After more than 10 years of "asking for directions", smart home may have come to a key point of large-scale implementation and popularization.
On April 2, the authoritative market research agency IDC released a report showing that China's smart home shipments will exceed 220 million units in 2021, and it is expected to exceed 260 million units in 2022. In addition to the emergence of the trillion-level market scale, the enterprise side is also showing signs: the head players represented by Huawei, Haier Zhijia and Xiaomi are exchanging fire in the field of "whole-house intelligence".
So the question is, where is the whole house intelligence that everyone is grabbing?
Huawei's full focus on connection
As a technology-based enterprise, Huawei often follows the layout concept of "technology first" in most investment fields, as does smart home.
At the spring conference of all-house smart home on March 16, Huawei released an upgraded version of "1+2+N" all-house smart solution. This scheme includes a host computer, two networks and N systems, covering control, network and space connectivity, which is equivalent to human brain, blood and organs.
Looking at this scheme, the biggest feature is that it can be accessed at the decoration stage. This is like laying a set of network and complete operation system for the house. After the later decoration, users can match the partners' refrigerators, televisions and other hardware as required.
This also fully reflects Huawei's "male science and technology" attribute of reconnection. For smart home, Huawei has always insisted on making its own software, connection and infrastructure, focusing on the host, network and interaction, and then providing a platform for ready-made hardware vendors to attract them to join the alliance to build a whole-house smart ecosystem.
From the perspective of direction, Huawei has the spirit of being a big schemer. However, this model also puts forward higher requirements for the after-sales and service of enterprises. Suppose that the user has bought a system in Huawei and matched with the household appliances of Midea and other partners. If the air conditioner fails in the later stage, should the consumer go to Huawei or Midea?
Xiaomi's full focus on hardware
As a typical Internet enterprise, Xiaomi has also been pursuing a lightweight Internet operation thinking. Specifically, smart home is to constantly fill its own hardware category and quantity by building a huge ecological chain enterprise alliance.
Just one day after Huawei's launch, Xiaomi Eco-chain enterprise Yunmi Technology released the "1=N44" whole-house solution on the 17th, bringing 60+categories of intelligent product lineup, including refrigerators, air conditioners and other large household appliances, as well as door locks, water purifiers, clothes dryers and other small items. On the whole, this kind of millet "family bucket" with high cost performance, easy to buy and use, and strong selectivity is enough to fill most of the space in the home for the users who have completed the decoration, and the connection is simple and the category is rich.
Both Yunmi and Xiaomi are consistent "heavy hardware". Whether it is more than 300 eco-chain enterprises behind Xiaomi or the smart family bucket launched by Yunmi this time, its essence is to create an unlimited product portfolio through a huge hardware base to meet the lightweight, convenient and personalized needs of smart home tasters.
However, this completely "post" hardware N-power model is a great test of the ability of enterprises in product connection, system and experience. Not to mention that Xiaomi itself has several operating systems, not to mention the product homogeneity of its brands. Now many eco-chain enterprises, including Yunmi, are "de-milling". How to coordinate the interconnection of multi-brand and multi-category products to ensure the user's actual experience and not be burdened by the "elephant turn" is also a problem that Xiaomi should focus on.
Full focus scenario of Haier Zhijia
The integrity of Haier Smart Home is reflected in the scheme that spans from "before decoration" to "after occupancy", which connects high-quality suppliers in the whole process, provides the most complete scene and professional scheme, and has differentiation advantages in the industry.
If the layout of Huawei and Xiaomi is more focused on the interconnection or combination of "products", Haier Smart Home has moved away from the hardware and turned its perspective to the overall customization of "scenarios". The scene brand Three-winged Bird, which was born in 2020, has the ability to provide one-stop customized services covering household appliances, home decoration, home furnishing and home life. Users can not only buy smart appliances, but also buy "Zhihuijia", which is all-inclusive from the early design, the middle construction, and the late home appliances.
In addition, in terms of professionalism, Haier Smart Home is the only enterprise that can provide customized whole-house water, whole-house air, whole-house intelligent control and other whole-house solutions according to the specific needs of users. Based on the leading intellectual brain, these solutions can achieve comprehensive and active services, and fully support personalized customization to meet all needs of different groups and families.
At the same time, Haier Smart Home is also an industry leader in landing. This year, Three-winged Bird is cooperating with Red Star Macalline and Fantastic Home to speed up the establishment of stores and deepen the penetration in front areas such as home decoration and home furnishing. Cassati, a high-end brand of Haier Smart Home, has been fully launched.
epilogue
Today, it is too early to decide which layout can break out of the siege, but we can also predict the future trend of smart home from the change of demand side.
At present, users are no longer satisfied with simple remote control and one-to-one interaction, but focus on the overall experience of the whole process and each scene. This indicates that the whole house intelligence must not be the superposition of single hardware products, but the complete set of intelligent life solutions in the whole process, and has begun to move towards the standardization, which is the competition of the whole industry chain.
It can be imagined that with the continuous development of technology, smart home appliances will no longer have high technical barriers in the future, and will be intelligentized or factory standard; At the same time, with the deepening of the trend of "unified big market", the ecological barriers and connection barriers of cross-brand products will no longer exist, and the moat built by technology-based enterprises in terms of platform and connection construction may also arouse water spray.