The five major trends in smart home industry in 2016!

For the upgrading of smart homes, and ultimately stimulating consumer demand beyond the traditional life concept, 2016 will be a key point in time, and it is also a critical year for the entire smart home industry to go to the left or to the right. The smart home industry needs to focus on the following five aspects in order to change the current lost path, get out of the predicament, and move toward real prosperity.

Technological breakthroughs and product innovation are the foundation

As a kind of technology-oriented high-tech products that provide practical help for life, smart homes should focus on technical R&D rather than propaganda and hype. Technological breakthroughs and product innovation are the basic driving forces for industrial development.

From the research situation, it takes some time to explore, the main performance is: First, the traditional industry, the Internet industry, the new entrepreneurs have not reached a consensus on the understanding of smart home; Second, the hardware industry chain to support home intelligence is not Mature; Third, the so-called system is not a system, the so-called single intelligent hardware is not smart; Fourth, the industrial boundary is relatively vague, leading to cross-border no standard, no cross-system-free situation.

If you look at the current technical level, wired products cannot be upgraded and expanded, and radio frequency products are insecure and unstable, which brings relatively large limitations to the industrial boundaries of the entire smart home industry. In the long run, this will give consumers The cognition has a negative impact.

In addition, due to the current wired or wireless technology, the user experience due to the limitations of the technology itself is not very good, so most of the so-called smart home products do not focus on home, but control around security, lighting, etc. . Or home-based products, most of which simply add people's voice, remote and other simple controls, did not form a true sense of intelligence.

As for the systems that have been initially formed on the market, on the one hand, they cannot meet the needs of home living. On the other hand, the prices are relatively expensive, and the hardware failure rate of the constituent systems is high, plus the technology is relatively professional and used. Unstable, which leads to the situation we see today - smart home industry industry, hot, cold outside, that is, the concept is very hot, the market is very cold.

At present, the core technologies involved in the smart home industry are almost all derived from the developed countries. The domestic technology level is always following, especially in the field of smart home sensor core components, and there is a serious shortage of domestic technologies. According to the survey data, more than 2,000 of the 6,000 kinds of domestic sensors are from abroad. Among them, the imports of high-end sensors accounted for 80%, while almost 100% of the high-end chips rely on imports.

The constraints of core key technologies have undoubtedly become a key element in the development of home intelligence in China. The development and breakthrough of the industrial chain not only influences the pace of the development of the smart home industry, but also guarantees the exclusive needs of the mobile Internet era.

Product innovation, especially hardware innovation based on consumer demand, is to enrich the content of smart home services, expand the use of smart products, and meet the actual needs of home users. Take the current hottest home appliances as an example, “interconnection, communication, perception, and sharing”. It can be seen from the propaganda words of these main pushes that all the businesses currently building are just empty frames with good-looking and imaginative space.

In fact, many household electrical appliances have not been able to meet even the basic consumer demands. For example, energy-saving air conditioners, cleaning of hoods, and quietness of vacuum cleaners, consumers are now more concerned with the improvement of these functions. Through hardware innovation and integration with the software system, even if it is to improve a function, but as long as it can really bring convenience to the user's home life, you can get the user's identity, you can cultivate a good smart home market. This is a key direction for the smart home industry that cannot be ignored in 2015.

Industrial environment and ecological circle support

The ultimate development of an industry depends on its own efforts. It is not enough. Being in an industrial environment, it is inevitable that it will not be able to influence the industrial environment. The same applies to the smart home industry. It is driven and restricted by various environmental factors such as science and technology, capital, society, economy, and living standards. Especially in our country, we have a specific national situation.

Taking domestic smart home development as an example, domestic consumers are first plagued by factors such as traffic, bandwidth, speed, tariff, and stability. Another potential security risk has not yet emerged, namely hacking. In addition, worrying about the quality assurance and after-sales service of smart hardware, the difficulty in improving the living and management environment in the short term, coupled with the lack of regulatory standards and unfair competition, these factors are difficult to promote the healthy development of the smart home industry.

One of the key issues is the current lack of an ecosystem in the smart home industry. In 2014, Smart Home started the "divisional division battle." Apple, Google, Microsoft, Haier, Xiaomi, and LeTV have high-profile expansion of the smart home market. The demand for smart homes with trillions of output value is higher than ... waves, and the establishment of smart shields and chanting circles has always progressed slowly.

The idea of ​​tall ideals can only be fulfilled when it comes to reality. The reason why smart homes still cannot form the core explosive force is that most smart home companies only want to be the “Ottoman” of the single player and are unwilling to compete in joint operations. "Pacific Rim". Smart homes need a "circle" to form a closed ecological ecosystem that works together. Therefore, strengthening industrial cooperation, recasting the industry ecosystem, and creating a “Lianheng” collaborative culture will undoubtedly greatly assist the popularization of smart homes. The establishment of the ecosystem will become a focal point of the smart home industry in 2015. We will see some giants' move to open hardware ports and standards based on the system platform.

