Though the first smart speakers were launched in the West, China has captured this technology and its concept sharper than anyone else. This has resulted in too many similar devices designed by Chinese companies. Strategy Analytics predicts that in 2024, there will be over 139 million smart speakers shipped in China. According to another research, the Xiaomi Xiao Ai smart speaker leads the local market. As a matter of fact, the first-gen Xiaomi Xiao Ai speaker was released July 26, 2017. Earlier today, at Xiaomi’s conference, a of much-awaited products were unveiled by the company and these included two new models of its smart speaker series, the Xiao Ai Speaker ‘Universal Remote Control Edition’ and Xiao Ai Speaker ‘PLAY’.
Features on the Xiaomi Xiao Ai smart speaker QQ music library, massive quality audiobooks, voice commands, over 600 practical skills and many more. The Xiaomi Xiao Ai smart speaker ‘PLAY’ comes with a price tag of 160 Yuan ($24) and its sales will kick off at 0:00 on June 18. The Universal Remote Control Edition, on the other hand, costs 199 Yuan and its sales will kick off at 10 am on June 12.
Just a few days ago, Xiaomi issued a statement via its official Weibo handle which said that according to the data of Aoweiyun.com, from January to April 2019, the cumulative sales of Xiao Ai smart speakers and the monthly sales in March and April of 2019 were the most in the Chinese market. It also said that the data from the Xiaomi data statistics platform shows that as of June 3, 2019, the cumulative number of voice interactions of the Xiao Ai speaker series exceeded 10 billion.
What this means is that Xiaomi’s smart speakers are very popular in China and people use them for many different purposes. With the addition of these new models, these numbers should go even higher.
