ai Pin. In 2024, Chuyuan BaiduSmart HomeGeneral Manager of Hardware Lu Cheng founded the company and launched Rabbit R1. The two products, in the novel form of "box", became the most popular AI hardware devices for large-scale application models. Time magazine even included Ai Pin in its "Best Inventions of 2023" list before it was officially shipped.

But soon, the disillusionment of AI hardware came even faster. Less than a month after the official shipment of Ai Pin and Rabbit R1 in early 2024, they were criticized by various media for their own defects, and completely became a failed experiment that "peaked at the debut".

Ray-Ban Meta, Image source: Ray-Ban official website

Recently, AI glasses are coming with a new wave of AI hardware. Ray-Ban Meta, the first hardware product in the field of AI equipment with sales reaching one million, is leading Solos, Li Weike, Honeycomb Technology, and Shanji to rush into the main battlefield of AI glasses. Behind these companies, there are big manufacturers including Tencent, ByteDance, Xiaomi and others that have made early arrangements.

Half a year has passed, and we can already see some commonalities or trends from the failures and successes of these AI hardware. Maybe they are not comprehensive enough, but I believe they have sufficient reference value.

The prototype that was rushed to completion became the pioneer that was photographed on the beach

Looking back at the beginning when AI hardware became a hot topic, we have to start with the story of a star entrepreneur.

In November 2023, Humane, an American technology company, released a wearable smart device, Ai Pin.GPTFeatures such as large models quickly gained widespread attention on the Internet.

Ai Pin, Image source: Humane official website

As a pioneering product, Ai Pin abandoned the most common screen + touch logic of consumer electronics in the past years, and instead opened up a new set of projection + voice interaction methods. The product itself is worn on the user's clothes in the form of magnetic suction, and information is displayed through projection. Users can use voice to operate the product for functions such as calls, music playback, and photo and video recording. The price is $699, and the AI ​​subscription fee is $24 per month.

After its release, Time magazine included Ai Pin in its list of "Best Inventions of 2023". Behind this, Humane, as a startup, can receive such widespread attention, which is inseparable from the "star halo" of its founders and investors. Chaudhry and Bongiorno are a couple, both from Apple. Chaudhry was the design director of Apple's human-computer interface team, and Bongiorno was the director of Apple's operating system. Investors include the now popular Sam Altman and the famous Microsoft.

It can be said that before the launch of Ai Pin, people were very interested in it with its "high concept" at the product level. But soon after it started shipping in March 2024, Ai Pin received a wave of doubts.

Ai Pin may seem like a beautiful projection, but it is difficult to achieve the effect in the promotional video in daily life. Image source: Official video

As the main function of the hardware, Ai Pin's projection is responsible for the most important ability to display information to the outside world. But soon, both evaluation organizations and individual users found that Ai Pin's projection function was almost unusable. Due to its low brightness, users could not see the projected information clearly outdoors or even in some indoor scenes.

In terms of AI performance, Ai Pin was also considered "too slow." The image recognition function that was very smooth in the official demonstration actually took 10 seconds to complete, and sometimes after more than ten seconds, the user would get an obviously wrong answer.

The Verge, a veteran technology media outlet, said of Ai Pin, “This thing probably won’t replace your phone anytime soon, and maybe never.”

A CEO of a tech startup told Titanium Media APP: "From a product perspective, Ai Pin is not feasible. Given the size and power consumption constraints of this kind of projection, the maximum brightness that can be achieved with current technology and the actual brightness required for daily use can be calculated. Anyone with a discerning eye knows that this is impossible."

Subsequently, the market quickly gave Humane the "slap in the face" it deserved. The latest data shows that the shipment volume of AI Pin is about 10,000 units, which is only one-tenth of Humane's plan. According to The Verge, excluding pre-sales and the first sale in April, the return volume of Ai Pin from May to August 2024 is 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.

In response to the latest reports, a Humane spokesperson said that the figures were "inaccurate" but declined to disclose specific details. However, from the personnel changes, it is not difficult to see that Humane is going through a crisis. According to the latest reports, including Customer Experience Director Tori Geiken, former Vice President Jeremy Werner, former Chief Technology Officer Patrick Gates and Product Engineering Director Ken Kocienda 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 do not have good results. Ai Pin itself has good enough investment and team, but the product is obviously a big "gamble".

Rabbit R1, Image source: official website

Compared to Ai Pin, which is expected to reach the sky in one step, the story of Rabbit R1 seems to be more realistic and down-to-earth. Unlike Ai Pin, which uses projection to realize its creativity, Rabbit R1 seems to be well-behaved and gives the appearance of an AI box.