Industry norms, standards are guaranteed

The ancients often said that "no rules will not be a round," and the same is true for the development of the industry. Without a unified standard, the industry will “grass”, which not only brings trouble to the enterprise, but also brings great difficulties to consumers. As a result, "the introduction of a set of industry standards as soon as possible, standardize smart home products and markets" has become a common voice of the industry and the terminal.

Earlier, Apple released the next-generation iOS system at the WWI)C conference, which added a smart home application platform to the new system and named HomeKito, through the open HomeKit smart home interface, to integrate with third-party products to realize intelligence. Home equipment is based on platform-based system management.

All devices integrated with Apple's smart home applications will undoubtedly need to meet Apple's standards. In a certain sense, it can be said that Apple will use the establishment of the smart home platform to occupy the industry’s standard commanding heights and control data, users, and applications. Obviously, this kind of standard established spontaneously by the enterprise based on the system platform will be a focus of the smart home industry in 2015, and it will also be a key factor in determining the vitality of the system platform.

On July 2, 2014, Microsoft joined the ALLSeen Alliance in a high profile. The alliance led by the Linux Foundation, Qualcomm, LG Electronics, Sharp and more than 50 technology giants set up, for the electronic home appliances such as electronic thermostats to develop a unified industry standard, its purpose is to occupy the industry commanding heights.

From the perspective of the development of traditional industries and the development of smart industries, eventually everyone will move toward a unified management and control platform. Whether it is Apple's HomeKit or ALLSeen Alliance, it is sending three messages to the market: First, unified industry standards can bring great benefits to enterprises and consumers, can promote the cultivation of the market healthily, and secondly, through the ecosystem. The establishment of a platform can control the right to speak and dominate the development of the industry. Third, through the unification and opening of the system platform, it will promote the development and maturity of smart home hardware products.

Big data, cloud computing is helping

The transition from "looks beautiful" to "beautiful to use" is the bottleneck that most smart homes need to break through now. With this evolution, artificial intelligence, big data, cloud services, and communication technologies will play a decisive role. If the “interconnection and interoperability” of home products is not supported by these links, intelligence can only be a hobby of some technology enthusiasts, and its products are nothing more than traditional mechanical products that can be controlled remotely, which is far from the concept of “smart” life of the public. .

With the big data platform, the future of the Internet of Things will allow businesses to better understand consumer usage habits and improve their experience. Based on the corresponding analysis on the basis of big data, the user experience can be improved in a more targeted manner and new business opportunities can be discovered at the same time. The accurate marketing of big data also plays an important role in guiding the smart home market.

Of course, with big data, cloud computing can't be ignored. The big data generated by the system is obviously inseparable from the transmission of communication technologies and the analysis and decision-making of artificial intelligence. Only with the help of artificial intelligence, big data, cloud services, and communication technologies can we effectively embody and realize the data analysis, mining, and use value generated after home intelligence.

For smart homes, data is generated all the time. If there is no storage device with a large enough capacity for massive data resources from the terminal, it will result in loss. Therefore, the commercial value of data cannot be realized. From this perspective, the cloud Service technology will also receive greater attention in 2015.

For now, ordinary storage devices can hardly keep up with the growth rate required for data storage. "Cloud" as a low-cost virtual computing resource will be a good solution. Combining big data with cloud computing, with the help of artificial intelligence, will become an important push for the development of the smart home industry.

Government support and smart popularization are opportunities

In China's special national conditions, policies have a crucial influence on the development of the industry. In 2011, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the “12th Five-Year Plan for Development of the Internet of Things”, which was one of the important projects for the first time that the Smart Home was listed as a person. With the introduction of the 12th Five-Year Plan of the Internet of Things, smart home ushered in a new round of development boom.

Subsequently, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Land and Resources, the Ministry of Commerce, the State Administration of Taxation, the Bureau of Statistics, the Intellectual Property Office, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Engineering, and the National Standards Committee jointly issued the Special Action Plan for Network Development.

In the application promotion transformation action plan, “promoting smart home application” was listed as one of the 14 key tasks, and the policy to promote the smart home industry is very obvious. These supporting policies for emerging industries are a good opportunity for smart homes.

Similarly, for the three forces of the current smart home industry, that is, traditional home companies, Internet companies, and emerging entrepreneurs, government intervention and supervision will change the existing chaos. As before the government's involvement in the application of the App sector, the heroic era of the Grasshopper Heroes in 2015 was replaced by a more rational and more standardized industrial standard.

“Let life be more intelligent and make home smarter” has always been the mission of smart homes. The future of smart homes is bright, and the process needs constant thinking and perfection. Let users rely on the use of products, truly understand the smart home, know smart home, fall in love with smart home, is the foundation of smart home. Despite the hardships ahead, the prospects are infinitely bright. Let us take the passion of 2014 and push the smart home industry to a healthy development in a more rational way.