Smart home interconnection and interconnection still need five years, how about the "island" phenome

[David Friedman also expects the iot smart home appliances industry to be worth $490 billion in 2019, with developed countries accounting for 60 percent of the market.]

The era of the Internet of Things is so tempting, as one of the most important components of the era of the Internet of things, how to break the "island" phenomenon of smart home?

"First financial daily" reporter recently interviewed on industrial chain each link of different enterprises in, upstream from the intelligent hardware parts suppliers and trading platform, intelligent terminal products manufacturers, to a third party cloud platform access provider, cloud platform and has a strong ability of electricity, everyone to solve intelligence lives in "islands" has a lot to look forward to.

However, some industry veterans predict that it will take five years for smart home products to achieve connectivity.

Brand home appliances do not connect

As an e-commerce platform for China's electronics manufacturing supply chain, Hardegg has been promoting intelligent home appliances. Hard Egg president assistant Wen Dong frankly, now the communication protocol of intelligent hardware is not unified, different cloud platforms have different communication protocols.

"Competition is inevitable, there will be chaos in new markets, and there will be no common standards." Wen Dong said, communication interface standards, such as WiFi, Bluetooth; At the level of operating system, iOS and Android are two major systems, and the manufacturer can develop two versions of App to solve the problem. The big problem is cloud access. No matter Internet companies such as Alibaba, Tencent and JD, or manufacturers such as Samsung, Haier and Midea, their cloud access does not have a unified standard, "you pick me up, you can't pick up others".

A relevant person of e-commerce platform also bluntly, the pain point of smart home is that products can not be linked. Ordinary people do not necessarily buy the same brand of household appliances, such as Midea air conditioning, Haier refrigerator, Samsung TV, they can not be connected. Even though brands can connect to each other vertically, there is a gap between them and other brands horizontally. The giant e-commerce platform is planning to promote interaction between brands.

In fact, no matter Ali, Jingdong, or Suning, Gome, all have such ideas. The problem is that manufacturers also have their own concerns, for user data, product use data voice, dare not easily surrender.

Sun Yingkai, president of Wanhe, admits that companies worry about the confidentiality of their data. "In the future, data will be money. Will you give it away?" Therefore, there must be a game process between the cloud platform of large e-commerce and manufacturers, and powerful manufacturers will also build their own cloud platforms.

Sun Yingkai said that from the perspective of Wanhe, product intelligence will go through the following three stages: first, "single product single cloud", a product docking a cloud, Ali sales of products connected to Ali cloud, Jingdong sales of products connected to Jingdong cloud, 70%~80% of manufacturers are doing this; The second stage is "one product, multiple clouds", a product compatible with different clouds, now there has been "smart cloud" such as the third party cloud service providers, but the level of business cloud is not very mature, very stable, because the more factors to consider, the greater the technical difficulty; In the third stage, "multiple products and one cloud" is the highest level. Products of different brands share the same cloud platform, and the user experience will be the best at that time. However, "a cloudy is advancing, more than a cloud is still in the mud!"

Third-party cloud access platforms rise

"Smart Cloud" company headquarters in Guangzhou, was established in 2005. At the beginning, it mainly provided software technology services to European and American companies. Five years ago, it cut into the ecological chain of Apple peripherals. Because there are many electronic companies in the Pearl River Delta, whose products include blood pressure monitors and wristbands, but they lack software strength, they need partners to help them make their hardware intelligent.

Looking back on the company's growth process, Huang Xixiong, general manager of Smart Cloud, told China Business News that the "service platform" around 2012 was simply based on the fact that many small and medium-sized electronic companies could not afford to develop software, so they adopted a commission model based on product sales. "Some products are less than 100 yuan, and the sales need to be more than 100,000 yuan to cover the development cost, so we set up a cloud platform to monitor product activation, use time, etc."

It is logical that with the growth of Apple's ecological chain, the business of "smart cloud" has also cut into the field of home appliances. In fact, Apple launched its Homekit smart home platform two years ago, and Haier, Midea and others have become partners.

Huang Xixiong said that their charging model is divided into two categories. For small enterprises, they generally adopt the model of charging platform service fees according to product sales. "Smart cloud" provides one-stop product cloud access and management services in the way of public cloud. For large enterprises, such as Haier and Midea, etc., hoping to build their own cloud platforms, "Smart Cloud" provides technical support to help them establish their own private cloud services, and the data of smart home appliances are controlled by these large enterprises themselves.

"Smart hardware has three elements: sensors, cloud access, and smart systems on the server side." Huang believes that the future of big data will be in the cloud. For example, the smart socket is small, and its computing, learning and reserve capabilities are all in the cloud. The cloud will tell the socket after analysis. For example, temperature, infrared, laser and other sensors, which are people's eyes, ears and nose, collect information, while the cloud is like the brain, which makes decisions after gathering information and notifies the terminal to adjust.

