[David Friedman also predicts that the value of the IoT smart home appliance industry will reach US$490 billion in 2019, and developed countries will account for 60% of the market space. ]
The Internet of Things era is so attractive, as one of the important components of the Internet of Things era, how to break the "island" phenomenon of smart home?
The reporter of "First Financial Daily" recently interviewed different companies in various links of the industrial chain, from suppliers and trading platforms of upstream components of smart hardware, manufacturers of smart terminal products, to third-party cloud platform access service providers, and For e-commerce companies with strong cloud platform capabilities, everyone has great expectations for cracking the "island" of smart homes.
However, some industry veterans predict that it will take five years for smart home products to realize interconnection.
Branded home appliances are not connected
As an e-commerce platform for the supply chain of China's electronics manufacturing industry, IngDan has been promoting the intelligence of home appliances. Wen Dong, assistant to the president of IngDan, said frankly that the communication protocols of smart hardware are not unified, and different cloud platforms have different communication protocols.
"Competition is inevitable, and there will be chaos in the new market, and there is no unified standard." Wen Dong said, communication interface standards include WiFi, Bluetooth, etc.; at the operating system level, iOS and Android are the two major systems, and manufacturers develop two App versions. Solved; the bigger problem is cloud access. Regardless of Internet companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, and JD.com, or manufacturers such as Samsung, Haier, and Midea, their cloud access does not have a unified standard. Can't take anyone else."
A related person from the e-commerce platform also bluntly said that the pain point of smart home is that the products cannot be linked. Ordinary people do not necessarily buy appliances of the same brand for the whole house. For example, Midea air conditioners, Haier refrigerators, and Samsung TVs cannot be interconnected. Even if all major brands can communicate with each other vertically, there is a gap between horizontal and other brand products. This large e-commerce platform is planning to promote the interaction between brands.
In fact, no matter Ali, JD.com, Suning, or Gome, they all have this idea. The problem is that manufacturers also have their own concerns, and dare not easily hand over the right to speak about user data and product usage data.
Sun Yingkai, president of Wanhe Research Institute, said frankly that companies are worried about the confidentiality of their data. "In the future, data is money. Will you give money to others?" Therefore, there must be a game process between the cloud platforms of large e-commerce companies and manufacturers, and powerful manufacturers will also build their own cloud platforms.
Sun Yingkai said that from the perspective of Wanhe, product intelligence will go through the following three stages: first, "single product, single cloud", one product is connected to one cloud, products sold by Alibaba are connected to Alibaba Cloud, products sold by JD.com are connected to JD Cloud, 70 %~80% of manufacturers do this; the second stage is "one product with multiple clouds", one product is compatible with different clouds, and now there are third-party cloud service providers such as "Gizwits Cloud", but the business cloud level It is not yet very mature and stable, because the more factors considered, the greater the technical difficulty; the third stage of "multiple products, one cloud" is a higher level, and products of different brands share a cloud platform, and the user experience at that time will be greatly reduced. better. However, "One Pin Duoyun is advancing, and Duopin Yiyun is still in the mud!"
The rise of third-party cloud access platforms
"Gizwits Cloud" is headquartered in Guangzhou and was established in 2005. At the beginning of its business, it mainly provided software technology services to European and American companies; five years ago, it cut into the ecological chain of Apple's peripheral peripherals. Because there are many electronic companies in the Pearl River Delta, products such as blood pressure monitors, bracelets, etc., but they lack software capabilities, so they need partners to help them realize hardware intelligence.
Looking back on the company's growth process, Huang Xixiong, general manager of "Gizwits Cloud" company, told the reporter of "First Financial Daily" that the "service platformization" around 2012 was only based on the fact that many small and medium-sized electronic companies could not afford software development costs, so they adopted A charging model that draws commissions based on product sales. "Some products cost less than 100 yuan, and the sales volume needs to be more than 100,000 yuan to cover the development cost. Therefore, we have built a cloud platform to monitor product activation volume and usage time."
It is logical that with the growth of Apple's ecological chain, the business of "Gizwits Cloud" has also entered the field of home appliances. In fact, Apple released the Homekit smart home platform two years ago, and Haier and Midea have become its partners.
Huang Xixiong said that their charging models are divided into two categories. For small enterprises, the model of collecting platform service fees based on product sales is generally adopted. "Gizwits Cloud" provides one-stop product cloud access and management services in the form of public clouds; Enterprises, such as Haier and Midea, want to build their own cloud platforms, so "Gizwits Cloud" provides technical support to assist them in establishing their own private cloud services, and the data of smart home appliances is controlled by these large enterprises.
"Intelligent hardware has three elements, sensors, cloud access, and server-side intelligent systems." Huang Xixiong believes that in the future, big data will be stored in the cloud. For example, the smart socket is small in size, and its computing, learning, and storage capabilities are all in the cloud, and the cloud will analyze it and then tell the socket. For another example, sensors such as temperature, infrared, and laser are human eyes, ears, and noses, which collect information, and the cloud is like a brain, which gathers information to make a decision, and then notifies the terminal to adjust.