On January 10, 2024, Lu Cheng, former general manager of Baidu smart home hardware and founder of Raven Technology, released Rabbit R1. Rabbit R1 itself is the size of a music player. After binding accounts such as Uber and Spotify, users can use voice control to play music, take taxis, order food, plan trips, etc.

Relying on the large model capability, Rabbit R1 also has visual recognition capabilities, which can identify food in the refrigerator and plan low-calorie dinner recipes for users. Using its own unique large action model (LAM), the machine learns and repeats the user's PC operations. The user only needs to issue a voice command, and Rabbit R1 can understand and repeat the user's previous operations like a robot.

In terms of form, Rabbit R1 is not a wearable device that hangs on the chest like Ai Pin, but from its design concept, it can be seen that this is almost a "prototype" of a wearable smart device.

In a previous video conversation, Lu Cheng said that due to the limitations of current chip and motherboard technology, the size of Rabbit R1 can only reach "half the size of iPhone Pro Max". Future Rabbit products may be smaller and can be integrated into TWS headphones or appear in the form of smart watches.

Judging from market feedback, the performance of Rabbit R1 when it was first launched can be described as “mixed”.

The good news is that Rabbit R1 is better than the more expensive Ai Pin, and it does not have the flaw of low projection brightness, which at least gives people a little hope for future OTA improvements. According to media feedback, Rabbit R1 can already answer routine questions, play music, take a taxi, order food, identify the type of food in front of the user and give cooking suggestions. The bad news is that the user experience of Rabbit R1 is not enough to support the expectations of the outside world.

Well-known review blogger Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) commented on Rabbit R1: I spent $200 and I don’t know what to do with it. Some bloggers pointed out that the battery life of Rabbit R1 is only 4 hours, which is not enough.

Mishaal Rahman, an expert in the field of Android operating systems, admitted that Rabbit R1 can do almost everything that Android phones cannot do: it can communicate with large language models (LLM) to get answers to questions, take a picture of an object to get information about it, play music from Spotify, order a ride from Uber, or order food from Doordash, but that's basically it.

There is a lot of information about Rabbit R1 case Android

To make matters worse, Rabbit R1 was soon pointed out by the outside world as an "Android shell".

Prior to this, Lu Cheng once said that we are equipped with a new operating system Rabbit OS, which is several times better than Android. But on May 1, 2024, Mishaal Rahman posted that the Rabbit R1 runs the Android system inside, and its entire interface is supported by Android applications. He also successfully "ported" the Rabbit R1 to the Android system, and it can even run on the Google Pixel 6a phone.

Later, a user reversed the operation and installed and successfully ran Android applications on Rabbit R1. Later, foreign media such as The Verge commented very sharply: This is "Android in a shell", and AI is in the Juicero era (Note: Juicero: a "IQ tax" juicer, now refers to unnecessary complex technological innovations, overpriced and over-hyped).

Later, Lu Cheng responded that most non-iOS consumer devices run with modified AOSP as the client, while the R1 is made with a very customized AOSP (Android Open Source Project) and lower-level firmware modifications. However, the interface of the Rabbit R1 is not an Android application, and it uses the large model (LLM) to run in the cloud.

There may still be controversy about whether Rabbit R1 should be put into a shell. But judging from market feedback, Rabbit R1 has also hit a bottleneck like Ai Pin. According to the press conference on April 24, 2024, within 24 hours of the launch, the Rabbit R1, priced at $199, sold 10,000 units, and has sold more than 100,000 units so far. But from May to early August, there was no more information about the sales of Rabbit R1.

In the introduction video uploaded by Rabbit on August 8, 2024, the official said that they had received comments from various reviews. In fact, Rabbit knew there would be these criticisms before the sale, and is currently working hard 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 full day. Unfortunately, this official video released by Rabbit is not open to comments on YouTube, just like their previous official videos.

It should be said that, whether it is Ai Pin or Rabbit R1, even if there is a chance to turn things around in the future, their first-generation products can basically be regarded as failures in AI hardware: the product experience is poor, the functions are not better than those of existing mobile phones, and there is a suspicion of "shelling", which obviously failed to support the previous expectations of the outside world for it to "take over the smartphone". Even if Sam Altman and Microsoft are rich, they probably won't consider continuing to increase their investment.

An investor in the technology industry told Titanium Media APP that both Ai Pin and Rabbit R1 can only partially replace mobile phones, but cannot completely replace them. In terms of implementation effect and sales, they are still unsatisfactory and can even be regarded as a portable "smart speaker".

"The industry is more realistic now. Sales of tens of thousands are not enough to make a difference. Without sales, everything is just empty talk."

This statement seems to be confirmed by Francisco Jeronimo, vice president of IDC, who said that whether users need a new hardware when using AI is a controversial issue. "While these ideas have their merits, the reality is that consumers don't need these devices, they need smartphones."

