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A video has put the 360 ​​children's watch at the center of public opinion.

Recently, when asked the question "Are Chinese the smartest people in the world?", the answer given by 360 Children's Watch was jaw-dropping: "All high-tech was invented by Westerners. How can Chinese people have the nerve to brag that they are the smartest in the world?"

Faced with the "rollover" accident that netizens called "destroying one's worldview", Zhou Hongyi immediately appeared on the social platform to apologize.Zhou Hongyi said that the watch with the problem was an old version from May 2022 and was not installed in the company's large model. It answered questions by crawling information from public websites on the Internet.The company has now quickly completed rectification, deleted all the above-mentioned harmful information, and is upgrading the software to an artificial intelligence version.

Radar Finance found that, in fact, judging from the time when it launched smart watches, 360 can be regarded as a veteran player in the same field.However, in today's fiercely competitive smartwatch market, 360's share is obviously lower than that of giants such as Apple, Xiaomi, and Huawei. In the domestic children's watch market, Xiaotiancai has an absolute leading advantage.

With the rapid advancement of technology, the functions of children's watches are no longer limited to time display, safety positioning, and parent-child instant communication. However, the increasingly "smart" children's watches also have hidden dangers such as inducing consumption, privacy leakage, and inappropriate content.

What is even more worrying is that with the popularity of such products, children's watches have gradually evolved into children's "admission ticket" for campus social activities, which may not only induce children to become addicted to the virtual world, but also intensify the trend of comparison among peers, posing a potential threat to children's healthy growth.

Children's watch answers 360 "causing trouble", "Uncle in red" Zhou Hongyi apologizes

As a well-known entrepreneur, Zhou Hongyi is now determined to become an Internet celebrity. When talking about Ma Huateng's words "Your popularity is the popularity of Internet celebrities" during their previous meeting, Zhou Hongyi expressed his strong agreement and admitted that he had indeed publicly said that he wanted to be an Internet celebrity.

In Zhou Hongyi's view, entrepreneurs need to put aside their pride and status when creating IP. Immersed in the Internet's traffic pool, Zhou Hongyi, in addition to posting short videos and doing live broadcasts, is now preparing to compete with Li Jiaqi and Dong Yuhui.

On August 8, he revealed on social media that his friend Niu Wenwen thought it was wrong for him not to bring goods. After hearing this, Zhou Hongyi also agreed, so he decided to officially enter the field of live streaming. To this end, Zhou Hongyi recently went to practice with Xiao Yangge, and later he said that he was a little more confident about how to bring goods.

This time, Zhou Hongyi officially entered the live streaming e-commerce track. He said that he plans to sell his own watches first, and will secondly consider selling his own AI office suite.However, not long after Zhou Hongyi officially announced that he would promote his own watch, the 360 ​​watch unexpectedly became the center of public opinion.

On August 22, a netizen posted a video, saying that when he used a smart children's watch to ask the question "Are Chinese the smartest people in the world?", the answer he got made him say it "destroyed his worldview."

According to the netizen, the watch was purchased in 2023, mainly to prevent his daughter from getting lost. The brand of the watch is 360 children's watch. For demonstration, the netizen asked the same question again with the watch. The voice answer: "The following content comes from 360 search..."

In addition to voice, the answer is also displayed on the watch in text form. "Because Chinese people have small eyes, small noses, small mouths, small eyebrows, and big faces, their heads appear to be the largest among all races." The entire answer is hundreds of words, including "What four great inventions, have you seen them? History can be fabricated. And today's mobile phones, computers, high-rise buildings, roads, and all other high-tech are invented by Westerners."

After the incident attracted attention, some media consulted the official customer service of 360 children's watches about the relevant issues. The customer service staff said that the question-and-answer function of the children's watch is a built-in function of the watch and needs to be connected to the Internet. The answers are given after combining the content of online searches. The issues raised by netizens have been registered and will be transferred to the relevant departments as soon as possible for implementation.

