Smart Speaker Foundry: How does a 27.5-element speaker come out?

At 7 am, Hu Borun drove to the factory. After simply taking inventory of the parts on the production line, he took his assistant and his understanding notes and drove over to the other small workshop in Huiyang for more than an hour to see the goods. In this small bungalow less than 100 square meters, woven bags filled with things piled up like mountains. He told me to understand the notes, and the "goods" in it were one of the materials for his smart speaker assembly.

"These are the products of Huaqiang North's trial and error. They are used." He said Huiyang Huiyang and Fenggang in Dongguan have more or less dismantled small workshops hidden in the houses. These motherboards and horns, which are contained in woven bags, are dismantled from the many stocks that have been recycled. "Generally I only need speakers. After all, these motherboards are too low to be used."

After completing the order, Hu Bo-run rushed back to Longgang, which was already at noon. Almost every two or three days, he would go to the surrounding dismantling workshops to see and look for "wild land" worthy of recycling.

And these used second-hand speaker units will be assembled from the next day to some smart speakers.

Hu Borun revealed that due to the small size of the smart speaker cabinet, the required speaker size cannot be too large. In order to balance the sound quality, the used speaker units that can be mounted on the smart speaker are almost all long-stroked designs from the very beginning. The sound quality and dynamic response are unmatched by loudspeakers disassembled from ordinary speakers.

"These goods are very good for low-end products, and inventory is new in a certain sense." He took a product and told him to understand the notes. The cylinder-like drum design is currently available on the market. The most common.

A model, sometimes affixed with the logo of several brands. Today, this batch of OEM orders is from a Shanghai-based digital manufacturer called "Xie Mo". The ex-factory price is about 27.5 yuan.

"If you use a second-hand motherboard, chip assembly, the cost can be as low as 20%." Hu Borun introduced that in Longgang District, he knows that there are more than 60 factories that can assemble smart speakers. Although the smart speaker market is booming, orders from OEMs cannot “feed” all the assembly plants. Therefore, the competition among foundries is also very fierce. Sometimes, for an order, the foundry will constantly refresh its respective lower limit of cost. “Before we fought for an OEM order for a Jiangsu brand manufacturer, we actually found that the foundry reported 12.7. Yuan/Taiwan's ex-factory prices make us all of us surprised."

Like most of the foundry CEOs, he is very curious to analyze the price of 12.7 yuan. Finding is a completely impossible price. Unless it is sold, it is to grab orders. And this kind of thing has not happened.

“In addition to some well-known big brands, ordinary small brands have almost no requirements on the quality of the products, as long as the prices are low.” Hubrun told me to understand that even if they gave a low price, the brand's requirements in the aftermarket Very harsh. Not only need unconditional warranty replacement, but also on behalf of the factory to bear a certain percentage of slow-moving inventory recovery, "plus the payment is not the end of the knot, it is too tortured."

Even after talking about the total package price, there are more than tens of hundreds of free-to-play brands. Therefore, the HuBruno who also needs to survive, as well as the neighboring foundries, can only continue to save costs. It can be a little bit to save.

Some people may say that some of the smart speaker parts use only the inventory of used disassemble parts, but in fact there is nothing. As long as it can be used, there are guarantees, complete functions, and high cost performance. However, in fact, to produce a smart speaker with an ex-factory price of only twenty or thirty yuan, is the use of materials only "second hand"?

"It's far more boring than you can imagine." Hu Bo-run smiled.

In order to save the province for the purpose, use the waste "heap" smart speaker

Under Hubrun's introduction, he understood the notes and came to another smart speaker assembly factory nearby. Before entering the workshop, they had already seen a pile of plastic parts used to assemble the speakers. Li Teng, the person in charge said that these yellow-white, gray plastic parts, are the brackets inside the speaker assembly components, and next to those colorful, is the speaker shell.

"Plastics are generally produced in downstream factories. We don't take part in this." He said that because the production of plastic produces certain air pollution, most of the downstream suppliers they purchase are small workshops in remote areas. As for why the products of workshop production were chosen, Li Teng said bluntly: "Cheap."

According to him, whether it is the dozens of speaker factories in the nearby industrial belts or the small workshops that produce smart equipment in the surrounding cities and counties, most of them use recycled plastic products from the workshop production in the central and western regions. Accessories, a mere RMB 6 cents. Looks like bright, colorful speaker shell, the price is also controlled within 1 yuan.

