With the rapid development of 5G and artificial intelligence, smart homes are accelerating the transformation from "island-style" single-product intelligence to "all things interconnected" whole-house intelligence. Recently, Huawei, Midea Home Appliances, Yunmi and other manufacturers have successively released their new smart products, hoping to share the smart home cake under the wave of 5G+IoT.

According to Kantar data, in the next five years, more than 50% of urban households in China will have smart housekeepers; the average number of smart home devices held by each household will exceed ten, and the market volume will reach trillions. Especially in the context of the retail scale of China's home appliance market touching the ceiling, smart homes and smart home appliances have become the focus of much attention.

"Where will the smart home go in the next ten years?" This is the industry's torture to the old and new contestants. According to Wang Xing, president of Kantar Group Greater China, the future trend of smart homes will shift to multi-scenario penetration, product experience iteration, and deep circle operations.

However, Chen Xiaoping, the founder and CEO of Yunmi Technology, always believes that the core of the development of smart home lies in the use of intelligent means to solve problems and create value for users. "Whether it is through health, safety, or active intelligence, we are actually talking about a topic: AI: Helpful. Useful and easy to use, intelligence must solve problems for consumers." In his opinion, the current smart home is healthy and active. The development characteristics of modularization are all developed around the needs of users.

Return to user pain points

As a hot word in the new era, "smart" has attracted the attention of the home appliance industry, and more and more companies are expanding their intelligent roads. In the past five years, the domestic smart home market has accelerated its expansion, reaching 450 billion yuan in 2020, with a compound annual growth rate of nearly 20%. AVC monitoring data shows that in 2020, the scale of smart home decoration projects supporting residential real estate will reach 2.739 million sets, a year-on-year increase of 21.6%.

After nearly 20 years of development, my country's smart home industry has moved from the single product intelligence stage to the whole house intelligence. At present, the production and sales of smart single products are very mature. Statistics show that there are more than 242,000 domestic smart home companies in 2020, most of which are smart single product companies with smart locks, smart lighting, smart audio and video, etc. as their main business.

In the early years, the excessive pursuit of the intelligent functions of the single product and the insufficient interconnection of the products brought a bad experience to consumers. Over the years, the industry has gradually reached a consensus that smart homes are not a rigid connection of modules. The essence of smart homes is ultimately to serve consumers. Just as Ding Wei, CEO of Hengjie Group, said: “Smart home appliances cannot be smart for the sake of intelligence. Only by refining the pain points of consumption and adopting intelligent methods on the pain points of consumption, can intelligence be truly and effectively served to consumers."

Recently, manufacturers including Haier, Galanz, Huawei, Midea, and Yunmi have successively released new smart products or new strategies related to smart homes this year. The 21st Century Business Herald reporter noticed that smart home appliances are becoming more and more humane from the product level, and the embodiment of their smart functions has returned to the essence of consumption, which is to solve the pain points of users.

Taking Yunmi as an example, this year the company released a new "AI: Helpful" strategy, and launched a variety of new AI products including toilets, water purifiers, water heaters, air conditioners, etc., ranging from health, active intelligence, home safety and natural voice interaction Four levels promote the implementation of AI technology in smart homes.

"In the 5G IoT era, AI will become the key to improving the smart home experience." Chen Xiaoping believes that smart home appliances are moving towards a more advanced stage of artificial intelligence, from whole-house intelligence to comprehensive AI, allowing devices to perceive, analyze, and judge like humans. , And taking the initiative to solve problems for others is Yunmi’s strategic focus this year.

Coincidentally, the Midea Lifestyle Appliances Division recently announced the establishment of a user and brand strategy center, which aims to grasp user needs and consumption trends through user big data analysis, innovation planning and brand strategy research, so as to provide users with better services.

"In the future, intelligence will enter the era of helping users solve problems and enter the era of creating value for users. This is the most critical." Chen Xiaoping told reporters that the biggest change in the smart home field in recent years is the consumer's The degree of attention has increased unprecedentedly, and he predicts: "In the next three to five years, the intelligentization of the family will enter a new era."

