2014 Smart Routers and TV Boxes: One is a Minor and the Other is a Half-Disabled

With the popularity of the smart home concept, too many manufacturers joined the battle in 2014. Smart TVs, smart light bulbs, smart speakers, smart curtains, smart air purifiers... even almost all consumer electronic products are given the title of smart to show their avant-garde and excellence.

The most popular word in the field of smart home this year is "entrance". The core meaning of the so-called "entrance" is to occupy users with hardware products, and then build an ecosystem behind it, thereby generating huge subsequent commercial benefits. It is said that whoever controls the entrance to smart home can grasp the future of smart home.

It is under such "theoretical guidance" that both traditional IT manufacturers and hardware start-ups with radical spirit are trying to find the entrance to the future 100 billion market by launching various smart hardware products. After searching for a long time, everyone found that perhaps the most inconspicuous router and the popular TV box are the most suitable candidates. So, what happened to these two "key figures" in the future development of smart home in 2014? What is the future development trend? These are the topics we are going to discuss today.

Why did you choose them for the competition of the living room entrance?

Since the door of Bill Gates' "home of the future" was knocked open several years ago, the concept of smart home has gradually entered the minds of Chinese people. According to statistics, by 2020, the scale of China's smart home market will reach more than 350 billion yuan. Regardless of the accuracy of this data, the impact of smart home on people's daily life in the future is undoubtedly unquestionable.

In order to share this huge pie, not only international giants such as Google and Amazon , and traditional domestic enterprises such as Haier and Changhong, but also some domestic Internet start-ups have joined in bravely, and they have all locked their sights on one area - the living room. In their view, routers and TV boxes are the best choices to enter the living room and open the smart door of your home.

The reason for choosing routers and TV boxes is mainly that major manufacturers have taken a fancy to the fact that router products are at the upper level of the entire smart home. Since all home appliances will be connected to the Internet in the future, controlling the router may control all home devices. Although TV boxes have always been considered to be a temporary substitute in the stage when smart TVs are not yet popular, in this relatively long-term updating and replacement process, TV boxes that cost a few hundred yuan are one of the hardware devices that are currently closest to users and most likely to be added to the home.

After becoming intelligent, these two products have a common feature that they can have independent operating systems. Users can install a large number of software by themselves, making the home environment full of infinite possibilities.

After seeing this goal, in the field of routers, companies in different fields such as Jilu, Baidu , 360, Shanda Guoke, Huawei, and Xunlei have launched smart router products since the second half of 2013. In the TV box market, there are many brands, and companies such as Apple , Amazon, Google, Huawei, LeTV, and Alibaba are also coming in fiercely.

According to previous data, the number of smart TV boxes is expected to reach 30 million by 2015, and according to last year's Taobao sales data, the combined sales of TV boxes of all brands have exceeded 1 billion yuan.

One is still a minor and the other is already half disabled.

Intelligent routing

Although major manufacturers have chosen routers and TV boxes as breakthroughs in the battle for the entrance to the living room, from the current situation, these two types of products do not have the ability to serve as "entrances" either in terms of their own performance or due to objective environmental conditions.

Let's start with smart routers. The so-called smart router actually means that an independent operating system is installed on the router, and users can install various applications by themselves, and can use mobile devices such as mobile phones to control the network by themselves, so as to achieve intelligent management of the network and devices. In our expectation, smart routers can realize remote background downloads , can connect to any home appliances, realize intelligent control, and can install various APPs like mobile phones to realize functions such as iOS download speed-up, remove video website ads, etc. However, from the current point of view, these functions are quite different from our imagination.

At present, smart router products are roughly divided into two types. One is a product that attracts attention by downloading various software plug-ins to enrich its functions, such as the Ji Router. The other is a product that is directly equipped with a hard drive inside and can realize its own remote download function based on the previous Ji Router, such as the Thunder Router.

Take the most famous smart router, JiRoute JiYiS, for example. As a smart router, it is hard to be considered qualified. First, although the graphical setting interface is relatively simpler than that of traditional routers, it is still not simple enough and is far from being really easy to use. Secondly, its main plug-in extension functions are not only few in number, but most of them are Apple App Store acceleration, Google Play acceleration and other plug-ins that are not very practical for us, and basically have no meaning.