Now is the communication protocol of cloud access, which is different. At the level of home appliance enterprises, there are Haier, Midea, Gree, Hisense, TCL, Skyworth and other different manufacturers. At the e-commerce platform level, there are Alibaba, JD.com, Suning and Gome. As Midea open out of the agreement, Haier will not necessarily use; If you give Ali intelligent products first, maybe JD cloud will not be connected. "In the past year, it has been difficult for factories. Jd, Ali, Suning and Gome have all asked to do smart home appliances according to their own standards (referring to cloud access protocol)."

This is where the value of neutral third-party cloud access platforms lies. "We've worked with 70 to 80 communication module vendors, open source, and the manufacturers have found that they can reach a variety of communication module vendors through Smart Cloud." Mr. Huang said the company acts as a "translator" for the agreements of different e-commerce platforms, such as, "We get through to JD.com, and I will adapt to you." The company hopes to connect products of different agreements and make them interconnected.

Such third-party cloud platform service providers are also emerging in the United States, such as Ella iot, which was founded in Silicon Valley. In an interview with our reporter at the end of 2015, David Friedman, CEO of Ella iot, said that the investment of self-built cloud platform is large and the return is uncertain, and the service of third-party cloud platform saves money and worry. Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung are all acquiring iot platforms and implementing their own iot strategies.

There is also fierce competition among the three BAT Internet companies in China. "Ella is not in competition with them. We are an enterprise cloud platform and we want to work with them all. Amazon and wechat have already worked with us." He also expects the value of the Internet-of-things smart home appliance industry to reach $490 billion in 2019, with developed countries accounting for 60 percent of the market.

At present, Aila iot has completed the B round of financing, the amount of financing reached 20 million dollars; Smart Cloud also got 200 million financing last year, becoming the largest single investment in the domestic Internet of Things cloud service industry so far.

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Although the third-party cloud access platform is rising, after all, the volume of giants such as Alibaba and JD.com is too large. To break the "island" phenomenon of smart home, it is still necessary for major manufacturing and circulation giants to "sit down" and promote open cooperation. Wen Dong believes that this needs the guidance of the government, industry associations, and integration in the process of marketization, and the formation of several global alliances, such as 4G has become two standards. Because if we do not cooperate, users will not have a good experience, to the smart home is "not buying".

As one of Ali intelligent business partners, Shanghai Qingke is a supplier of communication modules. Vice President of Shanghai city jian-hong ren to introduce "first financial daily" reporter, smart home industry is developing rapidly, a double tenth, 2015, ali platform has more than 120 smart sheet is tasted, and only less than 10 a year ago, in 2016 is expected to double tenth a intelligent item on ali platform will be more than 300, covering all kinds of intelligent home appliances products.

"We serve 500 customers. Last year, 150 customers mass-produced smart products, and we expect to mass-produce more customers this year." Ren Jianhong said Shanghai Qingke's WiFi modules are embedded in Alibaba's cloud access protocol, so as long as manufacturers assemble modules into smart products, these smart products can access Alibaba's cloud platform. He revealed that Ali this year will promote the exchange between various brands of home appliances. And at present, Shanghai Qingke also has cooperation with Jingdong.

The propulsion strength of home appliance bibcock is very big also. After August 2016, all air conditioners of Midea will have WiFi module as standard. Fang Hongbo, chairman and president of Midea Group, said in an exclusive interview with China Business News at the end of last year that the three aspects of hardware, software and cloud system constitute the smart home system of Midea. In 2016, Midea will release a full range of smart home appliances and Midea smart home system, and connect with all external systems.

The cost of WiFi modules has fallen rapidly in recent years, from about 100 yuan two years ago to more than 20 yuan last year, and will fall to more than 10 yuan this year, or even less than 10 yuan. Accordingly, Huang Xixiong thinks, network function will gradually become the standard of home appliances. Only when connected can value be generated. For example, when the air purifier is turned on, it also drives the air conditioner to start. The RANGE OPENED, SMOKE LAMPBLACK MACHINE AUTOMATICALLY SUCK LAMPBLACK, ONCE THE DEPTH OF SMOKE EXCEEDS THE standard, SMOKE alarm can ring. "Lack of openness is the biggest problem right now." In Ren Jianhong's opinion, to break the idea of "information island" of smart home, one is to continue to promote the intelligence of a single product. As long as the Internet is connected, through big data analysis, users can more accurately find their pain points through product iteration; Second, the major standards alliance further open cooperation; Third, call for more neutral third-party service providers, including hardware intelligent service providers, third-party cloud access service providers, big data analysis application service providers, etc., to promote the interconnection between products.

Ren expects it will take five years for smart homes to become truly artificial and interconnected.