Now there are different communication protocols for cloud access. At the home appliance enterprise level, there are different manufacturers such as Haier, Midea, Gree, Hisense, TCL, and Skyworth; at the e-commerce platform level, there are Ali, JD.com, Suning, and Gome. Just like Midea’s open agreement, Haier may not use it; give Ali’s smart products first, maybe JD Cloud will not access it. "In the past year, it was very difficult for factories. JD.com, Ali, Suning, and Gome all required to make smart home appliances according to their own standards (referring to cloud access protocols)."
This is where the value of the neutral third-party cloud access platform lies. "We have cooperated with 70 to 80 communication module manufacturers, open source code, and manufacturers have found that through Gizwits, they can contact various communication module manufacturers." Huang Xixiong said that for the agreements of different e-commerce platforms, Gizwits act as a "translator". ", for example, "We will connect with JD Cloud, and I will adapt to you." Gizwits hopes to connect products with different protocols so that they can be interconnected.
The United States is also emerging such third-party cloud platform service providers, such as "Ayla IoT" founded in Silicon Valley. David Friedman, CEO of Ayla IoT, said in an interview with our reporter at the end of 2015 that enterprises building their own cloud platforms have a large investment and uncertain returns, and using third-party cloud platform services saves money and worries . Apple, Google, Amazon, and Samsung are all acquiring IoT platforms to implement their own IoT strategies.
In China, the three major internet companies BAT are also highly competitive. "Ayla is not in competition with them. What we do is an enterprise-level cloud platform. We hope to cooperate with them. Amazon and WeChat have already cooperated with us." He also predicts that the value of the IoT smart home appliance industry will reach US$490 billion in 2019, and developed countries will account for 60% of the market space.
At present, Ayla IoT has completed its B round of financing, with a financing amount of 20 million US dollars; and Gizwits Cloud also received 200 million financing last year, becoming the largest single investment in the domestic IoT cloud service industry.
only way
Although third-party cloud access platforms are on the rise, giants such as Ali and JD.com are too big after all. To break the "island" phenomenon of smart homes, it is still necessary for major manufacturing and distribution giants to "sit down" and promote open cooperation . Wendong believes that this requires the guidance of the government and industry associations, and at the same time integrates in the process of marketization, and forms several major alliances around the world, such as 4G has become two standards. Because if everyone does not cooperate, users will not have a good experience, and they will "not buy it" for smart homes.
As one of Ali's smart business partners, Shanghai Qingke is a supplier of communication modules. Ren Jianhong, vice president of Shanghai Qingke, introduced to the reporter of "First Financial Daily" that the smart home industry is still developing rapidly. In 2015, there were more than 120 smart items on the Ali platform, and there were no more than 10 a year ago. In 2016, there will be more than 300 smart single products on the Ali platform, covering all kinds of smart home appliances.
"We have served 500 customers. Last year, 150 customers mass-produced smart single products. It is expected that there will be more customers in mass production this year." Ren Jianhong said that Shanghai Qingke's WiFi module is embedded with Alibaba's cloud access protocol, so As long as manufacturers assemble modules into smart products, these smart products can be connected to Ali's cloud platform. He revealed that Ali will promote the intercommunication between various brands of home appliances this year. At present, Shanghai Qingke also cooperates with JD.com.
The promotion of leading home appliances is also very strong. After August 2016, all Midea air conditioners will be equipped with WiFi modules as standard. Fang Hongbo, chairman and president of Midea Group, said in one of the few exclusive interviews with "First Financial Daily" at the end of last year that hardware, software, and cloud systems constitute Midea's smart home system. In 2016, Midea will release a full range of smart home appliances and Midea smart home systems, which will be connected to all external systems.
The cost of WiFi modules has dropped rapidly in recent years, from about 100 yuan two years ago to more than 20 yuan last year, and will drop to more than 10 yuan this year, which is even lower than 10 yuan. Therefore, Huang Xixiong believes that the networking function will gradually become the standard configuration of home appliances. Only interconnection will generate value. For example, when the air purifier is turned on, it also drives the air conditioner to start; when the stove is turned on, the range hood will automatically suck the oil fume. "The lack of an open mind is the biggest problem now." In Ren Jianhong's view, the idea of breaking the "information island" of smart home is to continue to promote the intelligence of single products. As long as they are connected to the Internet and through big data analysis, they can find the pain points of users more accurately through product iterations; The major standard alliances are further open to cooperation; the third is to call for more neutral third-party service providers, including hardware intelligent service providers, third-party cloud access service providers, big data analysis application service providers, etc., to jointly promote the development of various products interconnection among them.
Ren Jianhong predicts that it will take five years for smart homes to truly realize artificial intelligence and interconnection.