Nuance cloth will be split and listed in the United States on October 1. The new company Cerence will focus on the development of automobile-related software
In recent months, China's Internet of Vehicles field has been very lively. Car companies, Internet companies, and related high-tech companies may announce new products or announce new cooperation, making the Chinese Internet of Vehicles, which is already at the forefront of the world, look full of vitality.
There is no doubt that the role of software in the automotive industry has become increasingly important. Consumers and car companies pay more attention to functions, experience and customization in addition to automobile safety and performance. The rich functions of the on-board system and the business ecosystem derived from automotive intelligent networking will be centered on software technology. Whether it is the Internet of Vehicles, intelligent driving, or even the intelligent manufacturing of automobiles, these important development directions of the automotive industry are inseparable from the participation of software.
In early September, at the 2019 Nuance China Automobile Forum, Nuance, a smart voice technology solution provider, set the forum theme as "Software-defined Automobile Innovation Business Value" and announced that it will split the automobile business on October 1, 2019, establishing an independent operation Cerence based on the original Greater China and automobile business, and listing it on the Nasdaq in the United States.
Nuance has provided voice technology to technology giants such as Apple, Google , Amazon , Samsung , and Samsung . At its peak in 2011, it occupied about 70% of the global voice market. Afterwards, with the development of deep learning and the application of convolutional neural networks, a large number of manufacturers flocked to this industry to compete with Nuance, and the barriers to voice technology decreased.
After 2012, Nuance began to transform from a voice technology provider that only focuses on vertically deep algorithms to a technology provider that expands solutions in various industries horizontally.
After many twists and turns, Nuance gradually integrated its technology into services and processes, and independently developed industry solutions to provide product support to customers. Today, thousands of companies in the healthcare, telecommunications, finance, mobile applications and other industries can utilize the multi-dimensional services brought by Nuance products through natural language interactions. In 2018, the market share in the field of smart voice reached 31%, ranking first in the world.
automotive field, Nuance claims to provide technical support for more than 280 million cars driving on the road in more than 70 languages, and provides artificial intelligence technical support to almost all mainstream auto manufacturers such as Audi , BMW, Daimler, Ford, General Motors , Toyota , SAIC and Geely . At the
Forum, Nuance Group Senior Vice President Da and China President Kuai Wenrui shared Nuance's remarkable growth in China's business and R&D achievements in the Chinese market, as well as the progress of the One China strategy that is committed to providing customers with better services.
new company will be closer to the Chinese automobile market
According to relevant consulting agencies and investment institutions, the global smart voice market size will grow from US$1.5 billion to US$2.7 billion in the five years from 2018 to 2023. Last quarter, 54% of new cars used Nuance/Cerence technology.
Kuai Wenrui pointed out that this year's Nuance China Automobile Forum marks the 10th anniversary of the establishment of Nuance Greater China. In the past three years, Nuance has grown rapidly in China, including obtaining more than 160 patents related to China, completing more than 50 core R&D modules, and transferring all foreign codes to China, completing more than 100 mass production of artificial intelligence voice Chinese-related products, and establishing China's cloud, which is closer to the Chinese market and closer to Chinese consumer customers. Based on this, Nuance formulated One China's strategy.
Nuance Automotive Founder and General Manager, and Executive Vice President of Nuance, Dr. Stefan Ortmanns, said that the automotive industry is developing very fast. Nuance hopes to have a strategy to operate a company to operate the automobile business. China not only has the world's largest automobile market, but also has very strong innovation capabilities. In order to adapt to the rapid changes in the market, Nuance has the idea of splitting the automobile business and establishing an independent company.
He further explained that Cerence is a new name and word whose design blends multi-layered concepts.The inspiration for the logo is from the left and right half of the human brain, and the font shape is in a state of flowing forward, while the overall shape resembles the Tai Chi structure in Chinese philosophy, taking into account both the philosophical and cultural implications of the East and the West. At the same time, Cerence combines the concepts of intelligence, experience, serenity, and control, showing the company's conceptual blueprint for future travel.
Kuai Wenrui told reporters in an exclusive interview after the forum that Nuance's spin-off was split by the automobile business and Greater China. The main business in Greater China is related to automobiles and the Internet of Things, so there are many overlapping parts of the two.
In 2018, Nuance entered the Nuance China 1.0 stage, and Greater China adopted a different independent operation method from the head office, similar to one country, two systems. After the establishment of Cerence, Greater China and the Automobile Business Department will be integrated into one, and will achieve complete independent operation and enter the Nuance China 2.0 stage. Not only will it make more products in China and launch more services, it will also help Chinese automobile companies, Chinese brands and Chinese Internet of Things brands develop abroad along the "Belt and Road".
