It is no exaggeration to say that Huaqiangbei has been surrounded by AI.

In the past, "Apple-like" was the biggest selling point of Huaqiangbei, but now, it is slowly being swept away by AI.

We spent a few days visiting the most famous Huaqiang Electronic World, SEG Economic Building, SEG Communication Building, Longsheng Accessories City, Feiyang Building, Huaqiang New Electronic World.... .In addition to batches of electronic components, iPhones, and smart watches, there are also AI translators, AI guitars, AI phone cases, AI rings, VR glasses, humanoid robots...AI has become the most trendy the subject of.

The world’s electronics manufacturing depends on China, and China’s electronics manufacturing depends on Huaqiangbei. If entrepreneurs want to make a piece of hardware, their first stop is Huaqiangbei. On the one hand, they are studying Huaqiangbei's supply chain and how to use its mature upstream and downstream chains to assemble products at the lowest cost; on the other hand, they must be wary of Huaqiangbei and rack their brains to think about the barriers of brand, product and technology to avoid being imitated and surpassed. , You can’t even make a product with great fanfare too early.

On the surface, Huaqiangbei is the sales front and electronics market of the Pearl River Delta electronics supply chain; behind the scenes, entrepreneurs are coming and going, trying to turn this place into an explosion of AI innovative hardware.

In a broad sense Huaqiangbei contains dozens of buildings, covering an area of ​​about 1.45 square kilometers, which is nearly the size of 200 football fields. There are thousands of counters in one building alone.

Here, in addition to AI phones with AI elimination functions, the most popular AI product is the AI ​​translator.

As soon as you enter the SEG Communication Building, you can see the long counter on the first floor with an "AI Translator" sign on almost every store.

The cabinet brothers and cabinet sisters cannot answer the question of what kind of AI is behind these translators. Even in the translation function, you can hardly see any traces of AI.

The so-called AI is probably equipped with AI dialogue assistants that are not related to the translation function. The scenarios are AI storytelling, AI homework writing, AI role-playing, etc., which makes it feel like scraps.

Of course, there are also professionals who mentioned "AI large models".

This product is different from the traditional translator. It is a small magnetic metal disc that is attached to the mobile phone for voice recording. It has a sense of technology. After connecting to the mobile phone's Bluetooth, it can translate the text in the mobile phone. All text and voice, including WeChat real-time conversations.

A large part of Huaqiangbei’s business is export, and there are many foreign trade customers of all colors. They often need to find a local translator to show them around Huaqiangbei. The translators may not necessarily speak good English, but they must know enough about the densely packed stalls and products here. These translators becomeThe best products to attract these foreign trade people.

In the short ten minutes we stayed at the translation machine counter, three waves of foreigners came to ask for prices.

If translators seem too old-fashioned, there are plenty of novelties. We also saw AI guitars, AI rings, AI phone cases...

The main purpose of this AI guitar is to allow novices to play a complete song. By connecting to the APP, you only need to play one note, and the rest of the guitar will pop up automatically. As the difficulty level increases, the more you play and the less guitar you play, the APP will display the correct and incorrect playing.

This AI mobile phone case is actually an ink screen + NFC transmission. The AI ​​content lies in the AIGC wallpaper in the APP. Some APPs have large models built into them, which can be used to create pictures in the APP. Now The price is relatively expensive, ranging from 120 yuan to 180 yuan, which is ten times the price of ordinary mobile phone cases.

We have visited SEG Communication’s four-story mobile phone case stores, and currently only one has it on the shelves on a large scale. But the owner of another store "promised" us that every store would have it in one month.

"Huaqiangbei is like this. As long as one shop appears, this area can be paved in 30 days, and the price may drop to 30 yuan."

In addition to these products, today's most popular Robotic products are also already appearing in stores.

This small desktop robot is connected to large domestic and foreign voice models. It has eight joints. Voice can wake up conversations and can perform simple actions such as forward, backward, singing, question and answer, etc. It is mainly sold. Dong Wutian, the founder of HIXBOT who occasionally comes to guard the counter in places such as C-end schools, businesses or home education, said that the company only has ten people and mainly cooperates with customers in a project-based manner, which can be customized.

A popular AI drawing machine, connected to ChatGPT 4o, can allow the robot to generate and draw pictures independently through a sentence or a few keywords. It can also autonomously generate and draw pictures by taking photos. The trained face model generates a line drawing that the robot can recognize, and then draws it on a card or business card through the terminal. The current market price is 20,000 units, and the annual output is about 2,000 units. Already used in European and American markets.

