Is Xiaomi challenging Gree and wanting to make white goods?

The news about Lei Jun's gambling has faded away. I heard that Dong Mingzhu was flirting with Meizu, and that the Xiaomi box was released with cable TV function. I also heard that Xiaomi is making smart home products. I can't help but feel that the gambling has become big. At least Lei Jun seems to be serious about it.

I feel that Lei Jun will eventually make home appliances, or even subvert home appliances.

Of course, you can tell me that he has been making home appliances for a long time, isn't it TV? But in Lei Jun's eyes, Xiaomi TV is not really a home appliance, it is an Internet terminal in the living room. The home appliances I'm talking about are white appliances, refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners and the like.

Why do I dare to say this? There are two aspects to analyze. First, Xiaomi's tentacles are extending; second, the home appliance industry is stretching its neck to be subverted. Mobile phones and TVs are strictly speaking screens. Mobile phones also have a chip, while TVs are just a front desk girl with a pretty face. The one who really has the final say is the brain in the home.

So everyone is scrambling for it. For example, those who make intercoms make the intercom screen into the brain, those who make TVs add a chip to the TV and call themselves the brain, and those who make routers want to control the home... Now that Lei Jun is here, mobile phones, TVs, routers, and Xiaomi boxes are naturally a family. They can do a lot of things when connected together. What's more, these products are aggressive and can extend to other people's territories, such as smart homes.

Well, there are so many things that smart homes can do, but when I list them, I find that there is really nothing to do. Things like lights and curtains are just a piece of cake and not worth the bother. When I get home at night and the rice is ready, can I still eat it after soaking it for a day? There are really not many things that smart homes can do that I can't even name.

It's just a few manufacturers talking to themselves and fooling a few rich people with something they use to show off.

Well, the functions above are too small and not worth Lei Jun's effort. What about home appliances? A home appliance manufacturer said that the intelligence of home appliances is our advantage. If Xiaomi does not cooperate with us, it will not be able to control home appliances. Now we are at the door of home appliances. Let's look at the second aspect, what home appliance manufacturers are doing. At least in 2013, a home appliance giant launched an intelligent platform and invited a group of great people to lead the team to brainstorm every day to find the way to intelligentize white appliances.

Home appliances, what do you interact with your refrigerator? I dare not name domestic manufacturers, but I dare laugh at Samsung and LG. Do you really let users buy eggs, then put RFID tags on them, scan them one by one, and scan tomatoes one by one? On the third day, the refrigerator notifies you that you have 2 eggs and 1 tomato at home. Can you make scrambled eggs with tomatoes? Do you really let the refrigerator notify the supermarket to send you a basket of eggs today, or the washing machine to order three packs of diapers for you?

What I mean by this is not that home appliances cannot be intelligent, but this path cannot be achieved by the self-disruption of home appliance manufacturers. In the history of self-disruption, only one great man tried to subvert the culture and failed. In short, in terms of home intelligence, even if there are several new concepts a year, traditional home appliances still have not found the north. Because the north points to themselves, how can they find it? Even if any employee finds it, how dare they say it?

Well, now the two armies meet, who will win?

The home appliance factory said, you don’t have a factory production line, you don’t have accumulation, you don’t have a home appliance brand, you don’t have a supply chain…Okay, you can win in all these aspects, but you know these advantages, even if they are boundless and limitless to some extent, they can only give you an advantage in the competition with OEM factories in the future? Besides, is your industrial organization really better than factories like Foxconn?

Therefore, the so-called threshold of home appliances does not actually exist. It is a psychological defense line for home appliance manufacturers to comfort themselves. Even if it is not a burden, it is at least not an advantage. Now the two companies are at most tied.

If Xiaomi really wants to exceed 100 billion in output value, its current product line will definitely not be enough, so its tentacles are extending everywhere, simply looking for opportunities and testing the waters.

Xiaomi Box plus the cable TV CA support of Jiashi Interactive will subvert cable TV. The difficulty is not in technology, but in comprehensive blockade. This blockade is not really a blockade by the General Administration, but an unsolvable deadlock formed by years of chaos. In this regard, as a practitioner, I have unfortunately tried it, and it can be said that there is no solution. Yongxin Shibo, which is behind Jiashi Interactive, has the highest market share in China, but it is only a small part. Every region will encounter incompatibility issues. This matter is a long story and it is full of tears, so I won’t say it.

The functions of Xiaomi's smart home seem to be uninteresting and have limited appeal now, mainly because they have no technical content (at least what they are doing now has no technical content).

Xiaomi has achieved smart home, and the level of this industry is relatively low, and we look forward to its improvement. The related home appliance giants are all sticking to the old ways, isn't this a breakthrough point? Why does the title say that Xiaomi is going to launch white appliances? If Xiaomi really finds a way to subvert white appliances, old guys like Gree, Haier, and Midea will really not be able to withstand the impact.

The question is, has Lei Jun found the way to disrupt white goods?

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.