Is the smart home industry really a no return?

HC Smart Home Network News In 2014, after Google acquired the thermostat company Nest, smart homes ushered in, including Haier, Midea, Changhong and other home appliance companies, ZTE, Huawei and other communications equipment companies, as well as Jingdong, Alibaba and other Internet companies. In a different way, the smart home market has been cut, and the startup company that promotes the concept of smart home has also ushered in a wave of concentrated eruptions.

In September, a brand held a smart home strategy conference in Beijing, screaming for the IOC product strategy that includes the three elements of “single product, integration, and openness”. This brings the attention of the bell back to the field of "it seems to be lively, but it is not warm."

In 2014, after Google acquired the thermostat company Nest, smart homes ushered in, including Haier, Midea, Changhong and other home appliance companies, ZTE, Huawei and other communications equipment companies, as well as Jingdong, Alibaba and other Internet companies have cut into different ways In the smart home market, the startups that promote the concept of smart homes are also welcoming a wave of concentrated eruptions. Aowei Consulting also predicts that the overall output value of China's smart homes will exceed one trillion yuan in 2020, and it seems to be booming.

However, in the process of concept to landing, the response of smart home in the terminal consumer market is not very optimistic. So far, most of the market pioneers have become martyrs, and there are only a handful of products that consumers really recognize. Compared with the fiery two years ago, the focus of smart home companies has cooled a lot. It is said that many companies are financing difficulties and are seen by capital.

What is the reason for the whole industry to enter a dead end? Where will the future go? When will the industry’s long-awaited “window” appear?

Smart home ecology is useless, single product is the key

Up to now, even though the giants in the smart home industry are still in the cloud, they still don't see the leader, and most of them are playing the ecological card and establishing the control center. For example, the iOS10 has added the Homekit platform, and the iPhone has become the control center. Unfortunately, even if it carries all the ambitions of the Apple layout smart home ecology, there are few users.

Xiaomi is also a lot of products of Mijia, such as cameras, light bulbs, routers, boxes, etc., and their connection centers are all mobile phones. Samsung regards the refrigerator as the center of smart homes in life. ZTE believes that smart cameras, routers, and smart door locks have the potential to become entry-level smart hardware products. In addition, they also have smart home clients that can be managed and coordinated. All products inside the system: socket, camera, electric light, TV, etc., the client becomes another control center (such as Apple's "family").

However, practice has proved that connectors, entrances, control centers, and ecology are all built on top of a single product. There are no extreme items, and others are empty talk. There are five reasons:

1, heavy ecological light single product is the end of the original. The significance of the smart home platform is to connect more products. The amount of products on the platform depends on the user's choice. Therefore, in the construction of the platform, users are the core factor. And the product is the most important chip for manufacturers to win users. As the saying goes, "When the high-rise building is flat," if the platform is regarded as a high-rise building, then the single product is the flat land.

2, simply use the individual hardware as the entrance to the smart home, contrary to the user experience, such as when the user is cooking in the kitchen or leisure, it is impossible to hold the mobile phone in any place. TV is also the center of entertainment smart homes. After all, TV is only in standby when people need it. Only those items that have high frequency, can be connected at any time, and are extremely easy to operate can take on the responsibility of the entrance, but "possible" does not mean "will be."

3. Most people misread the relationship between ecology and product experience. The reason why domestic Internet companies pay too much attention to ecology is because they are not good at making products, but only concerned with user data. They just collect data in the guise of ecology. Once all the data exchanges are put in the cloud, The result is a decline in user experience, such as delays, failure to disconnect the network, and so on.

4. The biggest problem at present is still the scarcity of good products. Although there are endless products on the market, there are few good products. The product can't keep users, after the fresh period, the user can easily discard the so-called smart home products, and if the platform does not have products and users with poor user experience, it is just a mirage.

5, the future trend does not care about the control center, the development of the Internet of Things technology is followed by M2M (Machine-to-Machine), which means that devices exchange information with each other, which means that as long as the product and sensors are enough users, Through the operation and setting of the mobile APP, if artificial intelligence and machine learning (MachineLearning) are added, the future of the Internet of Things will be de-mobileized and decentralized, forming a high-level intelligence in the true sense of the Internet of Everything. So those who lack core products, rely on data, and only emphasize the powerful function of APP is contrary to IOT.

Therefore, focusing on a single product does not stop the single product is the need to do now, if ZTE's smart camera does not have a million-level sales, then ZTE's smart home dream is really just a dream. If the household products in Xiaomi's ecology can't be sold, the Xiaomi mobile phone will be a smart shelf and can't be a connector or a remote control.

