Here’s How Baidu Could Benefit From Its Foray Into Family Robots

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 Recently, Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) unveiled a voice controlled family robot called “Little Fish” or “Xiaoyu Zaijia” in Chinese at  CES (the Consumer Electronics Show) being held in Las Vegas this month. Developed in partnership with Ainemo, a hardware technology company in China, this assistant will allow users to use video chat, play music and request on-demand services such as buying movie tickets or controlling smart home devices. This product is similar to Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home virtual assistant. However, given that these companies are currently focused on the U.S. and Baidu is developing this family robot for China, we believe the company can get an early mover’s advantage in the Chinese home assistant market. The intelligent virtual assistant market size is expected to exceed $ 11 billion by 2024, according to a research by Global Market Insights, Inc. While use of robots in industries is becoming common in China, the home robot market is still at a nascent stage. Through its latest venture, Baidu is ensuring that it gets a strong holding in this market with an early mover’s advantage.

China’s Smart Home Market Likely To Reach $23 Billion By 2018

According to a recent report, the smart home market in China holds strong potential and is likely to reach $23 billion by 2018. While international players are yet to enter the region, local companies are already developing products to attract technology savvy Chinese consumers. A product similar to Amazon’s Echo was launched by Beijing’s Ling Long Co., which is a joint venture between JD.com and iFlyteck. Building a voice-based virtual assistant is challenging in China, given the dialects and accents associated with the Mandarin language. However, Baidu might be able to handle this challenge better with its focus on artificial intelligence. Baidu’s Deep Speech 2 has superior voice recognition abilities as it leverages the power of cloud computing and machine learning to create a neural network. In simple terms, neural networks are machines that learn and this technology works well in solving the challenge of voice recognition when the language has several dialects and accents. With this advanced technological capability Baidu will have the edge in the home assistant market and can gain a significant share in this potentially high growth market.

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Whether Baidu will expand its “Little Fish” outside of China remains to be seen.  However, it is well poised to capture the Chinese home automation/voice based personal assistant market.

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