Although the world is dominated by hardware, the large advertising space in the building has been quietly replaced by AI software. Interestingly, the advertisement for the AI ​​software for mobile phone cases shown in the picture below happens to be facing the building where mobile phone cases are sold. .

I can’t imagine how terrifying it would be to add AI buffs to the dazzling Huaqiangbei mobile phone case “Huahua World”.

There are still "castrated" versions of those popular products that are popular in the technology circle.

For example, these Bluetooth glasses and camera glasses, almost on every floor of every building, looks very similar to the popular AI glasses and AR glasses. The price is 250 yuan, and the asking price is 150 yuan. You can estimate the actual cost by yourself.

A merchant told Silicon Star that related products were put on the shelves as early as last year. At that time, "a large part of the sales of these less than 20 US dollars products came from overseas." After all, once the exchange rate is converted, the product The price/performance ratio is very high.

It’s hard to say whether the explosion of AI glasses driven by Meta was inspired by these Bluetooth glasses.

Nowadays, these Huaqiangbei merchants are also paying great attention to the latest hardware innovations. After Meta's smart glasses became popular, an glasses merchant quickly snapped up the product and was planning to study it carefully.

“Meta can’t do it, the technology is very good, but we will release AI glasses soon. About 300.”

Buy the latest and hottest products, experience them and even disassemble them, and then Finding ways to reproduce is a common practice in Huaqiangbei. There is a widely circulated judgment that "once the shipment volume of a certain product reaches 10,000, the supply chain behind Huaqiangbei will enter the market."

But for those products that have not yet been accepted by the market In terms of innovative hardware, counter bosses will think carefully. A trade counter owner showed us the smart ring he was trying out, "There are many smart rings now. The one I chose has simple functions and is relatively cheap. It costs about 100 yuan. I will test the effect for a week before deciding whether to purchase it or not." He said, “The main consideration is the risk of hoarding , after all, there are three colors, and there are stocking requirements for individual colors.”

Overall, walking through the electronics market in Huaqiangbei, you may be disappointed: there are no hot-selling AI hardware here as you imagined. There is no replacement for AR glasses and AI glasses from popular manufacturers. Dozens of buildings are still dominated by traditional electronic components, mobile phone accessories and smart watches.

But this is precisely the essence of Huaqiangbei: it is not a finished product market, but a "component bank" waiting to be reorganized. From the most basic chips, circuit boards, and cameras to various sensors, displays, and casings, all the materials needed for the future explosion of AI hardware are stored here.

The value of Huaqiangbei lies not in manufacturing complete AI products, but in providing a huge pool of hardware alternatives.

Based on a complete hardware chain, Huaqiangbei’s assembly capabilities are amazing, but the motivation for this kind of assembly and imitation is limited to products with absolute market attention and high demand, such as Vision pro, which has just been launched. After posting the picture, Huaqiangbei made a rough replacement.

But today’s wave of AI hardware wars is still full of uncertainties, especially since this outbreak is dominated by software algorithm capabilities, which is not Huaqiangbei’s strength.

However, Huaqiangbei is leaving room for AI.

A businessman said to Silicon Star, “As long as you have a suitable AI solution, IAll products in our store can be accessed. ”

Looking at it from another perspective, Huaqiangbei may be a paradise for AI software developers. The seemingly ordinary cameras, speakers, and bracelets on the counter are all waiting for the right software to inject their souls.

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In some corners, you can see modified camera puppies and earphone cases with displays embedded in them. These seemingly crude experiments are exploring the potential of hardware. Possibility. When AI developers encounter these semi-finished products, new product forms may be born at any time.

Even some dealers are already looking for cooperation with AI development teams, looking forward to activating these hardware with algorithms.

“I live next door to an old American who came to Shenzhen specifically to study AI hardware. Whatever he thought of, he immediately placed an order for 3D printing and could get it the next day. "The owner of a store said, "I was approached for cooperation a few days ago, but the details must be kept confidential. ”

After three days of immersive shopping in Huaqiangbei, I feel that unlike the AI ​​world that is keen to discuss high-end model changes, Huaqiangbei is surrounding itself with another kind of AI - here Everyone is dismantling today's AI in the most down-to-earth way, so it seems rustic and represents future possibilities at the same time.

Everyone who really pays attention to the implementation of AI hardware today. Everyone, it seems, has to go to Huaqiangbei.