Explosives create points, integration can form a face

Companies that value the importance of a single product are beginning to try out the levy strategy. For example, Xiaomi carefully designs a single product (or small package) and uses a low threshold to attract a large number of users, thus generating massive data and attracting users to generate secondary transmission or consumption. .

But in fact, the single product is a point-to-point competition model that followed the original industrial era. In the future, it will become more and more difficult to simply create a model with no connection and irrelevant explosions, and it will need to be integrated in the future. because:

1. The future is the chain-to-chain, ecological-ecological competition. Although a single product can be “exploded”, it will inevitably result in a single product and less relevance to other products, which makes it difficult for users to bring A system-level smart home experience. And if you expand the product line, because different products are mostly made by different teams (or even different companies), it will lead to shortcomings in the interconnection of system layers.

2. It is difficult for a single product to balance the distribution of benefits. The smart home eco-chain involves many stakeholders, including upstream chip and software vendors, mid-stream and downstream networked device manufacturers, platform providers, retailers, and service providers (such as cable TV, communication or security companies, etc. and big data cloud providers, the needs of each relevant supplier are different. If you bet a single product, it is difficult to coordinate the interests of the overall system, but only fully integrate and redistribute benefits. The party may be balanced.

3. The future profit model is no longer dependent on single items. The future of things connected, the "hardware + service" model will become the dominant, which means that the sale of smart hardware is only the starting point, follow-up service is the protagonist, which includes embedding APP applications, building home portals, collecting big data, and looking for data And traffic is realized and so on. In this mode, hardware is not the realization point of profit, but the basic link and carrier of the value chain, and the latter is the competition of integration ability.

Besides, no company can guarantee that all of its items will become explosive. Therefore, even Xiaomi is also attracting partners through investment and shareholding. These eco-chain enterprises are “small” millet that is cultivated in strict accordance with the millet model investment. At present, there are more than 50 “small” mills involving various usage scenarios. Household appliances have air conditioners, air purifiers, water purifiers, and security products have smart cameras and many Functional gateways, door and window sensors, health products include sphygmomanometers, weight scales, and millet bracelets. The market performance is very dazzling.

Integration is to get rid of the excessive dependence on explosive products, quickly achieve coverage from point to point, form influence and competitiveness in the industry, but integration still needs to pay attention to some issues, such as who helps install? How to land after the sale? In addition, the biggest problem in the smart home industry is that the product scene is not enough. The integration needs to support the complete IOT application, such as: from home to the community, from the community to the Internet of the car and the use of the scene, which is precisely the practice of integration.

The lack of interoperability standards is a table, and a bad experience is the source of all evils.

When it comes to integration, some people will say that the reason for the difficulty of integration is that the industry lacks interactive standards. Indeed, every manufacturer in the smart home industry has its own ideas. The products cannot be interconnected, but Bell is more willing to use the words "Tour experience is the source of all evils" to explain the "bad experience" of ZTE's smart home product operation director Tian Bo. The real reason. because:

1. People don't have a cold on smart homes. They are naturally uncomfortable with their own. They don't care if there are any standards. At present, the intelligent hype phenomenon of smart home products is frequent; the form is larger than the content, which does not match the user's demand, and the high cost leads to the price being high and the market acceptance is low. The joint survey data of Aowei Cloud Network (AVC) and Tencent Appliances shows that users are currently interested in smart homes up to 95.2%, but 87.5% of users are dissatisfied with the status quo of smart homes, indicating that they are completely inconsistent with or lower than expected. expected.

2. The intelligence of smart homes should not only stay on the networked collaboration (that is, interoperability) of home devices, but should enhance people's life experience in all aspects. Smart home people need practicality, not remote control, nor a cool control interface. It is efficient, convenient and energy-saving. The ideal smart home is to book a flight for us to change the flight, or automatically adjust the air conditioner to the right temperature according to our body temperature. In the future, smart homes need to automatically sense the environment and people, self-learning and self-adjustment.

3, the lack of interactive standards is actually because the layout is not perfect and done in a closed way, hurting the user experience. For example, Xiaomi chose to use closure to ensure the user experience, but in the case of imperfect layout, the result would be counterproductive; after Samsung acquired SmartThings, it required to purchase its SmartThinsg hub to enjoy its technology. But this closed smart home system, once not ready, became a "kidnapped" user.

