Exclusive interview with BroadLink's Liu Zongru: Only an open ecosystem can lead to a future in 2015

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2014 is a key year for the rapid development of the smart home industry. With the successive layout of giants such as Google, Apple, BAT, and others, participants continue to emerge, and the competitive and cooperative relationship will exist for a long time. The most impressive smart home appliance industry is developing rapidly and has become an unstoppable trend. Various single products emerge in an endless stream, and are gradually forming a system. BroadLink entered the market with one or two low-priced smart single products, and then formed a self-selected supermarket for smart homes; some smart single product startups formed a group, such as the cooperation between the smart bracelet Bong and Maikai. Apple's homekit takes almost the same path, but based on Apple's appeal, it has established access, data and control standards, so that these excellent single products can communicate with each other. Google entered the market with the smart single product Nest, and acquired dropcam and Revol through Nest. At the same time, it is formulating the thread protocol and opening API. In this way, the route of integrating the system through the explosive single product has become clear.

Liu Zongru believes that the long-term development of the smart home industry is very promising, because everything should be intelligent in the future, which is an objective trend. 2015 will be a key year for development, and an explosion is just around the corner, with voice semantic recognition/control, face recognition coming soon, and artificial intelligence also beginning to emerge.

What are the keywords for smart home in 2014? What will be the keywords for smart home in 2015?

2014 Keywords: Smart home appliances

Keywords in 2015: speech semantic recognition/control, face recognition, artificial intelligence

In the last interview, you mentioned that 2015 will be the first year of the explosion of smart home. So where do you think this explosion will occur? Is this explosion a merger or a cleansing of the survival of the fittest?

2015 is the stage for smart home, and smart home appliances will usher in explosive growth. When PC, tablet, and mobile phone develop to today's stage, the speed will slow down, and the next high-speed growth point must be IOT, which is another opportunity after the Internet and mobile Internet. The most down-to-earth and practical products must be smart home and smart home appliances related products, which conform to the development trend of the Internet of Everything.

This explosion is a kind of merger, and companies in different fields are looking for a point of convergence. Home appliance companies are good at hardware manufacturing, but weak at hardware-software platform integration. Internet companies are the opposite. Traditional home appliances are beginning to use Internet technology and capabilities to explore new products and business models. Nest's choice of Google shows that smart home equipment manufacturers are closely integrating with the Internet, and even merging the two.

At the same time, during the outbreak, the industry will also experience the survival of the fittest. Smart homes will give birth to more market segments, smart products will become more diversified and refined, and the accompanying competition will become more intense.

What changes will smart homes undergo in 2015? In which direction will they develop? Can they change from the current toy-like state?

2015 will be a key year for the development of smart homes. Voice semantic recognition/control and face recognition are coming soon, and artificial intelligence will also begin to emerge.

Most of today's smart homes are still just toys. An important reason behind this is that there are barriers to interconnection between home appliances. First of all, we need to solve the problem of interconnection between home appliances, so that home appliances of different brands can speak the same language and make them truly smart. After interconnection, when the environmental monitor finds that the air is polluted, it can link with the air purifier to automatically start working.

As individual products mature and an open, interconnected ecosystem is gradually established, the toy-like status of smart homes will inevitably change.

Every industry has a standard, and smart home needs such a standard even more. However, there is no standard now. For those who hope to make smart home a self-service supermarket, what do you think about the formulation of this standard?

Standardization will take time. In 2015, major platforms will further develop their layout, and the competitive and cooperative relationship will exist for a long time. Apple's HomeKit and Google's Thread will gradually be implemented as the standards of the two major camps. There will be no unified standard in China for the time being.

I forgot to ask you in the last interview why you chose Jiming Temple by Xuanwu Lake to hold the press conference. Is this related to BroadLink's corporate culture? Or is it a tribute to Steve Jobs who was also obsessed with Buddhism?

This is related to the concept we advocate. BroadLink advocates smart life and pursues smarter smart home solutions. Talking about wisdom can also be traced back to ancient oriental philosophy, so we thought of holding such a press conference where technology and humanities meet.

