David Freedman also predicted that the value of IOT smart appliances industry will reach US $490 billion in 2019, and the developed countries will account for 60% of the market space.
The Internet of Things era is so attractive, as one of the most important components of the Internet of Things era, how to break the "island" phenomenon of smart home?
First Financial Daily recently interviewed different enterprises in various sectors of the industry chain, from suppliers of upstream components of intelligent hardware and trading platforms, manufacturers of intelligent terminal products, third-party cloud platform access service providers, and e-commerce with strong cloud platform capabilities, all of us are cracking smart home. "Isolated Island" has great expectations.
However, some industry veterans predict that it will take five years for smart home products to interconnect.
Brand household appliances are not connected
As an e-commerce platform of supply chain in China's electronic manufacturing industry, "hard egg" has been promoting the intellectualization of household appliances. Hard Egg's assistant president Wen Dong admits that there is no unified communication protocol for smart hardware, and different cloud platforms have different communication protocols.
"Competition is inevitable, new markets will be chaotic, there is no uniform standard." Wendong said that the communication interface standards include WiFi, Bluetooth and so on. At the operating system level, iOS and Android are two major systems, and the manufacturers can develop two versions of App to solve the problem. The bigger problem is cloud access. No matter Ali, Tencent, Jingdong and other Internet companies, or Samsung, Haier, Mei and other manufacturers, they do not have cloud access. A unified standard, "You can't pick me up if you pick me up."
A related person of e-commerce platform also bluntly said that the pain point of smart home is that products can not be linked. People's homes do not necessarily buy the same brand of household appliances, such as air conditioning in the United States, Haier refrigerator, Samsung TV, they can not be interconnected. Even though the major brands can connect all products vertically, there is a gap between the horizontal and other brand products. This large-scale e-commerce platform is planning to promote interaction between brands.
In fact, no matter Ali, Jingdong, Suning or Guomei, they all have this idea. The problem is that manufacturers also have their own concerns, for user data, product use data discourse right, dare not easily let people.
Sun Yingkai, president of Wanhe Research Institute, confessed that enterprises were 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 platform of large e-commerce and manufacturers, and powerful manufacturers will build their own cloud platform.
Sun Yingkai said that from Wanhe's point of view, product intellectualization will go through three stages: first, "single product single cloud", "one product butt one cloud", "Ali cloud" for the products sold by Ali, and "Jingdong cloud" for the products sold by Jingdong, 70% to 80% of the manufacturers do so; the second stage is "one product multiple clouds" for both products. For different clouds, there are now third-party cloud service providers such as "smart cloud", but the level of business cloud is not very mature and stable, because the more factors considered, the greater the technical difficulty; the third stage of "multi-products and one cloud" is the highest level, different brands of products share a cloud platform, which was used at that time. The household experience will be the best. However, "one more cloud is advancing, one more cloud is still in the mud!"
The Rise of Third Party Cloud Access Platform
"Smart Cloud" Company, headquartered in Guangzhou, was established in 2005. At the beginning of its start-up, it mainly provided software technology services to European and American companies; five years ago, it cut into the ecological chain of peripherals around Apple. Because there are many electronic enterprises in the Pearl River Delta, such as sphygmomanometers, bracelets and so on, but they lack software strength, so they need partners to help them achieve hardware intelligence.
Looking back on the growth process of the company, Huang Xixiong, general manager of Zhiyun Company, told the First Financial Daily that the "service platform" around 2012 was only based on the fact that many small and medium-sized electronic enterprises could not afford software development costs, so they adopted the charging model of drawing commissions according to product sales. "Some products are less than 100 yuan, and sales of more than 100,000 yuan can cover development costs, so we set up a cloud platform to monitor product activation, usage time and so on."
It is logical that with the growth of Apple's ecological chain, "Smart Cloud" business has also entered the field of household appliances. In fact, Apple released the Homekit Smart Home Platform two years ago, and Haier, Mei and others have become partners.
Huang Xixiong said that their charging models are divided into two categories. For small enterprises, they generally adopt the model of collecting platform service fees according to product sales. Smart Cloud provides one-stop product cloud access and management services in the form of public cloud. For large enterprises, such as Haier and Mei, if they want to build their own cloud platform, then "Smart Cloud" is proposed. Provide technical support to help them build their own private cloud services. The data of smart appliances are controlled by these large enterprises themselves.
"Intelligent hardware has three elements, sensor, cloud access and server-side intelligent system". Huang Xixiong believes that big data will be in the cloud in the future. For example, the smart socket is very small in size, and its computing, learning and reserve capabilities are all in the cloud. After cloud analysis, the smart socket is told to the socket. For example, temperature, infrared and laser sensors are people's eyes, ears and noses, which collect information. Clouds are like brains. They gather information and make decisions before they are notified.
