Smart Home Industry 2015 Annual Forecast Report

来源:Dongguan Yanghan Industrial Co., Ltd.  时间:2020-09-09

In China, the market has never lacked followers and conceptual speculators. With the continuous upgrading of technologies such as the Internet of Things, cloud computing, big data, mobile Internet, and artificial intelligence, products related to "smart" and "smart" have become increasingly fashionable. With the help of the explosion of smart hardware in 2014, smart homes are no longer just mechanical intelligence in traditional cognition. Its concept has also extended to areas such as chopsticks, toilets, and sockets that do not seem to be closely related to intelligence.

In 2014, which is about to end, looking back, a large number of entrepreneurs, traditional companies, and Internet companies have poured in to explore this year. Smart homes are like a new besieged city. People outside the besieged city seem to be hot and yearning for influx, while those inside the besieged city seem to be entangled because the market has failed to support expectations.

Why smart heat is not hot

Intelligence has clearly become one of the hot words in the field of technology in 2014. Whether it is true intelligence or pseudo-intelligence, it seems that products that are not connected with intelligence are not called products. A large number of "smart products" are swarming in the market. According to my observations, the following three symptoms have appeared: First, traditional manufacturing companies hope to evolve toward intelligence; second, Internet companies hope to extend to the physical industry with the help of intelligence; It is the entrepreneurs who are blatantly devoting themselves to entrepreneurship in the smart industry. Of course, one aspect of this is related to the trend of mobile Internet, and the other aspect is related to the favor of capital.

Whether it's taking advantage of the situation, or being really smart, or it's arrogant. In short, after 2 years of hotness, whether it is a problem or a trend, it has gradually become clear and contoured. From the current relationship between the popularity of smart hardware and the indifference of market sales, perhaps we need a calm thinking about where the problems of smart hardware are and why the market is not hot.

No matter how advanced our products or concepts are, or how perfect the descriptions are. In fact, when the user’s experience, or the hard needs of life, cannot be effectively met, the positioning of the product has already been misplaced at this time, and it has become a product that is not really designed to meet the needs of end users.

Pulse of intelligent hardware disease

Through my observations, I found that smart hardware is by no means as beautiful and simple as everyone imagined. For Internet companies, traditional manufacturing, and young entrepreneurial teams, no matter how brilliant achievements you have been in any field, entering the field of smart hardware may not reap the desired beauty. Some of these companies do not have the strength of smart technology, or do not have this gene, but in order to chase "hot spots" or to make a wedding dress for marketing, in order to fill the so-called smart concept, they are not users. The innovation needed. The industry "pseudo-intelligence" was born from this.

After experiencing the "virtual fire" in 2014, now in my opinion, the smart home market is facing a "pseudo-intelligence" dilemma. The apparent prosperity is out of touch with the actual needs of users, leading to a situation of enthusiasm in the circle and indifference outside the circle. Looking back over the years of smart home, in my opinion, its "sickness" is mainly reflected in the following four aspects.

1. Intelligent or unwise: Concept hype is greater than reality

At present, many home furnishing products with the "smart brand" on the market still have great technical and functional differences from the actual meaning of intelligent control. It can be said that they still lack the shortcomings of "IQ". According to relevant media reports, some so-called smart washing machines only claim to be intelligent through simple "computer control" supplemented by the concept of intelligence. They are in fact a replica of fully automatic washing machines; some refrigerators are said to be intelligent through mature automatic temperature adjustment technology. In fact, it is a refrigerator with automatic frequency conversion function... There are many similar stories of first-line terminals.

And more so-called smart single products deviate from the actual needs of users, add a few immature sensors, and then load an APP with an incomplete interface design, and start to dream of counterattacks under the banner of subversion.

I can't say that this is misleading, but at least we can see that these smart home products seem to represent the feelings of entrepreneurs, but they cannot interpret the feelings of users. These are definitely not true smart homes, and even many products are not even truly smart home appliances. Lack of industrial chain support, with the help of "smart" hype under conceptual whitewashing, cannot meet people's real use needs, and ultimately will only endanger the healthy evolution of the industry and fail to achieve long-term development.

2. Intelligence and low intelligence: complicate simple things

Another problem that is close to the above problem is "intelligence and low intelligence." According to the requirements of a true smart home, smart home appliances should be the "interconnection, intercommunication, and interaction" of smart devices, and they can communicate and communicate in their own language. And with the help of big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and other technologies, language communication between people and smart devices can be realized. From this perspective, the intelligentization of home appliances seems to have not yet started.

