Smart home industry: Who is the next "pig" in the trend?

The rapid development of the Internet and mobile Internet technologies has put traditional industries on the brink of profound changes. The smart home industry has become the next hot spot in the industry. In this hot spot, there seems to be no clear answer as to who is the flying "pig".

From the development history of the Internet, whether it is the first wave of the Internet or the second wave of mobile Internet, it has driven the development of product forms. For example, in the Internet era, there are Internet "products" such as portals, games, IM, and e-commerce. In the mobile Internet era, there are various mobile phone APP products such as social networking, shopping, and travel.

Today, in the field of smart home, there seems to be no super port that connects users like in the Internet era.

The reason is that the smart home system is too large. The smart home industry chain can be roughly divided into home products, including hardware such as home appliances, smart home systems, manufacturing companies, platforms, etc. The entire industry chain is staggered and distributed, including the Internet, hardware, software, communications, cultural industries, decoration, real estate, etc.

In this huge system, all participants are super players. For example, Haier and Midea are both home appliance companies with a market value of hundreds of billions, while Alibaba and JD.com are both platform companies with a market value of hundreds of billions. In addition, telecom operators have also begun to covet this market, and companies such as Google and Apple have already begun to lay out their plans.

From the perspective of user experience and usage scenarios, the so-called smart home is to interact with the hardware in your home anytime and anywhere. Users can control the air, water, food, temperature, lighting, etc. in their home through remote operation or minimalist operation to meet the comfort and convenience of life. The ultimate of this control is automation. For example, the refrigerator may automatically send purchase information to a sales channel based on the user's food consumption, and the air conditioner will automatically adjust to the appropriate temperature according to the user's off-get off work time, etc.

In such an extreme experience scenario, different home products need to be unified on one platform, controlled by one port, and even all hardware products are interconnected.

But the reality is not so. Different home appliance companies are building their own ecological systems, hoping to become the user's entrance. Therefore, different home appliance brands have their own different APPs. Users need to download different APPs to control these products using their mobile phones. Therefore, for a single user, there are more and more smart hardware, and users need to download more and more APPs, which makes it very cumbersome for users to use.

Therefore, from the perspective of user demand, the smart home field needs a super platform, which has become the object of competition for all smart home participants. From the perspective of enterprises, the competition for platforms is the key to strategic leadership. The platform is to smart homes what the OS system is to smartphones. Whoever can become this "operating system" will occupy the user's entrance.

Super players have seen this opportunity. Traditional home appliance giants such as Haier's U+ system, Apple's HomeKit system, and Samsung's Smart Home service platform are all trying to occupy the most front-end entrance and obtain a large number of user groups and effective data.

Internet companies are not willing to lag behind. Baidu has expanded its smart home platform through the alliance of smart hardware, but these products are still small smart hardware products and have not fully covered the core home appliances such as TVs, refrigerators, and washing machines. Alibaba has entered the market with home entertainment products such as TVs and boxes, and intends to use Cloud OS TV as the entrance to the smart home platform to open up Alibaba's shopping system for home users.

Compared with Baidu and Alibaba, JD.com has made the most in-depth exploration of the intelligent networking of large home appliances. In July 2014, JD.com launched Cloud Assistant, which aggregates the services and data of third-party smart hardware manufacturers to become a platform for everyone to manage their own smart hardware and wearable device data. Its aggregated software services include four categories: cloud home, cloud health, cloud car and personal cloud. JD.com's super APP hopes to fill the data gap of third-party smart hardware devices and use data intercommunication to achieve automatic perception and mutual control of the status of different devices. JD.com has used its original channel advantages to gather domestic first-line brand home appliance manufacturers under its own smart home platform, but it is still in its early stages.

Various big players are doing well and have seen the value of the system and the value of the entrance. However, building a platform and connecting to someone else's platform are obviously different choices of interests. But from the user's perspective, whoever can solve the user's pain points and provide a good experience will be accepted by users and become the mainstream of the future market.

Judging from the current market situation, everyone wants to be the "pig" on the vent. But in fact, smart home is still in its early stages, and it is still in the stage of smart home appliances. It will take some time to become a super platform or portal. In this process, it is necessary to solve the interests of all parties involved and keep close to the needs of users.

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.