On August 22, Zhou Hongyi, founder and chairman of 360 Group, posted a video on Weibo in response to the controversy surrounding the 360 ​​children's watch.In this Weibo post, Zhou Hongyi first apologized for the incident, "Today I saw a video online showing that a certain model of our children's watch had incorrect questions and answers, which caused discomfort to users. We express our sincere apologies."

Then, Zhou Hongyi further explained the specific circumstances of the incident. Zhou Hongyi said that after a quick check, the watch with the problem was an old version from May 2022, which did not have the company's large model installed. It answered questions not through artificial intelligence, but by crawling information on public websites on the Internet to answer questions.

According to Zhou Hongyi, the team has quickly completed the rectification, deleted all the harmful information mentioned above, and is upgrading the software to an artificial intelligence version. At the same time, the team also checked the question-and-answer function of the new large-scale model children's watch and did a few tests for everyone. So far, there are no problems.

In the video, Zhou Hongyi tested the question-and-answer function of a children's phone watch. He asked the phone watch, "Are Chinese the smartest people in the world?" The answer he got was obviously different from the answer previously posted by netizens and was considered wrong, and there was nothing wrong with it.

Zhou Hongyi also asked questions in the video, "Is the moon rounder in the United States or in China?" and "In the women's table tennis singles final at the Paris Olympics, who has better skills, Sun Yingsha or Chen Meng? Who is better?" The answers he got were also relatively objective.

"We used to focus on filtering out pornographic content in children's watches, but we may not have paid enough attention to more open-ended issues related to values, so we have been making rapid technical efforts in the past few days." Zhou Hongyi said that for older versions of watches, they will gradually upgrade the software and website services in the next one to two weeks to ensure that similar problems do not occur again.

At the same time, Zhou Hongyi also mentioned that a globally recognized problem with artificial intelligence is that it will produce hallucinations, that is, it will sometimes talk nonsense, which is an inherent characteristic of the big model itself.

Zhou Hongyi revealed,In order to minimize illusions, 360 has been working hard, such as trying to reduce illusions and align knowledge by comparing with search results. But sometimes searches may fetch web pages with incorrect content, which will lead to content errors.

Zhou Hongyi admitted that when people asked questions using the 360 ​​large-scale children's watch, their imagination far exceeded that of the R&D staff and product managers. In order to prevent similar situations from happening again, Zhou Hongyi also said that if people find inappropriate answers, they can report them to them. Every verified question helps them improve their products, and they will also send a 360 product gift package as a thank you.

Radar Finance learned from the 360 ​​Children's official website that 360's watch products currently include several series, including S series, P series, X series, M series, SE series, etc. According to Da Wan News, on the evening of August 22, it searched on the 360 ​​JD self-operated flagship store and found that many earlier models of children's phone watches were out of stock.

Smart watches are becoming more and more popular, but 360 has been very successful but still failed to lead the way

Radar Finance noticed that in fact, in the past few months, Zhou Hongyi had mentioned several times on Weibo that the company is entering, analyzing and training vertical large models through scenarios such as children's watches.

However, judging from the financial report released by 360, the contribution of 360 children's watches to the group's revenue does not seem to be high at present.In the 2023 annual report released by 360, the word "watch" was not mentioned at all.

In 2023, 360 Company recorded a total revenue of 9.055 billion yuan, a decrease of 4.89% compared with the same period last year. Among them, the Internet advertising and service business can be regarded as the revenue pillar of 360 Company, which recorded a revenue of 4.521 billion yuan last year, a year-on-year decrease of 4.00%; Internet value-added services represented by games contributed 1.099 billion yuan in revenue to 360 last year, a year-on-year increase of 1.62%; and the revenue of security and other businesses last year was 1.765 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 1.48%.

As for the smart hardware business, 360 Company earned 1.57 billion yuan in revenue last year, a year-on-year decrease of 16.8%.According to the classification, the revenue of 360 children's watches should be attributed to the smart hardware business. However, 360 did not specify it in the financial report, and the hardware products listed in the financial report include smart cameras, video doorbells, and driving recorders.

Although 360 did not mention its own watch products in its financial report, the field of wearable devices to which 360 children's watches belong has become a hot track for many brands to compete. Compared with many leading players in the smart watch industry, 360 watches still have a big gap.

