Alibaba IoT Connect Kit is Just the Cat Named Qina?

Last night (January 9th), Qian Xue, general manager of Alibaba A.I. Labs, sent a message announcing that they released the IoT Connect Kit at CES and cooperated with Bosch to launch the first smart speaker for the high-end market. This is also the first smart speaker product launched by Bosch brand in China.

A networking protocol

The IoT Connect Kit is a smart home connectivity solution that supports voice networking. Last year, also at CES, Alibaba first released their IoT Connect, the smart network open connection protocol. Through this protocol, smart devices can be automatically networked and automatically connected. The launch of IoT Connect is closely related to the Tmall Wizard, which automatically adapts and supports the voice control of the Tmall Wizard. Tmall Genie has artificial intelligence voice interaction and service functions, and is an important voice portal and landing hand in Alibaba's artificial intelligence strategy.

According to data released by Alibaba, by June of last year, IoT Connect supported Tmall Genie's smart device models to reach 30 categories, 469 models. On the line for 5 months, the number of daily calls to the smart home control interface exceeded 300,000 times. As early as last August, the IoT Connect Kit has been piloted for some industries. By the end of last year, more than 4.5 million new devices were connected to the Tmall Wizard through this protocol, and this connection remains in each More than 50% of the high growth rate in months.

A core technology

When it comes to connectivity, I will mention the core technology of IoT Connect, Bluetooth mesh. Bluetooth mesh technology adopts optimized network flood communication mechanism. It is a communication technology suitable for IoT device networking, which is suitable for promoting the diversity of IoT scenarios. Chemical. Since the Bluetooth mesh network does not require complicated settings, pairing, or access devices such as routers, it is easier to meet the networking application of non-complex instructions of multiple devices. Because of these characteristics, IoT Connect uses Bluetooth mesh technology, which is also the world's first protocol to adopt this technology.

However, from the launch of 2016 to the release of 2017 to the real commercialization, Bluetooth mesh will be ""to 2022, there will be 5.2 billion Bluetooth devices output"" (""Bluetooth Market Update"", Bluetooth Technology Alliance released at 2018 Bluetooth Asia Conference The goal is still far away, the reason is its technical maturity (firmware upgrade, remote distribution network implementation), development threshold (the protocol stack function is not perfect), resource matching (equipment provider corresponding network app and corresponding library) ) and other conditions have yet to be improved.

It can be said that the combination of IoT Connect and Bluetooth mesh complement each other. For example, all the Bluetooth IoT chips currently developed by MediaTek have built-in IoT Connect protocol, and Shenzhen Weizhi Electronics has also begun to provide a mass production Bluetooth mesh module solution. In the previous IoT ecosystem of Alibaba, the automatic docking of Yunyun was mainly based on wifi sockets such as Bolian, Lifesmart, Ou Ruibo and infrared remote control.

An invisible cat

Compared to last year's IoT Connect, Alibaba's IoT Connect Kit is an upgraded version of the product package. In addition to open communication protocols, it also includes connectivity standards, SDKs, modules, development boards and chip libraries, and products. Library, solution library, and ""full stack"" smart home connection platform including product specifications, certification specifications, security specifications, etc. The first one to land is the smart speaker Qina launched in cooperation with Bosch. Qia is positioned in the voice control of smart home. At present, Qina has realized the voice control of 5 categories and 18 products of Bosch Home Appliances. The voice interaction capability is provided by Tmall Wizards, and of course includes some online resources. With this invisible cat, Bosch has become an important player in the Chinese smart home market.

Alibaba and BMW cooperate

In fact, in addition to smart homes, smart cars are also the market for the development of Alibaba's intelligent voice strategy. Last year, IoT Connect was just released. In April, Alibaba launched related programs, and Daimler (Mercedes Benz brand), Audi Cooperated with Volvo's three car companies to support the Tmall Genie voice assistant in its production model with networking capabilities; in January this year, Alibaba announced cooperation with BMW, and announced the cooperation upgrade on the eve of CES, in this year's Q4 in China. All of the main models of the BMW 3 Series and 5 Series are connected to the voice interaction and AI service capabilities of the Tmall Wizard.