An inconspicuous fashion brand ignites the upcoming "Hundred Mirrors War"

Compared with "AI boxes" such as Ai Pin and Rabbit R1, which were highly anticipated but have failed repeatedly, another track is rapidly becoming the new main battlefield of AI hardware thanks to the popularity of the blockbuster Ray-Ban Meta, that is, AI glasses.

As early as September 2021, Ray-Ban and Facebook (not yet renamed Meta at that time) jointly released the first generation of smart glasses Ray-Ban Stories. The product at that time was very simple, adding a camera, microphone, and speaker to the original sunglasses, supporting functions such as 30-second video recording, answering calls, and listening to music. The price remained at US$299, which was not exaggerated compared to Ray-Ban, and it was transformed into an ordinary pair of smart glasses.

According to the Wall Street Journal, from September 2021 to February 2023, Ray-Ban Stories sold a total of about 300,000 pairs, but there were only 27,000 monthly active users, which is less than 10% of the total. Obviously, this is not a successful product.

Ray-Ban Meta, note 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 first generation of products. In September 2023, Facebook, which had changed its name to Meta, launched Ray-Ban Meta. The battery life was increased to 4-6 hours, the audio experience was upgraded, and the starting price was still $299.

Compared to the previous generation Ray-Ban Stories, Ray-Ban Meta is obviously more ambitious and more cost-effective. The product is not only equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon AR1 platform, but also provides completely free AI functions (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 fix it", AI can immediately understand that this "it" refers to the broken water pipe and give a solution.

Judging from the market feedback, Ray-Ban Meta is not only good, but also breaks people's imagination of a pair of smart glasses. According to The Verge's forecast, Ray-Ban Meta has sold 1 million pairs in the first three quarters, making it the best-selling AI hardware at present. In horizontal comparison, it is equivalent to twice the sales volume of global AR glasses in 2023, or twice the annual shipment volume 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, there is a possibility of further improvement in future profit margins.

Guojin Securities released a research report that the annual sales of Ray-Ban Meta may reach 2 million units in 2024. Considering that the AI ​​function is currently only available to users in the United States and Canada, if the region and language are promoted globally in the future, the corresponding annual sales may exceed 6 million units. As glasses are the most portable wearable devices and the devices closest to the human eye, with the addition of AI, the industry is expected to exceed 10 million sales in the future.

In the face of the explosive popularity of Ray-Ban Meta, in recent years, it has been trapped by mobile phones, PCs,MetaverseThe technology industry, which has been in a continuous downturn, will obviously not miss this opportunity to make a comeback with the help of AI.

Thanks to the existing Ray-Ban Meta path, companies including Li Weike, the former general manager of Tmall Genie, Honeycomb Technology, a partner of Xiaomi smart glasses, Solos from Hong Kong, and Shanji, a well-known charging brand, have all released AI glasses with large model functions. Behind these companies, according to the announced investment news alone, Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi, ByteDance and other major 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 the fact that it already has a large Pangu model as a reserve, it is only a matter of time before it enters the AI ​​glasses market. In addition, it is reported that Luo Yonghao, the former founder of Hammer Mobile, also plans to launch AI glasses products through his newly founded company, Red Line.

Lee Weike Meta Lens Chat Al Glasses

From the timeline, Li Weike launched the first AI glasses equipped with a large AI model in China in April 2024: Meta Lens Chat AI glasses. The product is priced at 699 yuan and weighs only 38g. In addition to making calls and listening to music, users can use voice interaction to let the AI ​​assistant help solve work and schedules, and enable encyclopedia questions and answers, learning assistance, English translation, voice navigation and music entertainment and other functions.

It is worth mentioning that Li Weike’s founder Ru Yi was once the head of the intelligent terminal of Alibaba AI Lab and the general manager of Tmall Genie hardware and products. Most of the technical team also came from the Tmall Genie team. The company won financing from ByteDance only three months after its establishment. In terms of channels, Li Weike has cooperated with some domestic eyewear chains and has recently opened up B-end cultural and tourism businesses, with a single shipment of more than 50,000 units (not a single category).

In June 2024, Solos launched the Solos AirGo Vision, priced at $249, becoming the industry's firstGPT-4oSmart glasses with technology. Like Ray-Ban Meta, the product has a camera. Before this, Solos also had a version of glasses without a camera, including a frame designed for sports. Its diversified design is its important feature.

