The market size of smart hardware will reach 50 billion yuan, and smart home will become a new trend

Three years ago, the emergence of smart bracelets brought wearable devices into people's lives for the first time, and also kicked off the stage of smart hardware. Since then, various products have begun to enter their own intelligent processes. After a period of wild growth, the prototype of the smart industry has initially emerged, and smart watches and drones are the two brightest stars. As a result, the market temperature has gradually cooled down, and smart products may enter a stable development stage or die, and trends have begun to surface.

Basically, there is always a category that becomes the focus of the smart market every year. This field not only concentrates more industry resources, but also attracts more media attention. Judging from the popularity at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, there is no doubt that VR will be a major focus in 2016. However, judging from the situation this year, the overall cost of VR hardware is relatively high, and the most competitive products have not really entered the consumer market, so this part of the products will not account for too high a proportion of the entire smart market.

Based on the Chinese market, the "China Smart Hardware Industry Series Research Report" released by iResearch Consulting shows that the scale of my country's smart hardware market was 42.4 billion yuan in 2015 and will exceed 50 billion yuan in 2016. In this growing pie, which field will be the highlight in the coming year?

The report analyzes the sales share of various categories of hardware products in China in the past year. From the above figure, we can intuitively see that the sales share of smart furniture products is significantly higher than that of other categories. This is basically consistent with the data reported by e-commerce platforms. According to Qianxue from Alibaba's Smart Life Division, several products with sales of over 100 million yuan on Alibaba's e-commerce platform in 2015 were all from the smart home field, including a certain brand of sweeping robots and two smart air conditioners. In addition, smart air purifiers and water purifiers are also particularly popular with consumers. Among the 51 typical smart hardware projects released by JD.com last July, smart home products accounted for 37%.

Looking at the global market, the latest report released by Research and Markets shows that the global smart home equipment and service market will grow at an annual rate of 8% to 10% in the next five years, and the market size will reach US$68 billion by 2018.

It can be seen that for a long time in the future, smart home products will be the backbone of the smart market. This is related to the attributes of the product itself. For consumers, a large part of the value of intelligence lies in solving existing problems in a convenient way, rather than creating a new or insignificant problem and then solving it. The transformation of the original home products can fundamentally avoid the drawbacks of "pseudo-demand". Televisions, electric lights, air conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines, etc. are originally the most commonly used products in people's lives. This is also one of the biggest differences between smart home and smart medical care. The former is an upgrade of civilian scenarios, while the latter is transferring professional uses to ordinary scenarios, which naturally hinders more.

Electrical appliances are also the type of products that are closest to intelligence. Some people regard intelligence as the core of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and its application in this field can be said to be just in line with the technological revolution of electrification. Compared with smart transportation, home products involve fewer systems, simpler structures, and faster advancement.

In the past two years, the development of smart home products has been very stable, without the "big ups" or "big downs" of other products. One of the important reasons is that these products, especially large home appliances, have relatively high entry barriers, resulting in the players being either giants in the traditional home appliance industry or giants in the emerging Internet industry, which invisibly reduces the risk of the entire industry. On the one hand, it directly blocks small and medium-sized startups from entering the market, and on the other hand, even if the smartization is not successful, it will not affect the original home appliance market. In addition, the influence of core players can also lead the establishment of industry standards.

In addition, under the background of the overall economic downturn, the status of the real estate industry is difficult to reduce in a short period of time. How can we play with this traditional industry and inject some fresh blood into this field that can't be any older? Intelligence is a good attempt. Many real estate and home improvement companies have joined hands with technology companies to start exploring this aspect. If successful, it will also be a good growth point for the entire smart home industry.

Although the enthusiasm of capital for smart hardware has declined significantly, it is not enough to impact the smart home market dominated by big players. In 2016, whether or not there are hit products, the smart home products will continue to advance steadily and occupy a pivotal position in the smart market. For investors, this may also be a relatively safe area.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.