Cross-border co-construction ecology

Although the market education of smart homes has improved, due to the heterogeneous environment of consumer home appliances in the brand, the whole house integration ecology still has a long way to go. A research report pointed out that the biggest obstacle for consumers to use smart home appliances is the incompatibility of products between different brands.

"At present, the smart home market is mixed, with separate governance and no unified standards. Each product has become an information island. The smart home platform is initially completed, and the smart home system needs to be improved urgently." Zhao Meimei, assistant to the president of Alvi Cloud Network and general manager of the research and innovation department, believes that smart Home furnishing should first be a residential ecosystem based on the Internet of Things technology, consisting of hardware (smart home appliances, smart hardware, security control equipment, furniture, etc.), software systems, and cloud computing platforms.

Secondly, in this ecosystem, home appliances can communicate with each other to realize remote human-computer interaction and control. Finally, the device has self-learning and self-adaptation capabilities, and can provide users with safer, more comfortable, energy-saving, efficient, and convenient personalized services by collecting and analyzing user behavior data.

In order to be able to quickly create a smart home ecosystem that is accepted by the public, the industry has been constantly exploring, and there are currently two different solutions: one is to create a multi-dimensional product layout and directly provide consumers with a set of solutions Program.

such as Haier, Midea, Yunmi, etc., its smart home appliances products have covered all kinds of large and small appliances in multiple scenes such as kitchen, living room, bedroom, bathroom, balcony, etc. The product matrix is ​​very strict. Last year, Haier launched its first scene brand Triwing. The company previously revealed that this year's Triwing National Landing Plan will speed up and it is expected to open another 1,000 Triwing 001 stores in 2021.

Another path is to specialize in a multi-entry, multi-scenario intelligent interconnected operation platform to be compatible with products of multiple different brands. On April 8 this year, Wang Chenglu, President of Huawei's Consumer Business Software Department and Director of the AI ​​and Smart Full-Scenario Business Department, stated at the "Huawei 2021 Spring Whole House Smart and Smart Screen Flagship New Product Launch" that the Hongmeng system is an operating system for IoT , Its primary goal is to achieve the unification of the system. On the same day, Huawei and Midea's IoT teamed up to launch nearly 200 smart electrical products equipped with the Hongmeng system, marking the first landing of the Hongmeng operating system in the field of smart home appliances.

But Huawei's ambitions in the field of smart homes go far beyond this. Just four days later, according to Xu Zhijun, vice chairman and rotating chairman of Huawei, Hongmeng System has attracted more than 20 hardware suppliers and 280 software developers to participate in ecological development. It is expected that 100 million devices will be running Hongmeng in 2021. operating system.

Wang Xing pointed out in the sharing of ""User is King" Opens the Era of Smart Home Internet of Things" that when scenarios and demands are superimposed, market opportunities will show a spurt of growth. "The scene needs that smart homes can meet have surpassed what traditional home products can provide. In the next step, changes in consumption scenes will become the starting point and cornerstone for product brands to build ecological homes."

In fact, with the continuous upgrading of smart technology, the competition center of the smart home industry has shifted from traditional hardware and product functions to a contest between IoT technology and smart ecology. In addition to home appliance manufacturers, Internet giants and technology companies have also joined the smart home track, and the boundaries of the industry have become increasingly blurred.

With regard to cross-border challenges similar to those initiated by Huawei, Baidu, and JD.com, some people in the home appliance industry have expressed concern. “If interconnected alliances cannot be formed in the home appliance industry, if they all hope to build moats and barriers, the appliance industry is likely to be affected. Others robbed across borders."

But there are also optimistic people. "The future loT must be cross-border cooperation. No one can do everything. Everyone is just at different stages of the industry chain." In Chen Xiaoping's vision, the final stage of smart home is "Free", which is highly decentralized. And the de-APP feature allows users to realize the freedom of life in the ecology, and Yunmi's goal is "one-third of the world."