At present, even the basic operation settings of many home appliances are not humane enough, and it is even more difficult to provide intelligent design. For example, for some smart TVs, due to the complicated operation methods, old people want to watch TV but cannot even tune out TV programs... Smart home is a platform, which itself is an intelligent control system. On this platform, all home appliances, including doors and windows, water and electricity facilities, can be controlled remotely to achieve an intelligent application experience. At the same time, various intelligent controls can be carried out according to user-defined settings. This is the real thing. Smart home.

If you have a deeper understanding, the future of smart homes is based on wearable devices, which automatically adjust the environment according to people's physical and psychological states, so that hardware can serve people. What we need to clarify is that "smart" is to make life more convenient, simple, and comfortable, rather than concepts or complexity for users. If the result of intelligence is to increase the difficulty of operation and complicate simple things, are such smart products "smart" or "mentally retarded"?

In the future, the "IQ" of home appliances needs to use cloud computing to continuously learn and continuously improve through artificial intelligence. Finally, they will be able to think and judge like humans, so as to better serve human life. This is wisdom The basic standard of the family. However, this dream channel has not been opened up among many manufacturers at present, or the concept construction is only in its infancy.

The current predicament is that, as a component of smart homes, some manufacturing companies in the smart home appliance industry have also tried to provide the market with a template for smart homes so that smart home appliances can quickly become truly intelligent, but these manufacturing companies Restricted by its own product line and thinking mode, it is often unable to take on the important task of smart home. Therefore, the quickest way to break through is to allow smart homes to be realized through system platform companies, just like Apple and Microsoft, to promote industry upgrades through the revolution of building system platforms and standardize all smart hardware.

3. Interconnection: The starting point of enterprise products is competition rather than consumer demand

The starting point for many smart home appliance companies to launch products is based on the competition level, not the consumer level. Different products of different brands and manufacturers all follow their own standards, so the overall intelligence cannot be achieved in design, which is a trouble for users. From the perspective of the consumption needs of smart homes, no matter what brand or product, home appliances must realize "interconnection, mutual control, intercommunication, and interaction", so as to form a true smart home. However, the current situation is that each brand's smart solution based on its own capabilities is actually "painting the ground as a prison", focusing only on what it can do, and cannot meet the overall needs and real needs of consumers.

Consumers need to use different brands of home appliances in their daily lives, if they cannot be interconnected. In the end, each family will be divided into multiple "islands" by different brands, which will lose the effect of intelligence. The result is that the smart home intelligence stays in the dream stage, and the enterprise can only wander in the pseudo-intelligence strategy.

The smart home appliance industry needs a coordination platform that can realize the compatibility of equipment of various brands, build a bridge for the interconnection and mutual control of products of various brands, and ensure that products of different brands can "talk" without barriers, while satisfying the diverse needs of consumers And personalized needs. Only in this way can users connect software applications to home appliances with different functions and brands according to their needs, creating a truly new experience for smart homes. This is why the platform systems launched by international giants such as Apple and Google have attracted global attention.

4. Intelligent and ruthless: insufficient product humanized design

In fact, as a part of a smart home, smart home appliances not only carry functions, but also embody the humanized and intelligent experience brought by intelligence. Just like a person, he requires care, emotion, and thought, otherwise life is lonely and pale. For smart home appliances, both traditional home appliance companies and the early creators who have emerged in recent years have thrown out wonderful smart stories, but in reality, no company can achieve the humanization of home appliances. So, how should a smart home be practical?

A similar shadow can be seen from the popular trend of mobile Internet. Take WeChat as an example. It is no longer a simple tool, but a sharing platform, which has become a place for sharing thoughts, fun, and emotions among good friends. The upgrade direction of smart home appliances should be to be able to read and recognize the user’s living habits and characteristics after achieving interconnection and interaction, and become the user’s life secretary.

As far as current smart home products are concerned, there is great room for improvement in terms of appearance, technology, performance, or APP interface interactive operation. Leaving aside the hardware aspects of smart homes that are restricted by the immaturity of the industry chain, there is still a lack of humanized thinking in terms of APP design and the design of the interactive interface based on the hardware itself.

Trends in the smart home industry in 2015

In this regard, I believe that the upgrading of smart homes will eventually stimulate consumers' home needs beyond traditional life concepts. 2015 will be a critical time point. It is also a key point for the entire smart home industry to go left or right. Critical year. In the face of the coming 2015, if the smart home industry wants to change the current lost path, get out of the predicament, and move towards a real boom, it needs to pay attention to the following five aspects:

First, technological breakthroughs and product innovation are the foundation

Smart home, as a technology-oriented high-tech product that provides practical help for life, should focus on technology research and development rather than publicity and speculation. Technological breakthroughs and product innovation are the basic driving force for industrial development. I have always said that all smart home products that do not pursue the actual use value of the product are hooligans.