Kuai Wenrui said that Cerence's main business model is B2B2C. By serving car companies in the software field, it not only helps automobile companies and Internet of Things companies create good products, but also allows consumers to think about it and use it, but they are inseparable. At the same time, it also integrates the commercial application ecosystem with software as the entrance, turns car owners into consumers, helps car companies to achieve empowerment similar to upgrading from "typewriters" to "computers", face industry partners with an open attitude, and achieve coexistence of commonality and differentiation in cooperation. There are already many cases in
, including Nuance's cooperation with Huawei, , Xiaomi, , SAIC, and Geely. "The GUKI 19 car system that Nuance cooperates with Geely responds quickly, has high accuracy and has the best user experience; the SUV sales of Nuance and SAIC MG in India are the highest in the local area, and the world's first offline translator cooperated with Xiaomi is also very good," said Kuai Wenrui.
Target: The world's first "digital Tier1"
The trend of electrification, intelligence and networking in the automotive industry is becoming more and more obvious. Compared to the hardware era that only talks about technology, what we should pay more attention to now is the functions, business value and user experience brought by technology. The entire car construction is almost from the previous Token ring to the current Ethernet. Automobile companies all need powerful software. Global software suppliers are helping to redefine future cars, and the implementation of intelligent networking has become an important means to form differentiation of automobile brands.
90s have become the main force in car purchases. They are not so sensitive to brands. As a generation who grew up in the Internet environment, they attach more importance to the application experience of the Internet of Vehicles.
voice interaction is an important entrance to intelligent networking. It has become a very mature and popular market in China, attracting many technology companies such as Baidu, iFLYTEK, Yunzhisheng, and Sibichi. Many car companies are also establishing their own software R&D teams. In such an environment, how can Cerence position its role in the market? Liu Feng, senior product director of Greater China at
Nuance, said that Nuance is a voice technology company, and Cerence's goal in the next ten years is to span the scope of artificial intelligence and natural voice understanding, becoming the world's first "digital Tier1", which is the world's most leading automotive software provider.
According to Dr. Stefan Ortmanns, Cerence has advanced edge intelligent voice technology, the integration of AI edge and cloud computing, providing a fast, reliable and user-friendly user experience, and there are also multi-seat voice interaction technology, which can realize natural, multi-person and multi-round interaction scenarios.
Kuai Wenrui told reporters that Cerence will develop from a voice solution provider to a voice ++ solution provider in the future. The solution focuses on providing end-to-end user experience and will focus on developing professional technologies in voice, touch, gesture, emotion and sight. It not only provides voice technology, but also multimodal interaction technology, including handwriting, gaze tracking, AR display and other more and more intelligent solutions to achieve diversified and more humanized communication. The core technology will be shared with Nuance, and the products will be closer to the Chinese market and serve customers around the world of automobiles and the Internet of Things.
Kuai Wenrui for example, like from a cement company to a brick to a building building, what Cerence now needs to do is to build a building from a software perspective. Cerence's global headquarters is in Boston, USA, Europe is in Aachen, Germany, and China is in Shanghai. It has design, R&D, products, interaction, cloud, sales, marketing and other departments. It has a very complete system, the focus is design and R&D. Currently, there are more than 300 employees, most of which are technical R&D personnel, including three R&D bases in Shanghai, Chengdu and Beijing and six engineering service centers.
It is not difficult to see from the introduction of the company's senior management that the newly built Cerence will enter the automotive industry with intelligent voice as the core technology, not only to provide products and services, but also to use voice as the entrance to connect more application scenarios for cars and generate more commercial value. The method of splitting a company such as
and taking out a certain aspect of its business independently is common in the automotive industry, especially in auto parts companies. For example, Delphi dismantled Aptiv and Ottoliv dismantled VEONEER. The new companies dismantled are all to enhance industry competitiveness and product concentration. Cerence split from Nuance is no exception. It focuses more on the research and development of automotive software and more on the Chinese automobile market, providing greater space for the development of new companies.
When talking about how to view competitors in the same field in China, Kuai Wenrui said that the business model of Chinese local voice artificial intelligence companies has been changing, starting to sell software, then becoming an Internet company, and finally an artificial intelligence company or data company. For example, the challenges facing iFlytek are the same as Nuance in the past, including education business, government business, and automobile business. The automobile business department is very small, and it is hard to say which business department will get the most resources. This is why Nuance splits up its new company and focuses on the fields of automotive and Internet of Things related software.
This forum also showed the innovative technology application achievements carefully created by Nuance's Chinese team over the years to more than 100 guests from domestic and foreign automobile and related companies. This includes a real-time demonstration of the Chinese Dragon Drive (CDD) platform customized for the Chinese market and allowing the user experience to be more "humanized"; a pure software full-stack voice AI turnkey solution - ARK, which is independently designed, developed and adapted according to Chinese localization needs; and an innovative car system that Nuance provides voice technology support to its partners Ekatong and Zebra.