"As for the wires, they are all from the east of Guangdong. They will be able to use them." Li Teng told me to understand the notes. Brain" chip assembly.

For some of the more demanding OEMs, they all require the foundry to adopt the latest version of the chip assembly to increase the competitiveness of the product in the market. "But plainly, no matter what version of the assembly in the past two years, there are not many highlights on the hardware, the function is a simple matching operation, intelligent home control is also a problem to be solved later software instructions." He said disdain.

In the other corner of the plant area, a large amount of material resembling cotton is stacked, and two workers are cutting to a certain size. Li Teng pointed out that this is a kind of smart speaker that is designed with cotton and linen cover and the fabric to be used. Addition of those gray plus black, occasionally appear in the middle of a few colored thread cotton, suitable for energy absorption inside the speaker.

"It's all recycled materials. It's impossible for this to be new." He stressed that because brand owners are undercutting prices, most manufacturers will choose similar recycled fabrics and cotton to cover loudspeakers and fill sound cavity materials. A kilogram of such recycled fabrics is less than three bucks, and cotton is even cheaper. "Some smart speakers with very low prices are sometimes too lazy to reclaim cotton."

He pointed to a smart speaker on the table that had been tagged with “A certain” brand to tell me to understand the notes, so that the ex-factory price was more than 25, and the whole machine was new except for the program chip, and the rest were used accessories. And recycled materials.

"It doesn't matter if you take it for a short time, but the assembly workers are exposed to a lot of daily contact. Sometimes the hands can tickle." In this small, small factory, the workers on the assembly line all wear masks and gloves. Seemingly regular, but actually helpless.

In order to survive, the practice of the foundry is embarrassing. However, the smart speakers that can only be purchased in tens of hundreds of these markets are harmful to the human body. The answer is obvious.

The solution is hardly new, smart speakers lack "smart"

"Almost all brands are not concerned with the realization of the functions when looking for OEMs."

Ma Bin, who represented a variety of smart speaker integration modules, told me to understand the notes. Li Teng, Hu Borun and 60% of the entire industry's foundries used smart speaker chip modules, all from the products he represented.

The core of the module is mostly from IC design companies such as MediaTek. On the basis of the core chip, a professional manufacturer puts on Bluetooth, WIFI receiving, microphone, amplifier and other originals, and it becomes a “mainboard” full of lines, green or blue. Can be assembled directly on the smart speaker, the industry collectively referred to as "solutions."

“Prices are high and low, some use low-end chips, and some high-end chips are close to 100.” Ma Bin said that although the performance of the core chip has greatly improved during the two years of development of the smart speaker industry, The main hardware support, but there is not much innovation, "is nothing more than microphones, speakers, Bluetooth, WIFI, amplifiers, some brands up to this basis, an interactive display."

Software functions, most of them are also playing music, encyclopedia questions, alarm clock and other functions. He stressed that in the earlier period, some brands stressed that smart speakers are the entrance to the future smart homes and use voice commands to control every smart home appliance. However, there are very few manufacturers that have publicized this now, and all return to the single device itself.

“The smart home appliance ecosystem is not perfect. It is better to say that the entrance is useful, and it is better to emphasize what life assistants, resource services, child care managers, etc. are more practical.”

Li Teng believes that smart speakers from the initial emphasis on applications, features, and now blindly pursue low prices, may be to pass a more competitive market prices, such an adult's "toys" to the market, quickly seize the user home One of the entrances to entertainment.

Today's smart speakers seem to be beautiful in appearance and low in price, but the functions are basically the same, nothing more than the application of similar mobile assistants, "moving" to the speaker. It can be said that the smart speaker is only the most basic form of expression in the field of artificial intelligence, or even a pseudo-smart product with a name of “smart”.

Unable to break through innovation, it is doomed that the field of smart speakers can only be reduced to a price war. Behind the low prices, it is at the expense of foundries cutting corners, using inferior parts, and recycling harmful products. While intelligent speakers cannot bring new ideas to the market, they are constantly bringing unimaginable potential harm to users.

As for the "secrets" of low-priced head brand products, Hu Borun and others only told them to read the notes carefully: "Don't ask, really can't say."

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