From my recent research, it still needs some time to explore. The main performance is: on the one hand, traditional industries, Internet industries, and new entrepreneurs have not reached a consensus on the understanding of smart home; The second is that the hardware industry chain that supports the intelligentization of homes is immature; the third is that the so-called system is not systematic, and the so-called single smart hardware is not smart; the fourth is that the industrial boundaries are relatively fuzzy, leading to a situation of no cross-border standards and no systems. .

From the current technical perspective, wired products cannot be upgraded and expanded, and wireless radio frequency products are insecure and unstable, which will bring relatively large limitations to the industrial boundaries of the entire smart home industry. In the long run, this will bring consumers The cognition has a negative impact.

In addition, since the current user experience effect brought about by the limitations of the technology is not good, whether it is based on wired or wireless technology, most of the so-called smart home products are not around the home, but around the control of security and lighting. Or home-based products, most of which simply add voice, remote and other simple controls, without forming true intelligence.

As far as these systems have been initially formed on the market, one aspect cannot meet the needs of home life; the other aspect is more expensive; the third aspect is that the hardware failure rate of the composed system is relatively high; and the technology is relatively high. Professionalism, and instability of use. This has led to the situation we are seeing today. The smart home industry is hot in the industry and cold outside the industry, that is, the concept is very hot and the market is very cold.

At present, the core technologies involved in the smart home industry almost all originate from developed countries, and the domestic technical level is always in a state of following, especially in the field of smart home core component sensors, where domestic technology is seriously lacking. According to survey data, more than 2,000 kinds of 6,000 kinds of domestic sensors come from abroad. Among them, the import of high-end sensors accounted for 80%, and almost 100% of high-end chips rely on imports.

The restriction of core key technology has undoubtedly become a key element of the development of domestic intelligent home furnishing. The development and breakthrough of the industrial chain not only influence the pace of the development of the smart home industry, but also the need to ensure independence and security in the mobile Internet era.

Product innovation, especially the hardware innovation of the product itself based on consumer demand, is to enrich the service content of smart homes, expand the use of smart products, and meet users' actual home life needs. Taking the current popular home appliances as an example, "interconnection, intercommunication, perception, sharing", in these main promotional slogans, it can be seen that all businesses currently build only a beautiful and imaginative empty shelf.

In fact, many home appliances fail to meet even the basic consumer needs, such as the energy saving of air conditioners, the cleaning of range hoods, and the silence of vacuum cleaners. Consumers are now more concerned about the improvement of these functions. How to use hardware innovation and integration with software systems, even if it is to improve a function, but can really bring convenience to users' home life, can gain users' approval, and can cultivate the smart home market. For the smart home industry, this is a key direction that cannot be ignored in 2015.

Second, the industrial environment and ecosystem are supporting

The ultimate development of an industry is not enough by its own efforts. It is in the industrial environment and cannot be separated from the impact of the industrial environment. The smart home industry is also affected by technology, capital, society, economy and life. The promotion and restriction of various development environment factors such as level. Especially in our country, we have specific national conditions.

Taking the development of domestic smart homes as an example, domestic consumers are first plagued by factors such as traffic, bandwidth, network speed, tariffs, and stability. Among them, another potential security risk has not yet erupted, that is, hacker attacks. In addition, the worrying quality assurance and after-sales service of smart hardware; the living and management environment that is difficult to improve in the short term; coupled with the lack of norms and standards and unfair competition, it is difficult to promote the healthy development of the smart home industry in such an environment.

One of the most critical core is the current lack of ecosystem establishment in the smart home industry. In 2014, smart homes started the "territory division war". Apple, Google, Microsoft, Haier, Xiaomi, and LeTV have all expanded their smart home market with high profile. The voice of smart home trillions of output value is higher than that of the next wave, but the establishment of the smart home ecosystem has always been slow.

The ideal concept of tall and large can only be reborn when it is reflected in reality. The reason why smart homes still cannot form core explosive power is because most smart home companies just want to be the dominant "Ultraman" and are unwilling to give up and are fighting together. "Pacific Rim". Smart home needs a "circle" to form a closed ecosystem of mutual cooperation. Therefore, strengthening industrial cooperation, recasting the industry ecology, and forming a "Lianheng" collaborative culture will undoubtedly greatly help the popularization of smart homes. The establishment of the ecosystem will become a focus of the smart home industry in 2015. We will see some giants opening up hardware ports and standards based on the system platform.

Third, industry norms and standards are the guarantee

The ancients often said: "No rules can't make a circle." The same goes for industry development. Without a unified standard, the industry will be "clustered", which not only brings troubles to enterprises, but also to consumers. So "promulgating a set of industry standards as soon as possible to standardize smart home products and markets" has become the common voice of the industry and terminals.

