On-board audio: stand on the eve of the market explosion

A few days ago, Noiseless, a well-known municipal broadcasting agency in China, released the "2018 Special Analysis report on the Development status and Trends of China's Automotive Audio Market", saying that in the automotive audio market, the opening rate and utilization rate of traditional broadcasting, Market share has shown a downward trend. With the rise of the new car connection rate and the popularity of intelligent vehicles, intelligent vehicle audio is rising.

Based on this, Che Nun, as a forward-looking media to observe the automotive industry, first analyzed two reports to refine the core points for people in the industry for reference.

The original intention of the car service is to meet the entertainment needs of the car owners travelling. Radio and other audio is the early form of vehicle audio. With the popularity of smart phones, car owners often use mobile phones to navigate, listen to audio, and communicate with each other in the driving process. However, there are hidden dangers to travel safety. With the help of vehicle networking technology, car enterprises will carry common functions to the vehicle terminal, not only reduce driving risk, but also improve the convenience of operation.

Capital to the industry support, also can not be ignored. In 2018 alone, there were 100 investment and financing events in the auto networking industry. For example, Rainbow Wireless completed round B financing in January 2018, listened to the partner (former koala FM) to complete round A and round A in July 2018, Zebra completed the first round of financing of 1.6 billion yuan in September 2018, and so on. With the influx of capital, both in hardware and in software and services, the auto-networking industry has developed rapidly.

The 2019 Shanghai Auto Show, which is about to open recently, has also set up a future travel exhibition area for the first time this year, with exhibits covering new energy sources, car connectivity, self-driving and so on, attracting the participation of Anji Star, Bosch, mainland and other car networking service providers and first-class suppliers. Bring intelligent network connection aspects of forward-looking technology achievements. Intelligent in-car audio is also being paid attention to.

In general, at present, China's auto networking industry is entering a period of rapid growth, the car enterprises attach more importance to the car networking business, a large number of content service manufacturers, especially audio-related areas of manufacturers to the vehicle server layout.

Car networking, can be said to provide a prerequisite for the outbreak of vehicle audio market, and the change of consumer groups, is also an important factor in the explosion of vehicle audio. With the development of the times, the post-90s are in front of the stage. Compared with the post-70s, post-80s, post-90s more pursuit of personality, but also more willing to try new things, at the same time, but also more pursuit of cost-effective, in the purchase of cars, its car audio requirements are higher.

In the aspect of car enterprises, facing the saturation of stock market and the pressure of declining profits, the automobile enterprises need to transform from traditional manufacturing to user operation. In this process, the vehicle audio becomes the link between the car enterprise and the car owner. Similar to elevator advertising, the cockpit is a closed scene with a high sound touch rate, and the driver's main focus is on driving behavior, and the acceptance of brand information with a sense of companionship, temperature, emotion and community belonging is high. Audio will be the best way for companies to operate users in the cockpit.However, although car companies are "hot on the car audio" market, but due to the lack of entertainment content operational qualifications and content operation capacity, so the current mainstream practice with car audio companies to facilitate the solution to this problem.

At the same time, under the influence of AI,5G and other industry factors, the on-board audio industry will change to the direction of interconnection, intelligent streaming media, a new industry, the empowerment of technical factors, to provide protection for the development of on-board audio.

Although the on-board audio can be expected in the future, compared with the non-vehicle terminal, the particularity of the vehicle-on-board scene brings a higher threshold of scene transformation. Moreover, there are great differences between in-vehicle and non-vehicular users, such as content requirement, product form and operation direction, and mobile audio can not be transplanted directly to the vehicle terminal.

For example, mobile audio pays primarily for knowledge, while in the cockpit, car audio listening needs to be richer and more diverse because it remains dull for a long time and has no alternative strong media. Different content listening rates are different at different times. People tend to listen to information and travel content at peak hours in the morning and evening and to listen to music in the afternoon, while humorous and emotional programs have higher ratings at night, according to Noiseless.

Mobile audio and video media to grab attention, need to achieve immersive listening. On-board audio is not the same. In vehicle scenarios, more than 80 percent of car owners pay attention to content-focused concomitant listening and less than 1 percent immersive, according to Noiseless Media Research. Because the driver can not leave the steering wheel in the driving process, the listening mode is mainly light-on-demand or aimless listening, the radio stream is still the experience that the car owner values, at the same time, the active recommendation, the interrupted listening also becomes the experience which the car owner expects. This requires vehicle audio to provide technical support for the concatenation and arrangement of the broadcast content, the internalization of the content, and the natural transition between programs. 

All these lead to the huge difference between the mobile and the mobile terminal, and also bring the difference of the technology application. It is not easy to switch from the original mobile terminal to the vehicle terminal on the online audio platform, and the threshold is also relatively high.

At present, the layout of the platform in the vehicle can be roughly divided into two categories, one is in the vehicle end has invested most of the platform, to cool me, listening to the partner as the representative; The other is that although the vehicle end has been laid out, the main battlefield is still on the mobile side, represented by QQ music, the Himalayas, and dragonfly FM. Noiseless research data show that cool me, listening partners in audio companies have a relatively high host factory brand coverage, both reaching more than 60%.

Because of the long front, the mobile audio giant has little resource investment and operation experience in the vehicle audio market, but simply moves the mobile audio content to the vehicle terminal, so it lacks the innovative research and development of the on-board audio technology. And cool me, listen to the company such as car scene for product innovation and service customization, no doubt more popular with car companies and car owners. Take the listening partner as an example, the first audio company to enter the bureau and focus on the car field, leading the way, in 2018, launched one after another K-radio and brand radio products specifically designed for car companies, adopting scene-based AI station current technology. Offer steward-style content to car owners Recommendation, let people find content into content to find people.

Compared with previous years, the depot has clearly realized that intelligence will be the main track for future car competition. And the "explosion" of the smart cockpit market will also make cars a "third living space" outside the home and company.

Based on this background, since the beginning of 2017, a growing number of vehicles on the market are equipped with intelligent car networking systems, with significant upgrades in hardware, software and services. On the other hand, with the increase of platform and content resources, the competition will intensify day by day.

There is no doubt that the on-board audio market will be a blue sea. Any platform that wants to occupy a place in this blue sea must have specialized and customized content, optimize the technology accumulation of boardinghouse environment interactive experience, and recognize the development of automobile industry as a whole.

Based on this, for QQ music, Himalayas, dragonfly FM and other platforms, it is very difficult to enter a brand-new field, at the same time, the reality of car companies and Internet giants competing for voice power will also become a constraint; And for the cool me who has already preempted the car, the listening partner, through the precision and innovation break, established the vehicle audio market leading advantage, then need to pay attention to how to maintain their own advantage and expand it.