Google will pay the most attention to the products of heables

Release date：2016-08-19   Views：2017

In addition, the iPhone 3.7 will be the latest product in the market, and it will even be a new product in the market. Please pay attention to the "wireless" quoted here. Here, it refers to the cancellation of the connection between the two ear Bluetooth earphones. It not only brings more concealment, better appearance, and more convenient for sweating during exercise, but also solves the stethoscope effect (that is, when you are running, the line will vibrate and you will hear a thump).

20160818-ins-1 picture Title: the picture shows dash healables products produced by Bragi company. Bragi, based in Munich, Germany, successfully raised $3 million on KickStarter, a crowdfunding platform, to start R & D and manufacturing. Bragi won the CES Best Innovation Award last year and went public in large quantities this year.

This kind of wireless Bluetooth headset with two ears is becoming more and more popular. Apple, Samsung and other big brand Headphone Companies are ready to push this kind of products. Of course, as shown in the figure above, many emerging brands are eager to try, and they are very popular on some crowdfunding platforms in Europe and the United States. In addition to dash in the picture above, earin earplug of Lund company in Sweden and hear one of Doppler labs company are popular. However, the products of these companies will be expensive. For example, a high-end Apple lightning headset costs 6498 yuan (el-8 titanium closed back), which is even more expensive than the latest version of Apple mobile phone. The cheapest one of the newly launched audio zines also costs 4198 yuan.

If, I mean, there are Chinese companies that can achieve 80% performance of these high-end headphones at a price of 1 / 10-1 / 5, the market will blow out. As a matter of fact, it's already fast. I know that there are Chinese chip platform companies that are making efforts in this respect. If it's fast, we can see the hearables headphones with ultra-high cost performance on the market in China by the end of this year.

According to the prediction of wifore consulting, healables market will be the fastest growing wearable market, and its market size is expected to increase to more than 16 billion US dollars by 2020. However, I think that if Chinese companies can make it more affordable, then taking into account the Chinese brands and white brand market, the market size will be much larger than this number. As a matter of fact, we can see that the market of intelligent earphone products is changing from the former acoustic company to the mobile phone company. More and more mobile phone companies begin to set foot in this field, in order to bring more differentiated competition to their mobile phones. A new big market is coming out. Are you ready?

Now let's talk about what kind of chips and platforms are needed to design a hearables intelligent ear wear terminal? What patents are needed?

Hearables' chip platform is stronger than the functional machine

"Wireless" dual ear Bluetooth headset needs to improve the transmission efficiency of 1.5-2 times after the cable is missing: the mobile phone transmits the signal to the main headset through Bluetooth, and the main headset will send the signal to the auxiliary headset (one main headset and one secondary headset) after the signal is removed by the main headset. Therefore, after receiving the signal on the same chip, it will be transmitted to another headset through Bluetooth. Therefore, here, the Bluetooth transmission efficiency is required The efficiency of Bluetooth transmission is very high. One of them, as an active headset, needs to receive and send, and in theory, it needs to increase the bandwidth of 50%. If the efficiency of Bluetooth transmission cannot be solved, it will appear intermittent, or affect the sound quality and the experience is very poor. This is one of the important challenges of dual ear wireless Bluetooth headset.

Traditionally, the patented technology aptx of CSR (now acquired by Qualcomm) can greatly improve the efficiency of audio coding and decoding based on Bluetooth and provide Bluetooth audio quality. However, the mobile phone company or headset company adopts the technology, which is subject to patent fee. He used the patent to curb many competitors.

Now, the new generation of open source audio codec technology opus pushed by Google can also greatly improve the transmission efficiency. "This latest opus standard can double the efficiency of audio transmission. Even if the patented technology of CSR is not adopted, the Bluetooth transmission efficiency can be doubled by this latest opus decompression method, and the dual ear wireless Bluetooth ear machine with good experience effect can be achieved." Zhang Liang, CEO of hengxuan technology, said that hengxuan technology was a new platform level chip company just established at the end of last year. It was launched by many senior executives of former RDA (Zhang Liang is the former president of RDA), focusing on the latest "smart headphones and audio terminals". Hearables is their focus market. Zhang Liang recognizes that this is the next huge tuyere. "Apple cancels 3.5mm audio connection After the mouth, it will promote the outbreak of the dual ear Bluetooth headset market. We analyze that Apple cancels the 3.5mm audio port, and the goal is to promote the smart headset market. Because the traditional audio interface can not realize intelligent functions. Only by connecting USB port (or lighting) with the mobile phone system, can intelligent analysis be realized. For example, we can even detect location information and status information by mobile phone to realize the implementation Now you are in different environments, such as subway, aircraft, train, noise reduction functions are different, this is a new revolution, traditional headphones can not be realized. " "I think Apple really wants to push for a revolution, not just to cancel a 3.5mm interface," he commented

Zhang said that because opus standard has a natural open source advantage. "This brings good news to domestic mobile phone and accessories companies." But for now, Google has not put it in the Bluetooth stack, just supporting the standard on Android. As a headset solution company, it is necessary to pair the Android system and headset on the mobile phone. The software upgrade in the phone can support opus coding. "The effect is comparable to the aptx of CSR." He said.

