The opening show of the Magic Factory: reducing the burden and adding color to smart homes

At the just-concluded National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, Premier Li Keqiang stressed that "Internet Plus" should be included as a strategy for the transformation and upgrading of traditional Chinese enterprises in the Internet era.

As a representative of China's large private enterprises, Lenovo Group has entrusted the important task of transformation and exploration into the Internet to the Magic Factory led by Chen Xudong.

On March 25, Lenovo Magic Factory submitted its first answer sheet.

A series of products are released to compete for the smart hardware ecosystem

Although Xiaomi, Haier, Meizu, JD.com and Internet giants BAT are actively developing smart home ecosystems, smart hardware products are still more about hype than content. Problems such as unstable product performance, complex connections, and poor practicality harm the user experience. So far, there is no successful model that can be replicated in the smart home ecosystem around the world.

In such a market context, this time, Magic Factory launched two products, one is the 188 yuan free-installation smart router newifi mini magic version and the other is a set of smart home products new home (including smart home control center, smart door and window sensors, smart infrared human body sensors, LED smart bulbs, smart wireless switches and reset magnetic sticks).

Among them, the smart home control center and newifi mini magic version constitute the "central brain" of the magic factory smart home ecosystem. Through the unified single App control mode, consistent control and experience of smart home can be achieved.

Chen Xudong, CEO of Magic Factory, said, "A very important mission of Magic Factory is to explore new strategies in the mobile Internet or the future Internet of Things. Magic Factory's own brand of smartphone products will be released in the second half of the year. In the field of the Internet of Things, Magic Factory is committed to building an open and convenient smart ecosystem."

Break the bubble of the smart ecosystem with subtraction

As smart home is a hot topic around the world, Chen Xudong once said, "I think 99% of the products made by companies may end up being failures, and only a few products will be successful. Because so many people are trying, there will definitely be a lot of bubbles, and the quality of the smart home products currently launched is very uneven."

Judging from the current smart home products, it is difficult to make breakthroughs in practicality and ease of use. Only when ordinary users can operate them with ease, in addition to enthusiasts, can smart homes be truly pushed into the consumer market.

Both products released by Magic Factory send a strong signal: they are doing subtraction for smart homes.

The main feature of newifi mini magic version is that it does not require installation, breaking the vicious circle that smart routers are only for technology experts. It is the first to introduce a one-key migration function. When users use it for the first time, they only need to connect the old and new routers with an Ethernet cable and press the RESET button. The familiar Internet configuration will be automatically migrated to the newifi mini magic version, which captures the core needs of current users when replacing smart routers.

It is understood that the smart home control center released by Innovation Works is compatible with the most mainstream Zigbee protocol. In the future, the smart home control center will also have multi-protocol gateways equipped with the newhome platform. By simplifying and unifying, the compatibility of the entire home ecosystem entrance will be infinitely expanded. It plans to connect 200 to 400 devices this year. In the future, Magic Works will open the SDK interface to attract more manufacturers to join the platform.

Regarding the development of Magic Factory, Lenovo Group President Yang Yuanqing once clearly stated that there was no specific sales target for this new business company, and Magic Factory was more responsible for incubating new products and new businesses. Without the pressure of KPI, the only tasks left for Magic Factory to complete were innovation and embracing the Internet, and the smart home product that was reduced to a minimum was the first answer that Chen Xudong handed over to Lenovo.

According to a joint survey conducted by Aowei Cloud Network and Tencent Home Appliances, the current user interest in smart homes has reached 95.2%, but 87.5% of users are dissatisfied with the current status of smart homes, saying that it is completely inconsistent with their expectations or is lower than their expectations.

At this stage, competition in the smart home market is becoming increasingly fierce, but what users need is not gimmicks, but the ultimate operating experience. After the manufacturers' fanatical following of the trend, it is time to calm down in the Internet wave and do some subtraction for smart hardware products.

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.