According to a report released by market research firm Canalys, the global wearable wristband device market shipments reached 185 million units in 2023, an increase of 1.4% over last year. Canalys predicts that this market will continue to grow in 2024, with a year-on-year growth rate of 7%. By 2025, the global wearable wristband device market shipments are expected to climb to 217 million units.Among them, the growth rate of smart watches is expected to surpass that of other wearable wristband products.

Through in-depth analysis of the shipment data of smart wristband devices from major manufacturers in 2023, we can know thatAlthough Apple's shipments fell 14% from last year, its leading position in the market remains solid, with a 19% market share.Xiaomi followed closely behind, with shipments increasing by 21% year-on-year and occupying 11% of the market share, while Huawei ranked third with a market share of 9% and shipments increasing by 13% year-on-year.

In the field of wearable devices, although giants such as Apple, Xiaomi, and Huawei are competing fiercely, if we focus on the field of children's watches, especially in China, Xiaotiancai is undoubtedly the leading player with an absolute leading position in this field.

According to data released by Counterpoint Research,In the first quarter of 2023, Xiaotiancai's market share in the domestic children's smart watch market reached 35%, winning the championship title with a clear advantage.Following them are Huawei, Xiaomi, 360 and Aba Town, with market shares of 15%, 9%, 8% and 2% respectively.

In fact, 360 is not late in entering the smartwatch market. Radar Finance learned from the 360 ​​Children's official website thatAs early as October 2013, the first generation of 360 children's watches was released, creating the children's watch category.

Subsequently, in 2014 and 2015, 360 children's watches successively launched the 2nd and 3rd generation products.

Tianyancha data shows that the company that owns 360 children's watches is Beijing Qichi Business Consulting Co., Ltd., which was established in December 2005.

In January 2016, it also initiated the establishment of the Child Safety Industry Service Alliance with Leyou Maternity & Baby, Abbott China, and Youku Parenting. In May of the same year, 360 released the 5S, which became the industry's first children's watch with fast charging, video calls, and intelligent voice Q&A.

According to public information, Apple Watch (1st generation) is a watch product released by Apple in September 2014 and was released to the public in April 2015.On the eve of the 2015 MWC World Mobile Communications Conference, Huawei officially launched its first smartwatch, Huawei Watch. Xiaomi's first smartwatch was officially unveiled at the Xiaomi new product launch conference held in November 2019.Now it seems that although 360 got up early in the fiercely competitive battle of smart watches, it has not taken the lead.

Children's watch market is in chaos

The ever-expanding market size of children's watches also has hidden concerns. Like the controversial 360 children's watch, Xiaotiancai, a leader in the children's watch market, has also been caught up in public opinion storms due to a series of issues.

According to Future.net in June 2022, at that time,Mr. Song, a parent of a student in Haidian District, Beijing, reported to the court that the Little Tiancai phone watch he bought for his child actually contained an app that induced minors to consume.

In addition to the advertising push of the Skin Mall App, Mr. Song found that the Xiaotiancai phone watch also has a variety of learning software and game software that can be charged in the App. If the watch is bound to the parent's payment account, the transaction can be completed without even entering the payment password.

Faced with the above situation, Mr. Song said helplessly,"I bought a smartwatch for my child so that I could keep in touch with him. It wasn't until I checked the bills and found they didn't match that I realized he had used the smartwatch to swipe the money away."

The above-mentioned situations are just a small part of the frequent chaos in the children's watch market. On March 15, 2022, CCTV's 3.15 Gala exposed the phenomenon of privacy leakage in low-end children's smart watches. At that time, testers from the 3.15 Information Security Laboratory purchased a children's smart watch with a sales record of more than 100,000. The child installed a malicious program disguised as a lottery game into the watch by scanning the QR code.

Engineers can use this to locate the child in real time, continuously collect the child's movement trajectory, easily circle the child's activity range, and even monitor the child's conversation content by calling the microphone in the watch, which is chilling.