Therefore, Ali is the cloud Internet of Things open platform, Baidu cloud also launched a dulife for wearable devices, in addition to Apple's HomeKit, Amazon's echo, Haier's U+, Midea's M-Smart, Huawei's HiLink, etc. are also open Flags, but they are mostly internal coordination of the system. Certain technical strength, industry appeal and cooperation mode that can succeed in the future, that is, openness are good.

Smart homes still have a golden triangle: hardware, cloud services and smart terminals. The hardware is Machine, the app on the smart terminal is the human-machine interface, the control hub, and the cloud is the center of connection, data and service. Only open can completely release these capabilities, improve and enhance the user experience. Interoperability standards will come to fruition.

Looking at the marketing concept in the short term, and long-term research and development of patent technology

Another important reason why smart homes are cooled is that they are exaggerated. Many so-called “frontier technologies” are just a propaganda concept. When the industry is full of speculative behaviors that lack hard power and rely solely on marketing to make money, the demand is weak. Naturally, "one mouse smashed a pot of soup" became the best description.

The foundation of smart home is the use of technology, such as Internet of Things technology, information technology, digital technology, voice technology, and sensing technology. In the long run, the whole industry will be like the mobile phone industry. There must be a process of shuffling. Enterprises without technical genes and technology are hard, and companies relying on marketing hype will be the first to go out. In addition to the above-mentioned speculative enterprises, some enterprises are transforming into the field of smart homes, such as furniture companies, sanitary ware enterprises, door and window enterprises, including Internet companies. These are not technology-based companies. The products themselves are not used much by innovative technologies. Innate and genetic defects are exposed, and the intelligence of their products can be imagined. In 2015, Xiaomi was deeply troubled by patents. Since the patents had not been approved, they were publicized by the public relations department, and then they were severely punished by the industrial and commercial departments, and they became a laughing stock at one time.

Bell friends Li Junhui previously counted the 2015 corporate invention patent application acceptance list. Among the enterprises involved in smart home, ZTE, Huawei, Xiaomi, Qihoo, BOE, Gree and Lenovo have all entered the top 10. The accumulation of technology, patents, resources (funds) and talents by Samsung and Apple overseas is an irreplaceable advantage for other companies. This is undoubtedly proving an established fact: smart home, the only patent development technology is the core competitiveness. Moreover, patent R&D technology is not a temporary effort, and the building was not built in one day.

So those companies that are trying to use the thousands of dollars to submit a new utility patent to take advantage of the space are still taking a break. Even if you have long-sleeved dances in marketing and packaging, there is no technical patent support. With sporadic smart home products, the smart home you create will always be a castle in the air.

It’s not the time, but the security is not doing well.

Finally, talk about the issue of security. Many people in the industry attribute consumers not to buy the account, but they have not reflected on whether their products are really good enough, especially the lowest level of security considerations. This is the consumer purchase. The first premise.

Not long ago, New York Times columnist Nick Bilton said that a malfunctioning Nest smart thermostat caused the temperature in his home to become very low. Earlier news reports that a freshman student wrote a mobile phone virus, which led to hundreds of thousands of Android phone users. Currently, almost all smart devices use Android-based Android systems. This system has many vulnerabilities and poor security. Smart home enterprises basically have no security defense technology, which means that smart home systems are more vulnerable to hackers, which can lead to smart door locks and indoor monitoring failures. Thieves can enter your home and take things as if they were in and out of their homes. A large number of potential dangers, such as stealing content from indoor surveillance cameras, leading to user privacy leaks.

The Samsung NOTE7 explosion, which has recently fallen into the whirlpool of public opinion, is a great tool for us to make smart hardware products. No matter how good the technology is, the safety is always the core and lowest level. Unfortunately, most of today's manufacturers focus on the shape or technology of smart homes, and put security behind.

Of course, from another perspective, it is also an opportunity for entrepreneurs. The good news is that some smart home developers have realized that security is important at all levels of the Internet of Things, but there are still a handful of components and processes that provide adequate security in today's industry. Because this tests them not only the ability to collect, organize, analyze, judge, predict, respond, and adjust big data.

In short, in the past few years, on the one hand, we have seen the development momentum of smart homes and the development prospects worthy of expectation. But on the other hand, they have to face the bleak market situation of smart home products. When the industry bubble period has passed, all enterprises should sink their hearts and make their products well, and then they will have more capital and more platforms to connect, so that products can truly realize the “Internet of Everything”, so user accumulation is a natural thing, so-called Integration, ecology, and icing on the cake, it is logical.

Editor in charge: Tian Wenjie