Qwen's Bose-tuned AI earbuds launch at ¥1,099 with app task delegation
On October 13, Alibaba's Qwen put its first AI clip-on earbuds, co-developed with Bose, on sale in China through JD.com at a promotional price starting at ¥1,099 after subsidies. Qwen says the earbuds use Bose tuning and support voice control of its services, real-time and offline local recording, transcription notes in 92 languages and AI translation in 89 languages including face-to-face and call modes, with 9 hours of battery life and 40 hours with the charging case. According to 36Kr, from October 15 the earbuds can be bound to the Qwen App, letting users ask questions by voice and delegate tasks such as research briefs through the app's work assistant, which runs in the background and notifies them when finished. The same launch event in Hangzhou also introduced the screen-less Qwen N1 and N1 Pro AI glasses, priced from ¥2,218 and ¥2,600 respectively.
It shows Qwen pushing its Personal Agent from an app into wearable hardware, betting that always-available audio interaction and background task execution matter more to users than camera- and translation-led AI glasses features.