Zuoyebang, a leading edtech company in China, unveiled its first hardware product, a smart light lamp with a display. The smart lamp features a display, camera and built-in digital assistant. It is aimed at school-going children who can use the device to finish their homework and the camera will enable parents to tutor their kids remotely via a mobile app.

Meanwhile, Tencent Education has partnered with HP to launch 'HP Smart Education Laptop'. Tencent took the launched smart education hardware as a hub and more education products will be developed by cooperating with hardware vendors and channel providers.

From smart lamps to education laptops and other educational intelligence devices, edtech companies are expanding their business into hardware offerings. Moreover, they are trying to acquire customers through offline channels. 

An affiliated company of China's Internet giant Netease, Youdao, for example, has opened offline experience stores in second-, third-, and fourth-tier cities, where users can experience its products and services. In addition, Youdao has established Youdao Parent Club to provide students with career planning and other types of seminars.

With the business expanding into hardware offerings and interactive offline stores, the ecosystem of education technology is getting more mature. By leveraging the main traffic from its existing products, edtech companies provide online teaching and learning services and finally lead users to offline stores to purchase smart devices to facilitate digital learning, which completes the online-offline user journey.

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