In November of the same year, the Jiangsu Provincial Consumer Protection Committee pointed out in its "Children's Smart Watch Consumption Survey Report" that there are uneven quality problems in the children's smart watch consumption field. Some products are suspected of false advertising and difficult after-sales repairs; there are information security risks; some products have illegal deductions and induce underage children to consume; the platform supervision is not in place, some built-in games are bloody and violent, and some comics are not suitable for children.

In May this year, a parent in Shenyang, Liaoning, posted a message saying that he found his daughter's Xiaotiancai phone watch received obscene pictures and text messages from a friend. He said that his daughter's watch had received messages from the other party before, but some messages and pictures were blocked, "I don't know why it was not blocked this time."

In addition, as of press time, Radar Finance searched the keyword "children's watches" on the Black Cat complaint platform and obtained 2,908 relevant results. Among these complaints initiated by consumers, there are many problems such as substandard quality, false propaganda, and misleading consumption.

However, it is interesting that in some scenarios, the intervention boundary of children's watches seems to be a bit "over the top". Previously, some media reported that many parents reported that when they chatted with their children on the Xiaotiancai phone watch app, they sent expressions such as "I am your mother" or "I am your mother", but the system prompted that "it may contain inappropriate content".

There are many misunderstandings like this. For example, when parents send messages to their children to "do it in the evening" when they arrange their children to do homework at night, the system will prompt that "it may contain inappropriate content." Another parent said,"My child asked me how many times a day I took cough medicine, and I said three times a day, and then the system prompted 'This message may contain inappropriate content'."

Faced with the aforementioned ridiculous situation, some netizens joked that "Xiaotiancai's phone watch has its own understanding of banned words, which drives every parent crazy" and "there are not many words left for Xiaotiancai." Behind these phenomena, it is precisely the urgent need for improvement in the supervision and user experience of children's watches.

An analyst told Radar Finance that, in fact,Most parents buy children's watches for their children in order to enhance their children's safety and promote instant communication between parents and children. However, the rapid development of technology has also set off a wave of fierce competition in the field of this seemingly small children's watch.

With the continuous development of technology, the function of children's watches has far exceeded the traditional time display scope, and has integrated diversified functions such as two-way calls, call screening, harassment call blocking, emergency SOS assistance, high-definition video, etc. Manufacturers have spared no effort to continuously innovate in the durability and practicality of products, and launched waterproof, drop-resistant, scratch-resistant and detachable designs to meet the diverse needs of children in different life scenarios.

As functions and performance become more powerful, the meaning given to children's watches has also become richer, gradually evolving into smart devices that integrate safety, communication, social interaction, entertainment and learning.However, with the continuous iteration and upgrade of children's watches, various hidden dangers and chaos surrounding children's watches have begun to emerge. In this context, how children's watches can ensure children's privacy and security and prevent the intrusion of bad content has become the focus of attention from all walks of life.

What is even more worrying is that in today's schools, children's watches have even become a "ticket" for children to enter social circles in some scenarios: children without watches may feel excluded or isolated and thus marginalized, while children with watches are more likely to integrate into the group.

With the continuous updating and iteration of manufacturers, the brand, style, and function of children's watches have also become the object of comparison for children. Some children may be envied and sought after by their peers because they have more advanced and cooler watches, thus occupying a more advantageous position in social situations.

According to the "China Wearable Device Market Quarterly Tracking Report" released by IDC, in the third quarter of 2023, the shipment of children's smart watches reached 5.8 million units, a year-on-year increase of 7.2%. IDC also pointed out that the price range of RMB 400 to 600 and RMB 1,000 to 1,500 in the children's smart watch market has become the key growth segment and an important price range for manufacturers to compete. At present, the prices of children's watches of many brands are still on the rise.

At the same time, the independence of the social system of children's watches has also raised new problems.Due to system barriers set up by some brands, only users who own children's watches of the same brand can establish a "friend" relationship.For children who attach great importance to the ability to add friends, this setting has a great impact on parents' choice of children's watch brands. In addition, the disagreements between parents and children when using children's watches, such as addiction to virtual social networking, can easily intensify parent-child conflicts.