Prior to this, Apple had released the next generation of IOS system at the WWDC conference, in which a smart home application platform was added to the new system and named HomeKit. By opening the HomeKit smart home interface and integrating with third-party products, platform-based system management of smart home devices is realized.

And all devices integrated with Apple's smart home applications undoubtedly need to meet Apple's standards. In a certain sense, it can be said that through the establishment of the smart home platform, Apple must occupy the commanding heights of the industry standards and control data and users. ,application. Obviously, this kind of standards established spontaneously by enterprises based on the system platform will be a focus of the smart home industry in 2015, and this is also a key element that determines the vitality of the system platform.

And on July 2 this year, Microsoft joined the ALLSeen Alliance (ALLSeenALLiance) with a high profile. The alliance is led by the Linux Foundation and formed by more than 50 technology giants such as Qualcomm, LG Electronics, and Sharp. It intends to formulate unified industry standards for smart home devices such as electronic thermostats, and its purpose is to occupy the commanding heights of the industry.

From the perspective of the development of traditional industries and the development of smart industries, everyone will eventually move towards a unified management and control platform. Whether it is Apple’s HomeKit or the ALLSeen alliance, both of them are delivering two messages to the market. One is that unified industry standards can It brings great benefits to enterprises and consumers, and can healthy promote the cultivation and development of the market; the second is to control the right to speak and lead the development of the industry through the establishment of the ecosystem platform; the third is to unify the system platform And openness will promote the development and maturity of smart home hardware products.

Fourth, big data and cloud computing help

How to transition from "looking beautiful" to "beautiful to use" is the bottleneck problem that smart homes need to break through. To complete this evolution, artificial intelligence, big data, cloud services, and communication technologies play a role as needed. If the "interconnection and intercommunication" of household products is not supported by these links, intelligence can only be the hobby of some technology enthusiasts, and its product is nothing more than a traditional mechanical product that can be remotely controlled, which is different from the popular "smart" life concept Far away.

With the help of big data platforms, the future Internet of Things network will allow businesses to better understand consumers' usage habits, thereby improving user experience. Based on the corresponding analysis on the basis of big data, it can improve the user experience in a more targeted manner, and at the same time explore new business opportunities. The precision marketing of big data also plays an important guiding role in the promotion of the smart home market.

Of course, with big data, cloud computing cannot be ignored either. The big data generated by the system is obviously inseparable from the transmission of communication technology and the analysis and decision-making of artificial intelligence. Only with the support of artificial intelligence, big data, cloud services, and communication technology can the data analysis, mining, and use value generated after the home intelligence is effectively reflected and realized.

For smart homes, data is generated all the time. If the massive data resources from the terminal do not have a storage device with a large enough capacity, it will cause data loss and fail to realize the commercial value mining of data. From this perspective, Cloud service technology will also receive greater attention in 2015.

At present, it is difficult for ordinary storage devices to keep up with the growth rate required for data storage. As a low-cost virtual computing resource, "cloud" will be a good solution. The combination of big data and cloud computing, with the help of the development of artificial intelligence, will become an important thrust to promote the development of the smart home industry.

Fifth, government support and intelligence popularization are opportunities

Under my country's special national conditions, policies have a key impact on the development of the industry. In 2011, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Twelfth Five-Year Development Plan for the Internet of Things." The "Plan" listed smart home as one of the important projects for the development of the Internet of Things for the first time. With the introduction of the 12th Five-Year Plan for the Internet of Things, smart homes have ushered in a new round of development boom, which is closely related to the planning of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Subsequently, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Land and Resources, the Ministry of Commerce, the State Administration of Taxation, the Statistics Bureau, the Intellectual Property Office, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the National Standards Committee and other relevant units jointly issued The "Special Action Plan for the Development of the Internet of Things."

Among them, in the application promotion transformation action plan, "promoting smart home applications" was listed as one of the 14 key tasks. The policy to promote the smart home industry is very obvious. These supporting policies for emerging industries are a good opportunity for the smart home industry.

For the same three forces in the current smart home industry, namely traditional home furnishing companies, Internet companies, and emerging entrepreneurs, government intervention and supervision will change the current chaotic situation. Just like the government's intervention in the APP field not long ago, the era of reckless heroes in 2015 may be ended, and replaced by more rational and standardized industry standards.

"Make life smarter and home smarter" has always been the mission of smart homes. The future of smart homes is bright. The process needs constant thinking and improvement, so that users can truly understand smart homes and know smarts through the use of products. Home, fall in love with smart home, this is the foundation of smart home. Although the road ahead is difficult, the prospects are infinitely bright. With the passion of 2014, we will promote the smart home industry on the road of healthy development in 2015 in a more rational way.