MTS has declared five models of smart speakers

MTS is testing new models of MTS Center smart speakers made in China. According to Kommersant, the speakers will become a control center for a smart home, to which devices from different vendors can connect. After an unsuccessful experience with the “Marvin” voice assistant, MTS has developed a new one, which it will present under a different brand. It will not be easy for the company to compete in the smart speaker market with Yandex, VK and Sber, experts say. But at the same time, they note, in the Russian Federation the segment is still far from being saturated, and the telecom operator has clear advantages in it.

Kommersant found in the SPARK-Interfax database that MTS declared the import of 2 thousand MTS Center smart speakers of five different models. The manufacturer of the equipment is the Chinese Shenzhen Venz Technology Co., Ltd. The seller’s page on Alibaba.com states that the company develops and accepts for contract manufacturing smart cameras, motion and humidity sensors, routers, etc.

According to Kommersant’s interlocutor, who is familiar with the MTS project, the operator needs the speaker to control a smart home: “The previous version of the speaker did not pass testing, so the company completely rewrote the software and created new devices.” The development of an MTS smart speaker with the Marvin voice assistant became known in December 2019. Then the company expected to launch the device into commercial operation in the first half of 2020. In mid-summer 2020, MTS introduced a product; for testing it was supposed to be distributed to several thousand subscribers for 1 ruble. The devices never arrived at retail.

At the end of March 2023, MTS President Vyacheslav Nikolaev announced that the operator would restart the smart speaker (see Kommersant on March 30). In the summer, the company clarified that they were preparing a completely new project that would unite several teams working on MTS Devices, a smart home and a virtual assistant (see Kommersant on July 10). The new voice assistant will be released under a different brand, a Kommersant source familiar with the project clarified. In his opinion, in the near future the operator will not announce the columns: “Batch imported for testing.” MTS declined to comment.

Now MTS sells both comprehensive solutions for smart homes and individual sensors, cameras, etc. from Chinese manufacturers Xiaomi and Aqara. According to Kommersant’s interlocutor in the IT market, MTS plans to integrate support for IoT devices (Internet of Things) from different vendors into its smart home system.

According to M.Video-Eldorado, in eight months 2.1 million speakers with voice assistants were sold in Russia, which is 80% more year-on-year. In monetary terms, the market volume exceeded 16 billion rubles. (75% increase). According to the retailer, the average check amounted to 7.7 thousand rubles, a decrease of 5%. “The greatest growth is demonstrated by basic compact models up to 5 thousand rubles. and flagship speakers are the most powerful and functional,” notes M.Video-Eldorado. They clarified that 99% of sales come from devices with their own ecosystem and smart home devices from Yandex, VK and Sber.

Kommersant’s interlocutor among the developers of smart devices believes that even if MTS is able to create a working audio system with a voice assistant, due to competition with Yandex, VK and Sber, the operator is unlikely to take a significant market share. Yandex and VK declined to comment. Sberbank did not answer Kommersant.

At the same time, according to Finam analyst Leonid Delitsyn, only 17% of Russians have smart devices, so the market is far from saturated: “The penetration of speakers for smart home control is significantly lower, we can consider that the segment is at the very beginning stage of development ” In his opinion, telecom operators have a significant competitive advantage, since their services are necessary for monitoring, telemetry and remote control of cameras: “It is likely that all major operators will enter the segment and in the end it will be distributed among them.”

Timofey Kornev