Smart home is expensive, but it is worth it!

Ms. Wu, who lives in Guangzhou, recently bought a sweeping robot that not only cleans every corner of the house, but also remembers the route and bypasses obstacles. "It's very convenient. It will automatically charge back when it is finished. It can also set a regular cleaning every day, which saves time." Ms. Wu told the First Financial Reporter.

Nowadays, more and more consumers are spending money on home smart devices, from TVs, refrigerators, washing machines to air purifiers, water dispensers, drying racks , to door locks, cat eyes, cameras... with the layout of domestic and foreign giants In this field, China's smart home industry has entered a period of rapid development, but at present it seems that this industry has not experienced explosive growth like mobile Internet and smart phones, and there are still many faces for smart families to enter thousands of households. challenge.

The "expensive" word is the standard of the smart home industry, but it is all the way.

The price of smart items is generally higher

The sweeping robot was the first home smart device that Ms. Wu started. The price of 1649 yuan made her "tangled for a long time" when she decided to purchase. She originally wanted to buy a smart door lock, but the price of 3,000 yuan still made her " give up".

The first financial reporter interviewed a number of consumers of household smart devices, generally reflecting that "price is not high."

In their eyes, the degree of intelligence of a single item does not match its price. Only the function of automation can not be called "intelligence", while the ability to intelligently perceive, interact, and self-learn is generally more expensive.

Take the 2017 explosion of single-piece drying racks and door locks as an example. Automatic drying racks can be purchased in more than 100 yuan, and can be intelligent remote control, telescopic, lighting at least 1000 yuan, plus air drying, drying, disinfection function, at least 2500 yuan; replace an automatic lock 100 Diversified can do it, and intelligent door locks that can be closed, locked, remotely controlled, and support fingerprint passwords, etc., are generally more than 1,500 yuan, plus screen display, fire alarm, and open door record query, at 3,000 yuan. the above.

Friendly reminder, the above prices are all "e-commerce price". If you buy in a physical store, you usually have to go up again. In addition, families with large housing or smart devices need to purchase special gateways to ensure that these terminals are always connected.

According to a portal survey, in the eyes of consumers, the primary problem of smart home products is “expensive”, followed by unfriendly interaction, cumbersome control, and then insufficient stability.

In this regard, Zhu Hong, vice president of the access network product line of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., believes that only when the "quantity" goes up, the price will come down.

He gave the first financial reporter an example, saying that the earliest phone number of 5,000 yuan was installed, and everyone was free at the end. The same is true for broadband. From the very beginning, it is very expensive. Now operators are free to install fiber optics, and also send gateways and send set-top boxes. The key is to increase the quantity. "Looking at a single product now seems to be more expensive, such as smart door locks, but it has reached 10 million units, and broadband has reached the level of 100 million. If the amount of door locks can reach this level, the price will definitely drop. Come down."

Zeng Yuzhou, chairman of Guangzhou Haojia Decoration Materials Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “靓家”), also expressed similar views to the First Financial Reporter. “Before the market promotion, I used 'smart' as a show-off thing, I think the price should be expensive, but I think smart products should be cheap. For manufacturers, what is most needed now is sales, otherwise where is the product iteration? The process of caring for these products is a small young man whose economic accumulation is still in its infancy, and they need to let them experience the convenience brought by smart products with as little money as possible," he said.

This sounds like an infinite loop, and it is obviously unrealistic for companies to sell at a loss. Zhu Hong said that the only solution is to make this industry bigger and let everyone realize that it is beneficial, so that consumers are willing to pay for products and services, and the participants in the entire industry chain are willing to invest in R&D. Providing better services, forming a virtuous circle, and ultimately getting cheaper.

Product interconnection unified standard dystocia

When consumers have more and more smart items in their homes, if they can't solve the interconnection, they will directly lead to a bad user experience, and even give up the control of the previously purchased smart items, returning to the simplest manual operation.

In the view of Chen Xiaoping, CEO of Foshan Yunmi Electrical Technology Co., Ltd., many smart single products use mobile phone APP as the remote control, which is basically the design of “anti-human”. “What we need is the product matrix and scene linkage based on the Internet of Things” .

Specifically, “all the things that are charged at home are connected. They can communicate together and learn by themselves. For example, you may forget to go to watch TV while you are soup, and the TV will remind you; for example, the water quality of your home. Very hard, the water heater is a hard water working mode, the washing machine will also add the composition and dosage of the washing liquid..."

From the perspective of terminal product form, the development of smart home is divided into three stages: single product intelligence, cross product interaction and systemized intelligence. The scenes similar to those in science fiction movies portrayed by Chen Xiaoping belong to the third stage. However, given the current development of big data and artificial intelligence, China's smart families are still at the initial stage and are moving toward the second stage.

The First Financial Reporter learned that there is no international standard for the interconnection of equipment, and it is basically a private agreement between enterprises. The smart home industry chain is long, from upstream chips and components to midstream home appliances, security, to downstream platforms and service providers, with more participants and more and more division of labor.

Zhou Jun, secretary general of the China Smart Home Industry Alliance (CSHIA), told the First Financial Reporter that it is difficult to implement uniform standards at the national level. "The smart family itself is a systematic product. If it is traced back to the competent national authorities, it will be found that it involves the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the National Standardization Administration Committee. It is difficult for us to pass the national administrative orders in the short term. The industry has been regulated. The China Household Electrical Appliances Association has been pushing the interconnection and interoperability solutions for home appliances, but it is only the initial interconnection, such as the ability to control the opening and closing of air conditioners. However, enterprises are reluctant to open up the air conditioners.

The market size will reach 436.9 billion yuan in 2021.

When interoperability between different products is achieved, consumers will find new problems. For example, home network coverage issues, smart home security issues, design style mismatch issues, zero-fire issues, potential presets, etc., some need to be involved in the renovation phase.

Zeng Yuzhou said that especially in the fields of intelligent security, water, electricity, gas, etc., it is only related to the line, but many people did not care at first, and found problems when needed. In addition, not all smart products are light and intelligent design, the switch also has strong and weak electricity, some will also generate signal interference, how many potentials to stay and so on.

“Consumers may not understand, then the industry should be treated as a standard, just like building a foundation, so that consumers will not encounter obstacles in upgrading hardware and software in the future. Everyone has a claim that every participant must recognize My own role, focus on what I am good at, willing to do more synergy, the industry can go forward." Zeng Yuzhou said.

At the recent 2018 Smart Home Industry Innovation Summit, the China Smart Home Improvement Application White Paper was officially released. According to the white paper, according to the report issued by OVUM and Zhiyan Consulting, a third-party consulting organization in the telecommunications industry, the market size of China's smart home industry reached 29 billion yuan in 2014; the size of China's smart home market will reach 90.8 billion yuan in 2017. According to the report, the average annual compound growth rate of the smart home industry in the next five years (2017~2021) is about 48.12%. By 2021, 120 million households will use smart furniture products and services, and the market size will reach 436.9 billion yuan, accounting for the world. 25% of the market.

The "expensive" word is the standard of the smart home industry, but it is all the way.

"Intelligent and non-intelligent have a big difference. The former can continuously upgrade, iterate, and brush, and improve self-learning ability. Whether this learning is based on big data or AI (artificial intelligence), including the current problem of non-communication, It doesn't matter, because that's what software engineers need to think about, and it's all that can be done in the end. Maybe it's just a code plus an interface. Just like wearing clothes, put them one by one, and then change for better clothes." Chen Xiaoping said.

Editor: China drying rack network - Dabao