Does Iflytek have a future?

As the leader of artificial intelligence in A-share market, Iflytek is the absolute leader of speech recognition and synthesis technology. If the company used to specialize in the development of voice technology, then now it is basically turning to AI in an all-round way, developing, platforms and applications, but each field has not shown its own market competitiveness, and even the housekeeping skills are being chased by wolves. The gap is getting smaller and smaller. Compared with bosses, Iflytek does a little business at most. Let's see what kind of enterprise it is.

Is it a science and technology enterprise?

Of course it is. Especially from scratch, from perceptual intelligence to cognitive intelligence, taking the road of independent research and development, it is a veritable technical enterprise. Only now it not only does technology development, but also its technology is not as irreplaceable as before. Now there are similar technologies and products in the service lists of Alibaba Cloud, Baidu Cloud and Tencent Cloud websites, indicating that you have mastered this technology yourself, or even if you don't have it, you can use it for yourself by introducing it. But in any case, the company's technical position is being challenged, and the fact that the market has been divided has not changed. This is also fully explained in the company's financial report. In the first half of the year, the company achieved operating income of 3.2 billion yuan, up 52.68% year-on-year, and non-net profit was only 20.2 million, down 74.39% year-on-year. The weak profitability is incompatible with its position in the intelligent voice industry and the characteristics of mature technology enterprises. It can be said that the company's technical advantages in the voice field are no longer obvious.

Is it a hardware brand enterprise?

Sort of, but it's not good From education to medical care, from customer service to smart home, to mobile phone and car environment, the company has a variety of applications and hardware products, which are said to be driven by its technology. Unfortunately, most of the products it provides can basically meet the demand as long as users download an APP application software on their mobile phones. In addition, the company has no access to the Internet, so it can't form its own "flying powder", which may be the reason why there is no Iflytek explosion in the market so far. At present, the product representing the highest technical level of the company should be an instant intelligent translator that can instantly translate 33 major languages around the world into Chinese. However, after all, it is not a mass market product and has a small audience. Moreover, the substitution effect of "high, refined and sharp" products in the mass consumer market is not obvious. Because it is expensive, it cannot be an explosion, and it is naturally difficult for the company to form its own hardware brand image.

Is it an internet company?

I should say not exactly. Using its own technological advantages, the company has developed and operated the world's first open intelligent interactive technology service platform-Iflytek Open Platform, and is committed to creating a one-stop intelligent human-computer interaction solution for developers. At present, the open platform provides developers with many services in the form of "cloud+terminal", such as speech synthesis, speech recognition, speech awakening, semantic understanding, face recognition, personalized color ring back tones, mobile application analysis and so on. However, compared with other Internet companies, especially the leading companies in the Internet industry, the biggest shortcoming of the company is that it does not have its own business scene. It can only be said that the company has Internet genes, but it lacks the characteristics of openness of Internet companies, and there are no Internet users, especially 2C. It is difficult to form an internet ecology, and naturally it is difficult to make a big difference.

Will its layout in multiple tracks really have prospects?

I can only say that it is not good. In recent years, the company has made continuous efforts in education, justice, medical care, smart cities, intelligent services, smart cars and other industries, and it should be said that it has achieved remarkable results. But in these fields, it can only provide related products in the voice field, which is relatively simple and the overall market competitiveness is actually not strong. The reason why companies are 2B and 2G is probably due to the consideration, demand and pressure of scale and performance growth as listed companies, but it is obviously not worth the candle. After all, this field is not only fiercely competitive, but also needs to build a huge on-site support system. Reflected in the financial statements, its sales expenses have increased significantly. At present, the absolute amount of this part of the company's expenses and the proportion of its income have exceeded the R&D expenses. The layout of each track will make the company gradually break away from the technology-oriented label, and then gradually become a system integrator led by intelligent projects.

Where will the future go?

