Shadows in the Sun! The death list of smart hardware is here

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Smart hardware, as a typical product feature of the Internet of Things era, has experienced germination, exploration and development from 2012 to 2015. The entire market is gradually heating up, and the market share is growing exponentially. Thousands of new products, tens of millions of crowdfunding, and the active participation of BAT giants have led to a brilliant transformation from grassroots teams to companies with a valuation of over 100 million...

The smart hardware market is booming, but behind the brilliant market, some products and companies have lost their former glory and are gradually falling into the shadows. This article lists these smart hardware that have been abandoned or are being abandoned, hoping to serve as a warning to those who come after them.

Shadows in the Sun: The Death List of Smart Hardware

Since the development of Project Glass in 2012, Google Glass has been like a depth bomb, which has received a huge response. After that, many businesses followed suit, and smart glasses became popular. As my country's first eye-controlled smart glasses, aGlass has attracted much attention from the media and the public after its release. However, the good times of smart glasses did not last long. Internationally, in November 2014, Google closed its only physical retail store. In January 2015, Google announced that it would stop producing the current form of Google Glass. After 2014, there has been almost no news about aGlass in China, let alone new product releases. There is no trace of it when searching several major e-commerce and portal websites.

Haloband is a bracelet with a legendary story. It was developed and produced by a Chinese team. It was first successfully crowdfunded on Kickstarter, the world's largest crowdfunding platform, raising $45,288 and once ranked in the top three, attracting widespread attention from foreign technology media. However, in 2015, Haloband fell into silence and sales were dismal. After being active for a period of time, Litu, QR code paipai, Huanxiang health smart bracelet, etc., have all withdrawn from major e-commerce platforms and disappeared.

Apple Watch, the leading smartwatch, also tried to bundle Apple Watch with iPhone for discount promotion in November in order to boost Apple Watch sales. In China, smartwatches are still active, with new brands constantly entering the market, but also products constantly exiting the market. Fashion Comm, Tianshi, and EMGRING smartwatches generally have low recognition, and their market share is almost negligible. The fate of being "abandoned" is not far away.

Baidu entered the smart hardware field early, but the first few products it tried all came to nothing. When Baidu Music Box was launched, it was welcomed by many music lovers and smart hardware enthusiasts. However, by the end of 2014, Baidu announced that it would no longer update it, and Baidu Music Box became out of print. Baidu Kuaisou and Baidu Anti-lost Patch also had great concepts in the early stage, but they were much ado about nothing.

Iorgane Orange Smart Water Cup was once a star product on JD.com crowdfunding. It started small-scale trial production in October 2014, but by July 2015, Shenzhen Orange Weiye Technology had gone bankrupt and liquidated. The news that Moji Weather, an Internet company that crosses over to make smart hardware, would make smart hardware has attracted much attention from the beginning. Air Fruit can be said to be popular before it is released. However, up to now, browsing several major e-commerce platforms, Air Fruit has disappeared and has been forgotten by people.

A brief analysis of the cause of death

The impact of capital markets on smart hardware

The main reason for the O2O death list that was widely circulated in the early stage was the broken financing capital chain and the lack of sustainable business model of the enterprises themselves. The "China Smart Hardware Trend Analysis Report" released by JD.com pointed out that the sales volume of China's smart product market in 2014 was nearly 1 billion yuan, but the financing amount of the smart hardware industry in 2014 reached 4.7 billion yuan. In the early stage of the industry's development, smart hardware start-ups were highly dependent on the capital market and were greatly affected by the capital market. According to incomplete statistics, there were more than 120 smart hardware investment cases in 2014, of which more than 70 start-ups received about 650 million US dollars in investment.

In 2014, the capital market's attention and investment in smart hardware greatly promoted the prosperity of the smart hardware market. However, in the second half of 2014 and the first half of 2015, few companies were able to obtain round B and round C financing, and even angel and round A financing became difficult. According to statistics, as of September 2015, more than 270 smart hardware companies had completed the angel round to round A, while only 18 companies had completed the round B. After the 2014 smart hardware investment boom subsided, the capital market began to calmly analyze and wait and see, causing a number of domestic small and medium-sized enterprises to withdraw.

Supply chain immaturity

In the early days of the smart hardware market, there was no outstanding product that could continue to explode the consumer market. Under such circumstances, the supply chain and foundries did not dare to expand production on a large scale. Some key chip and sensor suppliers were scarce, with low production and high costs. This slowed down the development and mass production of smart hardware, and also caused the high price of smart hardware and low cost performance.

Insufficient system and functional experience

The operating system is not simple enough, there are few connection services, and there is a lack of heavyweight, targeted and excellent applications. In terms of user experience, the appearance is not beautiful and diverse enough, the material is not safe and comfortable, and the waterproof ability is not high. There are two most important problems: one is the excessive dependence on mobile phones, and the other is the lack of continuous battery life. Taking smart watches as an example, Apple smart watches must be used with Apple phones, and their battery life is only 18 hours. The low practicality of the product and the insufficient realization of the value of intelligent functions have prevented smart hardware from becoming a rigid demand for users.