"This will give mobile companies a differentiated competitive advantage because they can have a better hearing experience," he said Zhang Liang said. He analyzed that after the dual ear Bluetooth headset and Bluetooth speaker market, Google will add this technology in the Bluetooth protocol stack, because of the huge demand in the market.

"For the solution of hearables dual ear wireless Bluetooth headset, it must be a platform level chip first, because you never know what new functions will be added. Some new features currently seen include: removing the middle connection, increasing heart rate test, increasing active noise reduction function, and even adding microphone array... There may be more functionality in the future, and we can't imagine it now. " "Hearables will become a new human-computer entry," he said

In fact, this dual ear wireless Bluetooth headset looks simple. In fact, it is not lower than the platform demand of a functional mobile phone. It needs to integrate Bluetooth, WiFi, CPU and various digital functions, and requires high integration to make id the smallest and most beautiful, and the power consumption is lower. (the dash earphone mentioned earlier, said to charge five times a day), "so we have to use the highest integration, state-of-the-art technology to reduce power consumption to a lower level." Zhang Liang said.

Active noise reduction and microphone array are two selling points of hearables

At present, in the top headphone market, you often hear two terms: active noise reduction and microphone array. Many people confuse these two functions.

Microphone array is remote noise reduction, which means that the person answering your phone can't hear the noise in your environment. Active noise reduction is local noise reduction. When you are listening to music or making a phone call, you can't hear the surrounding noise, such as the sound of aircraft engine, the sound of high-speed rail, and the sound of surrounding cars and horns. At present, there is no hearables two ear Bluetooth headset to do both functions at the same time.

"Microphone array, now it's very difficult to do it on small earphones because there is not enough space. In such a small headset, only two microphones can be placed, and the distance is not enough, so it is difficult to achieve phased array aiming at the mouth shape, and the effect will not be very good. Amazon's echo speakers use seven microphones. " Zhang Liang explained.

The active noise reduction based on Bluetooth is also very challenging. Previously, active noise reduction earphones were used on wired headphones. According to Zhang Liang, hengxuan technology is now able to provide Bluetooth based active noise reduction earphones based on its platform level solution, and large brand Headphone Companies and mobile phone companies are working on cases.

"Although we are experts in electricity, not acoustics, we can solve acoustic problems with electricity." He explained, "when we make the electricity strong enough, the acoustic requirements will be reduced (Chang Xu explained: just like before MTK made the reading chip sensitivity strong enough, the requirements for disc quality were greatly reduced?). Bose international giants such as Bose are very strong in acoustics and have many patents, but their electricity is relatively weak, which is solved by a third party. And our solution is to make electricity strong enough to reduce the requirements for acoustics, to compete with them differently, and not to touch their patents. "

Zhang Liang stressed that in addition to reducing the area and power consumption, the greater significance of integration is that only after integration can we truly innovate. "When we can achieve the integrated optimization of audio codec and acoustic hardware, we have a great advantage. We are confident that the wireless two ear Bluetooth headset without that cable will be better than the Bluetooth headset with that cable. "

Of course, his bigger dream is to make these thousands of Yuan high-end headphones become products that can be consumed by Chinese consumers. Each mobile phone is equipped with one standard, and even each consumer can buy several (wired, wireless, active noise reduction, even with microphone wind array, and of course, there are still some functions that we can't imagine. Hearables is the next one Smart portal.) He firmly believes that they can do it. He is catching up with a huge wind outlet, which his team has accumulated for more than ten years.

"There are two conditions for the outbreak of the market. The first is to have enough innovation, and the second is to have price competitiveness. Hearables wireless Bluetooth headset is facing such a big opportunity at present. " "Today's headphone industry is a bit like the smartphone market five years ago," he said. At that time, the company that had done a good job in technical reserve now has its advantages. In this field, we are the only one that can be positioned as a platform company. "

Speaking of the originator of earphone technology like Lou's, Zhang Liang explained that Lou's strong point lies in acoustics. They can realize low power consumption of speech recognition. By directly integrating a speech digital processor into the microphone, the power consumption of speech recognition can be reduced. "In some cases, they are equivalent to the RF chips in mobile phones, and we are equivalent to the main chips in mobile phones. They are complementary to each other. His speaker is the PA, and his microphone is the receiver. " "We have a cooperative relationship," he says In addition, he added, "those non platform chip companies can make a Bluetooth headset, but they can't make an intelligent Bluetooth headset."

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