Appliance giants are competing to deliver smart homes

As the giant of today's Internet era, Apple Inc., at a recent developer conference, said that after 20 years, smart homes will change the way you and I live, and Apple’s smart home "platform" will be built. There are more home appliance manufacturers supporting their applications.

However, smart products are still based on the basic "control" function at present. Industry insiders suggest that manufacturers should develop more value-added services for users.

Last year, the smart home appliance industry has exceeded 100 billion yuan

In 2014 or in the important transition period of China's household electrical appliance enterprises, more home appliance companies began to move closer to the Internet and directed at the smart home industry, such as: Mei Li and Alibaba cooperate to build smart home platform products; Changhong and Meiling launched CHIQ refrigerators. Haier released the smart home platform U+ smart living system. Companies are eager to start the smart industry market and hope that the industry chain can speed up as soon as possible.

Liu Buchen, an observing observer of the observatory, believes that despite the difficulties in constructing an intelligent ecosystem, Apple’s platform construction still bears the significance of the times. In particular, it has converged the strengths of Haier, Texas Instruments, Philips, Cree, etc., and it is believed to be a long one. Time, competition strategy will be more than competition.

Zuo Yanjun, general manager of the research company's Yikang brand, also believes that with the development and application of smart home platforms, the smart home industry is expected to enter a substantive stage, and it is bound to enter the rapid development of the entire intelligent industry chain. Develop channels to achieve leapfrog development.

Statistics show that there are more than 100 million potential smart home customers in China. By 2015, the output value of smart homes will reach 124 billion yuan. According to the report, the output value of smart home appliances in China has reached 100 billion yuan in 2013, and it is expected that the output will reach 2020. To 1 trillion.

In addition, the industry policy level is also actively supporting the development of smart home appliances. The "12th Five-Year Development Plan for China Household Appliance Industry" released in 2011 put forward the direction of energy saving, environmental protection and intelligence as the technological development direction. The "General Principles of Intelligent Technology for Intelligent Household Appliances" issued in 2012 put forward the need to standardize intelligence. Appliance market, guide the development direction of smart appliances.

Software development is still weak

However, the market research company Aowei Consulting's report believes that the current sales volume of smart home appliances in China has started initially, but overall, it is still in the capacity import period. Standard smart home appliances should include several major functions such as remote control, home appliance network upgrade, remote maintenance, and anti-theft alarm. However, at present domestic products do not fully cover the above factors in application, and they are still relatively rigid in product design and function implantation. .

The concept of smart home also has a good reputation, but the proliferation of smart peripheral products can hardly conceal the lack of core technology. Shenyin Wanguo Securities analyst pointed out that at present, most smart products are still based on basic "control" functions, and the strength of software development is weak, and there is a lack of development of derived value-added services for users' "pain points". Most smart appliances are overpriced and difficult to popularize. He suggested that manufacturers change the past selling of products to the thinking of the end of the value chain, attaching importance to iteration and interaction.

Zuo Yanji believes that smart home appliances not only use product design, but also use Internet thinking in marketing channels. They can even use the "free" marketing ideas of Internet companies to promote their products.

“Intelligent development direction is the general trend. Consumers are more comfortable with smart products, but how to use smart products to make them more useful, consumers’ interests become more prominent, and product integration development is more efficient and rapid, these are smart manufacturers' needs. The place to further meet the challenge," said Liu Buchen.