Jiehuan AI Audio Glasses

In August 2024, Honeycomb Technology, the partner of Xiaomi's Mijia Glasses Camera and Mijia Audio Glasses, launched its first self-branded product, the Jiehuan AI Audio Glasses, which features AI functions. The starting price is 699 yuan. Compared with other products, the Jiehuan AI Audio Glasses have undergone the iteration of the previous 2 generations of Mijia brand products. The lightest all-titanium pilot model (excluding lenses) weighs only 30.7g and has "8 frames and 14 colors" to choose from. From the actual experience of the Titanium Media APP, the wearing experience is good. In terms of AI, the main functions of the Jiehuan AI Audio Glasses include AI chat, face-to-face translation, and AI notification broadcasting. Multiple large models are used behind the scenes, which can be called according to different functions, including products from major manufacturers such as Baichuan and Tongyi Qianwen.

In addition, Shanji, a brand previously known for its charging products, has also launched the Shanji smart shooting glasses A1. The product has a camera that supports shooting functions and multi-modal AI. It has not yet been released and the pre-sale price is 999 yuan.

Image source: Guojin Securities Research Report

According to a research report by Guojin Securities Research Institute, a large number of companies are currently entering the AI ​​glasses market. Xia Yongfeng, founder, chairman and CEO of Honeycomb Technology, also told Titanium Media APP that there are more than 20 projects similar to Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses in China, and the smart hardware industry is likely to see a "hundred-mirror war" in the future.

Subtracting things may not necessarily lead to better smart products

Based on what we have learned from the industry, Titanium Media APP believes that the popularity of Ray-Ban Meta and even the fact that AI glasses have become a new hot spot in the smart hardware industry are essentially due to the following reasons.

First, consumers are more receptive to the product. Among them, the price is not much more expensive than traditional sunglasses. The price of Ray-Ban Meta is $299, while the price of an ordinary pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses starts at around $250. Domestically, both Li Weike and Jiehuan AI glasses start at 699 yuan, which is basically the same or slightly higher than the non-intelligent products in LOHO, JINS and other optical stores commonly seen in shopping malls.

For many consumers, choosing AI sunglasses or glasses, whether it is an extra lens for shooting first-person perspective videos, or the ability to play music and watch videos, most people agree that it is "worth the money" and will be more tolerant of AI functions.

On the other hand, Ai Pin and Rabbit R1 can’t do anything except AI, so users will try every means to challenge its “AI”. Judging from the current level of technology, even the top AI will find it difficult to fully meet the demanding requirements of users in the short term.

Solos also has styles designed specifically for sports

In addition, whether it is Ray-Ban Meta or a domestic brand product, the brand value, appearance design, and wearing experience of the product are also crucial. Some manufacturers told Titanium Media APP that they are not currently making AR glasses, largely because the display effect, weight, and price of AR glasses do not meet expectations. AI glasses themselves are closer to ordinary glasses for daily use at the product level, and the user's learning cost is very low.

In addition, the consensus that Titanium Media APP has reached from the industry is that whether it is sunglasses or glasses, and whether a camera is added, becoming a good pair of glasses is the prerequisite for making good smart glasses.

Second, the combination of AI + glasses itself has a high ceiling. According to user survey data provided by Honeycomb Technology, the average daily wearing time of users of its own audio glasses was as high as 7 hours, and the usage time was 4.2 hours. The 5,000 most active users wore them for an average of 10.7 hours a day, 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 believe that AI devices can be established.

On top of that, the user base of glasses is also large enough. According to data from the World Health Organization and the National Health Commission, about 2.6 billion and 700 million people in the world and China wear glasses, respectively. In addition, some non-myopic users choose to wear plain glasses as a device to block blue light. 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, there is the development of AI, which has no foreseeable end. Previously, Honeycomb Technology and Titanium Media APP stated that there are many things that can be done with AI glasses in the future, and the ultimate goal is to "free users' hands from using their phones." Before that, the functions that can be seen and realized in the near future include active AI services: similar to presetting the price of a stock, notifying users immediately when the price is reached, and collecting analysts' opinions for reference, which are not difficult to achieve.

Prior to this, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates have expressed their optimism about the future of smart glasses. Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg 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 the way we live and work, and headphones and smart glasses will become two key areas of artificial intelligence hardware.

He believes that headphones are more than just audio playback devices, as they will add audio capabilities, eliminate noise, improve sound quality, and become an important medium for human-computer interaction; smart glasses can project video content into the user's field of view, opening up new forms 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 content that users are interested in and provide continuous assistance.

“While we already disclose a lot of personal information in digital systems, the value of AI assistants would be enormous if they could summarize meetings or assist with follow-up matters.”

However, it should be pointed out that AI glasses also have some potential problems, the main one being the possible low-price competition. Currently on e-commerce platforms, audio glasses priced at RMB 100 can even add AI tags to keywords, which shows that if you just pursue it or don’t have it, the industry threshold for AI glasses is obviously not high enough. If manufacturers want to develop better, they still need to cultivate their own AI skills and achieve differentiation as soon as possible.(This article was first published on Titanium Media APP, author: Wu Honglei, editor: Zhong Yi)