Looking at the above four fields in which Iflytek independently set foot, it should be said that each field has opportunities, but it has not yet become a climate, and there is no possibility of making a big difference in the short term; But if we integrate the above fields, is Iflytek playing the next big game, that is, trying to be a resource integrator and a giant? This shows its overreaching side. After all, the field of voice intelligence technology is too small, and it is only an application in other people's projects or platforms, and it is a non-core application. So it is difficult to integrate resources. It seems that we should be based on the main business of intelligent voice, specialize in technology, and actively integrate or embed its voice technology into other Internet platforms, intelligent hardware products and smart city projects with a more open mind, instead of choosing it ourselves. In any case, the company's technical strength in its own voice recognition field is still very strong, and there is definitely a long way to go to build its future business model and core competitiveness. I hope that in this long night, enterprises can focus a little, focus a little more, and fight one battle after another, instead of attacking from all sides like now, let alone falling under the pressure of capital before dawn.

The core of Iflytek is speech recognition. With the continuous development of AI, its advantages will gradually decrease.

In the early years, Iflytek gradually became a master in the field of voice recognition by virtue of customer service voice phone. When the whole market has not paid attention to speech recognition, Iflytek has been rooted in this segment for so many years, so it has established certain technical barriers.

Last week, we also talked about a technology company. After the B round of financing, a large number of employees have been laid off, which is close to declaring bankruptcy. 20 10 company focuses on a certain subdivision and has obtained better technical barriers. When the market started to come, it quickly took off, prospering by technology and losing to technology. Because of the rise of the industry and a large amount of capital investment, technical barriers will soon be broken through. When other people's technology is not much different from your customer's perception, your advantage will gradually disappear. In addition to the company I mentioned (it is not convenient to say my real name for the time being), there is also a particularly famous company: Sharp's LCD business is also the same.

The development curve of technology is moving forward slowly, but when the market comes and a large amount of funds flood in, technology will develop and change rapidly. If the whole company system cannot be established before then, it will be difficult to deal with it.

In this era of change, don't think that you have the technical advantage in the early stage, so you are reckless. It is a big mistake to think that the future market is yours.

The war of enterprises is cruel, and life and death are often separated by a thin line. Success is difficult, and all kinds of loopholes must be filled. Just like the plane given by Mr. Ren, you can only keep filling all the loopholes. Failure is very simple. As long as there is a hole that is not filled and then expanded, the enterprise will be finished.

The right or wrong of enterprise strategy determines the future direction of Iflytek. Needless to say, the direction is wrong. In the era of change, choice is very important.

Corporate culture may not be so important when it was once a monopoly, but in the face of the explosive development of the whole industry and more opponents, corporate culture will be the core force, which determines the presentation of the collective strength of the team, whether it is gathering or dispersing.

The operation of the enterprise determines what you use to fight. Many people think it is technology, but I put technology behind the operation. Is there a big difference between 97% recognition rate and 96% recognition rate in speech recognition? This difference of 1% has little difference in application experience, but it is technically very difficult, especially when it is closer to 100%, the geometric coefficient of the difficulty interval increases.

So, if you want to know the future of Iflytek, you might as well look at these three aspects. After reading it, you will naturally understand.

Artificial intelligence is doomed to fail. How can Iflytek have a future?

What a pity!

Iflytek is an artificial intelligence company focusing on intelligent speech and speech technology research. Speech technology mainly includes two key technologies: speech synthesis and speech recognition. Let the machine speak, use speech synthesis technology, let the machine understand people's speech, and use speech recognition technology, which has broad application space now and in the future. Iflytek is also the first State Key Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Intelligence formally established by the Ministry of Science and Technology. The fact that our country can entrust such a high-level laboratory to Iflytek is enough to show Iflytek's leading position in this field. Iflytek has become a leading enterprise in the field of artificial intelligence and is more optimistic about its future.

In China, some state-owned enterprises are not born for profit.

There is still a future, which needs to be readjusted. After all, human resources are good, and the country is the backrest.

Very promising. Now I prefer to use voice when typing on my mobile phone.

Iflytek made great efforts on his ears and mouth. Think about the prospect of a technology that occupies two of the five senses of the human body.