Overlapping application scenarios

The application scenarios of smart hardware can be mainly divided into two aspects: the first scenario is convenient information prompts and signal control, including data information reminders and signal control of other smart devices. The second is simple monitoring related to sports health. However, products such as smart bracelets, smart watches, smart shoes, and smart water cups all involve these two aspects, resulting in a situation where smart hardware has many functions but lacks pertinence. From the perspective of categories, the current smart hardware product categories are quite concentrated: smart bracelets, smart watches, smart sockets, and smart cameras account for more than 90% of the smart hardware product share, and manufacturers are struggling in the "red ocean" of homogeneous competition.

Improper marketing and promotion

First, the marketing rhythm is not accurate enough. Successful marketing must have precise rhythm control in crowdfunding, publicity, first release, mass production and sales. Take crowdfunding as an example. If crowdfunding is too early, the product will be exposed in advance and will face greater competition after the product is launched. At the same time, if crowdfunding is too early, the gap between mass production and later stage will be too long, which will lose attention and cause users to wait too long and have a poor experience. The frequent delays in 2014 strongly proved this point.

However, it is not good to arrange crowdfunding too late. On the one hand, similar products may have already come out and lack topicality. Second, the promotion strength and coverage are insufficient. Most of the smart hardware in China is promoted through vertical media, and a small part is promoted through platform portals. However, except for a few products, ordinary people do not have a high understanding of the large variety and quantity of smart hardware. Third, the prevalence of false orders in crowdfunding has led to false prosperity.

The first project on JD.com's crowdfunding platform, "Wukong i8 Air Conditioner Smart Companion", which raised more than 10 million yuan with a customer unit price of less than 100 yuan, was questioned for fake orders. The data of the project first skyrocketed within an hour, and then remained basically unchanged. Second, when you open the JD.com reviews of the product, you will find that they are all flooded with online comments. Today's crowdfunding platform has become a new way to advertise and promote marketing, and the crowdfunding platform is deviating from its original intention.

Facing "death", where is the future of smart hardware?

Rapid elimination

The excessive expectations of the capital market for smart hardware have disappeared, and investment has become more calm and cautious. At the same time, a large number of new products have been introduced, and homogeneous competition has further intensified. This will make the rule of survival of the fittest in smart hardware more prominent, and products with weak competitiveness, such as copycats, products that are out of touch with consumer demand, products with poor practicality, products with low technical content, and products with single services, will disappear on a large scale, and the elimination speed will be very fast.

The overall layout is initially completed

So far, the three giants of BAT have all preliminarily completed their strategic layout in the field of smart hardware. We have seen that Alibaba has integrated the three business departments of Tmall Electric City, Alibaba Smart Cloud, and Taobao Crowdfunding under the group to establish the Smart Life Division to fully promote smart products. Tencent launched the TOS+ open platform, and WeChat wants to be a connector, aiming to establish an access platform for smart hardware entrepreneurs. Baidu has the "BaiduInside" plan for innovative smart hardware, the Baidu Inside platform, and the Baidu Future Store based on the aggregated sales of smart hardware, as well as the dulife platform for the health monitoring field, and the "DuerOS" in the field of artificial intelligence. In addition, JD.com has a hardware incubation plan JD+, and Xiaomi's smart hardware ecosystem has been expanding its layout without boundaries. This means that small and medium-sized entrepreneurs who rely on capital, lack platforms, funds, technology and brands will gradually be marginalized if they do not make breakthroughs. It is also difficult for new forces to enter.

Intelligent hardware comprehensive management platform gradually emerges

Smart hardware's requirements for supporting software will no longer be limited to simply connecting hardware to mobile phones, but will move towards one software controlling multiple hardware, further improving data accumulation and analysis, and more closely integrating with third-party services to provide users with content and services, which is the so-called smart hardware 2.0 era. Smart hardware companies that only sell smart hardware as electronic consumer products but lack or have shortcomings in software will gradually lose their competitiveness and gradually face elimination. We found that some excellent startups have already transformed in this direction, such as lifesmart, which makes smart homes, and "Mango Home", the Chinese version of life360's home positioning product.

Smart hardware is gradually changing people's lives and consumption habits

With the increase in the types and quantity of smart hardware products, and the upgrading of technology and services, smart hardware is gradually moving from geeks to the general public. The price of smart hardware will be more affordable, and it will play an increasingly important role in people's daily lives. At the same time, with the prevalence of mobile payments and the development of corresponding smart hardware, people's consumption habits will gradually change. This puts higher requirements on the battery life and wearing experience of the hardware.

"Death" is not scary. We are full of confidence in the future of the smart hardware industry, but we should also calmly see the fierce competition and many existing shortcomings in the development of smart hardware, and correctly understand the light and dark of the smart hardware industry. From the perspective of consumers, based on actual needs, we will improve the industrial chain and system, make intelligence simpler for people's lives, and thus let the smart hardware industry mature and prosper in the context of the capital winter.

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.