There are plenty of smart displays like Facebook Portal in China, but do consumers care?
Baidu and JD both have smart displays, but smart speakers have been slow to catch on
Smart speakers like Amazon Echo and Google Home are so last year. This year is all about smart displays: Smart speakers, except they’ve got a screen and camera for video calls.
This week will see three new ones in the US: Facebook just unveiled the Portal, Amazon opened pre-orders for the second generation Echo Show, and Google is (at this writing) hours away from unveiling the Google Home Hub.
But Chinese companies have been building smart displays for a while, with Baidu and JD.com leading the way -- despite the fact that Chinese consumers have shown little appetite for smart speakers yet, according to the China Internet Report 2018.
Baidu, China’s biggest search engine, was the first to launch a smart display in the country. Named “Xiaodu Zaijia”, which loosely means “Little Baidu at home”, it was based on the company’s AI assistant DuerOS. It has a 7-inch display, and is priced at only 699 yuan (US$102), and let users made video calls and access Baidu’s video platform iQiyi.