The end adjusts.
Now is the communication protocol of cloud access, which is different from each other. At the level of household appliances enterprises, there are different manufacturers such as Haier, Mei, Gree, Haixin, TCL, Chuangwei, and at the level of e-commerce platform, there are Ali, Jingdong, Suning and Guomei. Just like the open agreement of the United States, Haier may not necessarily use it; if we give Ali's intelligent products first, maybe Jingdong Cloud will not access it. "In the past year, factories have been very difficult. Jingdong, Ali, Suning and Gome all require smart appliances to be made according to their own standards (referring to cloud access protocol).
This is the value of a neutral third-party cloud access platform. "We have cooperated with 70 to 80 communication module vendors to open source code. Manufacturers have found that through the Smart Cloud, they can contact a variety of communication module vendors." Huang Xixiong said that for different e-commerce platforms, Smart Cloud acts as a "translator". For example, "We communicate with Beijing Dongyun, I will adapt to you." Smart Cloud hopes to connect products of different protocols and make them interconnected and interoperable.
The United States is also emerging as a third-party cloud platform service provider, such as the Silicon Valley-based Allah Material Alliance. David Friedman, CEO of Allah Wulian, told our reporter in an interview at the end of 2015 that self-built cloud platforms by enterprises have large investment and uncertain returns, and use the services of third-party cloud platforms to save money and worry. Apple, Google, Amazon and Samsung are all acquiring the Internet of Things platform and implementing their Internet of Things strategy.
In China, BAT's three major Internet companies are also competing fiercely. "Ella and they are not competitive, we are doing enterprise-level cloud platform, hope to cooperate with them, Amazon, Wechat has cooperated with us." He also expects that the value of the Internet of Things smart home appliances industry will reach $490 billion in 2019, with developed countries accounting for 60% of the market space.
At present, AILA has completed the B round of financing, with the amount of financing reaching 20 million US dollars, while Smart Cloud has also received 200 million financing last year, becoming the largest single investment in the domestic Internet of Things cloud service industry so far.
The only way
Although the third-party cloud access platform is rising, after all, the giants such as Ali and Jingdong are too big. To break the "isolated island" phenomenon of smart home, it is still necessary for major manufacturing and circulation giants to "sit down" and promote open cooperation. Wendong believes that this requires the guidance of the government and industry associations, while merging in the process of marketization, and forming several major alliances around the world, such as 4G has become two standards. Because if we do not cooperate, users will not have a good experience, on the smart home "do not buy".
As one of the partners of Ali Intelligent Business, Shanghai Qingke is a supplier of communication module. Ren Jianhong, vice president of Qingke Shanghai, introduced to the First Financial Daily that the smart home industry is still developing very fast. There are more than 120 smart items on the Ali platform in Shuang11 in 2015, compared with no more than 10 items a year ago. It is estimated that there will be more than 300 smart items on the Shuang11 Ali platform in 2016, covering all kinds of intelligence. Household appliances.
"We have served 500 customers. Last year, 150 customers produced intelligent products. It is expected that more customers will be produced this year." Ren Jianhong said that Ali's cloud access protocol is embedded in Shanghai Qingke's WiFi module, so as long as manufacturers assemble modules into intelligent products, these intelligent products can access Ali's cloud platform. He disclosed that Ali will promote the exchange of various brands of household appliances products this year. At present, Shanghai Qingke and Jingdong also have cooperation.
Home appliances faucet is also very strong. After August 2016, all air conditioners will be equipped with WiFi modules. Fang Hongbo, chairman and President of Mei Group, said in an exclusive interview with First Financial Daily at the end of last year that hardware, software and cloud system constitute Mei's smart home system. In 2016, MeiMei will release a full range of smart appliances and smart home systems in MeiMei, and connect them with 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 this year to more than 10 yuan, or even less than 10 yuan. Therefore, Huang Xixiong believes that the networking function will gradually become the standard of household appliances. Only interconnected will produce value. For example, once the air purifier is turned on, it also drives the air conditioning to start. When the stove is opened, the lampblack smoker will automatically suck the lampblack. Once the smoke depth exceeds the standard, the smoke alarm will ring. "Lack of openness is the biggest problem now." From Ren Jianhong's point of view, to break through the idea of "information island" in smart home, one is to continue to promote single product intellectualization, as long as the Internet is connected and the data are analyzed, the pain points of users can be found more accurately through product iteration; the other is to further open up and cooperate with major standard alliances; the third is to call for more neutral third-party service providers. Including hardware intelligent service providers, third-party cloud access service providers, large data analysis application service providers, to promote the interconnection of products.
Ren Jianhong predicts that it will take five years for smart home to truly realize artificial intelligence and interconnection.