Smart homes should not be created for the sake of being cool, but to allow humans to reduce the time wasted on these trivial things. Smart terminals can create a better living environment based on their own living habits and benefit mankind. This is the original intention of technology.

BroadLink has launched many single products. What is the logic behind BroadLink's single products?

BroadLink's strategy is to first launch intelligent single products, such as smart sockets and smart remote controls, to guide and educate the market, and then consider building an entire smart home ecosystem after market demand is gradually nurtured.

The first batch of third-party appliances using BroadLink Wi-Fi chips have been launched. How are the results? Interoperable protocols include Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Zigbee. What are the advantages of BroadLink choosing Wi-Fi?

More than 30 BroadLink DNA home appliances have been launched on JD.com's "Smart Life Pavilion" on Double Eleven and have received good market feedback.

From the perspective of technical standards, Wi-Fi currently has the upper hand in interoperability protocols. Because home networks are popular, there is no need to add additional network management, so users can add all the smart home products they buy. Wi-Fi has a huge advantage in the technical ecosystem. Bluetooth mesh should not be underestimated. After it matures, it will have a very large opportunity in the network field. It is a very good supplement to smart home wireless technology. Zigbee will see the merger of ZLL and ZHA on LEDs. There is also Google's thread protocol. The competition in technical standards is all about the ecosystem rather than the technology itself. Let us wait and see.

How does BroadLink view its relationship with traditional home furnishing industry giants?

Smart home appliances are an unstoppable trend. BroadLink provides open smart solutions for the traditional home furnishing industry, helping traditional home appliances become smart and interconnected, which is the foundation of smart home. Currently, 30-40 BroadLink DNA home appliances have been launched, including AUX, Chigo, FOTILE, TCL, Macro, Jingmeishi and other manufacturers, covering air conditioners, water purifiers, air purifiers, range hoods, disinfection cabinets, ovens, etc.

BroadLink DNA connects the three most important ends in the smart home system. The first end connects to home appliance manufacturers, giving the system the ability to "act", with connected home appliances acting as the execution end. The second end connects to sensor manufacturers, giving the system the ability to "perceive", with sensors collecting data and various home appliances making corresponding feedback actions based on the data information. The third end connects to Internet giants, giving the system the ability to "cognite", collecting user data and uploading it to the cloud, and devices responding to human behavior based on big data. BroadLink DNA plays the role of a link in this.

Smart home is an ecosystem. Only through win-win cooperation can a true smart home be realized.

What is your smart home self-service supermarket like now? How do you define the smart part of smart home?

We have been working hard on single products and continuously launching new products to enrich the missing elements in smart homes. For example, if there is no broadcast center, we launched a Wi-Fi speaker. We have cooperated with leading companies in the industry to deepen, strengthen and continuously iterate each product. In 2015, we will introduce deep intelligence based on the interconnection foundation laid in 2014, and further improve the "self-service supermarket" from single products to systems.

Smart home is divided into three steps. The first step is to connect the devices to the Internet. However, just being connected to the Internet does not necessarily mean that it is smart. It can only be said that the device can be remotely controlled. The second stage is that the products must be interoperable. If they are not interoperable, users will not buy it. It is difficult for people to accept using different apps to control different devices. The third step is that after interoperability, adding some sensors, home automation can be achieved. Through sensors, home appliances, lights, curtains, etc. can automatically sense and operate, but it is not the ultimate goal. The ultimate intelligence is to introduce artificial intelligence after data mining, so that people and machines can interact very naturally. The machine can understand what I want to do, or execute what I want to do. The machine serves us, rather than us opening the program every day to control these devices. When a device understands you, it is truly intelligent.

Let me express some hopes and suggestions for the smart home industry.

The hope for the smart home industry is still openness and win-win, after all, only an open ecosystem can lead to a future.

All major giants and domestic and foreign platforms are cooperating.

In addition to smart products, smart homes also need cloud services provided by Internet companies. Cloud technology has the ability to store, calculate and mine data, collect user experience and feedback, and achieve better smart home services through big data analysis.

We hope that through smart products, users can experience the convenience and fun of smart homes; through BroadLink DNA, we can connect partners from various fields such as home appliance manufacturers, sensor manufacturers, and Internet giants to make the smart home ecosystem more prosperous.