Original link: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1217
The vigorously intelligent learning light may become byte’s first and last educational hardware.
“LatePost” exclusively learned that Yang Kang, head of Byte Education’s hardware business, will be transferred to the business strategy office; the hardware team will only retain quality inspection, sales and other teams. Two hardware sources said that there are still hundreds of thousands of lamps in stock for sale, and there are no plans to launch new hardware.
Yang Kang took over the educational hardware in September 2021. Before that, he was in charge of Qingbei Online School, a double-teacher major class under Byte.
It is also understood that Yang Luyu, the first head of the byte education hardware business, also resigned last week. He is one of the founders of Musical.ly. After joining Byte in 2017, he launched Dali Smart Learning Lamp. However, after the “double reduction” policy in 2021, Yang Luyu was transferred to the strategic department.
Hardware has always been the key business of Byte Education. After Yang Luyu joined ByteDance in 2017, the founder Zhang Yiming once expressed to him that he hoped that the company’s future business could be “from soft to hard, from online to offline”. At that time, Byte researched mobile phone, automobile and other businesses, but finally chose to do educational hardware, the main reason is: the market is large enough, there are not many powerful players, and there are successful precedents such as BBK.
Table lamps are Yang Luyu’s preferred category. He believes that this is a product that is always available on students’ desks. The penetration rate is high, and market education is not difficult. He also proposed a vision: to connect the desks of thousands of students with smart desk lamps to form the largest classroom in human history. In the early days of the project, this vision inspired many people.
A former hardware employee said that making desk lamps at that time was like doing a Web 3 business now. “It’s a cool and popular business that no one has ever done before.” Influx into the online education industry.
In addition to hardware, Yang Luyu also plans to develop software and educational services at the same time, which he calls “Triathlon.” In 2019, Byte launched question search software in many places in India and the United States; the desk lamp was also defined by the team as a “hardware version of homework help” in the early stage of design – when students point to the questions and words in the book, the solution can be displayed on the screen. Question ideas, text notes, etc.
Before the launch of Dali Table Lamp in October 2020, the team proposed “traffic, not volume”, that is, before the brand recognition of the new product has been established, a large number of effective advertisements will be placed on the e-commerce platform. But this approach did not work. Before Double Eleven in 2020, Bytes only sold hundreds of desk lamps each month.
The following year, the team shifted the sales of table lamps to Douyin e-commerce, and set a target of 2 million units. In order to support the hardware business, table lamps can get a 25% discount on internal settlement when they place brand advertisements on Douyin e-commerce, and a 20% discount on performance advertisements. In the end, Dali Smart Work Lights successfully sold 1 million units, and online channels accounted for 80%.
Zhang Yiming, founder of ByteDance, and Chen Lin, senior vice president and head of education business of ByteDance, have repeatedly commented on the internal evaluation of “Dali Smart Work Light” as a “remarkable breakthrough” in the education business. But even so, Dali table lamp still “sells one and loses one.” A byte employee said.
Yang Luyu once thought about making money through follow-up services such as courses and tutoring after the hardware has been sold to a certain scale. This was the mindset of the entire industry at the time. However, this monetization path is not clear-the screen of the desk lamp is too small to be suitable for live teaching; the course content of Bytes has little advantage over competitors such as Gaotu and TAL.
It is understood that after the “double reduction”, Byte Education’s competitors have also adjusted their hardware sales ideas. NetEase Youdao released a smart learning lamp in April this year. A senior executive of Netease Youdao revealed that they removed all functions that did not meet the “double reduction” before the sale, such as taking pictures and searching for questions, and the price of Youdao smart learning lights was also the most expensive one of the Dali smart learning lights. The product is flat to guarantee a profit from selling the hardware.
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