Before launching routers, Xiaomi had already launched TVs, TV boxes, mobile phones and other products. These products need to be connected to the Internet. At this time, the router is equivalent to a network platform that can optimize the network resource usage between different devices, but these applications are only limited to Xiaomi products.

In addition, Xiaomi router and Xunlei router also have NAS (network storage, which can be understood as a home private cloud) function, and can use APP for remote downloading. However, we can't help but ask, is a router with NAS function called a smart router?

Obviously, for the current smart routers, not to mention the ability to add various home appliances, even the installation of its main smart applications has not been done yet. Although the concept of products such as smart routers is worthy of recognition, it is currently like a child who has not yet reached adulthood, so how can we talk about "competition for the entrance"?

TV Box

Let's talk about TV boxes. TV boxes have become popular among smart home manufacturers since last year due to their low prices and rich video functions. At the peak of their popularity, almost all home appliance brands you can think of launched their own box products. In the eyes of most manufacturers, Internet thinking is the savior of the future. Before the era of "free hardware" is about to come, whoever first grasps the users will have the initiative in the future. Although products such as TV boxes will eventually be eliminated, it is the safest move to attract users at a low price before smart TVs are widely popularized.

Judging from the functions of the boxes at the time, this type of product did bring a lot of convenience to users. The most important point was that it opened up the long-sealed TV screen in your home. You could use the TV box to watch various online videos, download various applications, and even tempting Android games would bring you back to your student days when you sat in front of the TV playing games all day.

For example, Taijie Video TV version is integrated into Taijie WEBOX, and you can choose videos of different clarity from different video sources such as Tencent Video, Sohu Video, LeTV, etc. for on-demand viewing; the previous Alibaba Cloud TV box can be linked to Alipay to shop and pay utility bills through TV; and BesTV Little Red Box focuses on the download function and has added Thunder's remote download service, so the TV box can be used as a simple NAS.

Obviously, the above applications are just the first step for manufacturers. In the future, the cultivation of user usage habits, the layout of smart homes, and the expectation of applications such as TV shopping and games are all further goals that manufacturers want to achieve.

However, the manufacturers who had planned everything well did not expect that the SARFT's series of strong crackdowns on TV boxes since June this year cast a shadow over all TV boxes, and even some TV boxes suffered a devastating blow.

For the box manufacturers at this time, it is like just when they were about to fight in the arena, they were suddenly beaten half-crippled by the big boss who had been hiding behind them. Therefore, there are only two choices for the box manufacturers now: either die or cooperate according to the rules of others.

Combining the two may be another new path

In summary, from the current situation, the two "key figures" selected by major manufacturers as the future development of smart home are not in a good situation this year. One is due to their own reasons, and the other is due to objective reasons. But even so, what cannot be stopped is that the momentum of smart home is still growing, and it is getting stronger and stronger.

In the case of irreversible macroeconomic situation, we might as well calm down and rethink the future of these two types of products. I think the most important thing for smart routers to do well is to have an open mind. Whether it is in the construction of the plug-in function ecosystem or in the unified standards of smart home applications, it is not advisable to fight alone or work independently.

In addition, there is a voice in the market: in the future, communication operators will join the competition for routers. In other words, when your family installs ADSL in the future, the "extra" modem will not only integrate the routing function, but also directly bind the account to it. In this way, the existing routers will be completely replaced. Of course, the credibility of this news is still questionable. Although communication operators pay more attention to routers, they should not forcibly occupy the home router market, nor do they have the ability to do so, especially in the current context of high anti-monopoly pressure.

As for TV boxes, there are two paths in the future. One is to weaken the previous video advantage and work hard on games, shopping, and multi-device interconnection. The other is to honestly establish a joint venture with the licensee to achieve the transfer of video content and review authority.

Finally, I would like to talk about the reason why this article discusses smart routers and smart TV boxes together. First, these two types of products are regarded by major manufacturers as the entrance to smart homes; second, I think that combining these two types of products into one may be another new path for their future development.

In fact, if you think about it carefully, the so-called smart router is actually more like a combination of a TV box + routing function, and in the future these two types of products may be integrated to jointly shoulder the task of realizing smart home.

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.