How does a smart home "seat a seat"?

Friends who have read "Water Margin" know that Liangshan Puli has an important thing, that is, "seats". After Liang Shanbo's development and growth, the first thing to do is to rank everyone. One hundred and eight will be, who is the boss, who is the second child, must be clear and clear. If the seats are not arranged well, chaos will be inevitable. For example, Wang Lun, the first owner of Liang Shanbo, is reluctant to give way to Lin Chong, who is better than himself. The result is a fire. The smart home industry is also facing the problem of “seats”. With the advancement of the intelligent trend, there are more and more smart products in the family. Whoever "sings the protagonist" and "becomes the boss" becomes a big problem. This problem is becoming more and more urgent and has become the biggest obstacle to the popularity of smart homes. The debate about who is the smart home entrance has been around for a long time. The first to be put on the stage is the smartphone. The popularity of smartphones has ended. As early as 2014, the size of China's smartphone market reached about 400 million, accounting for one-third of the global scale, laying the groundwork for the outbreak of China's smart home market. In addition to having a large user base, the smartphone is also portable, highly viscous, powerful, and compatible, making it ideal for use as a control center for smart homes.

However, the voice of opposition is equally loud: despite the power of the smartphone, its essence is still a universal remote control. Turning off the lights with the mobile app doesn't make our life easier than just pressing the switch on the wall. A true smart home should make users feel that there is no intelligence, rather than requiring users to control it.

Also on the stage are smart routers and smart switches. Since the popularity of mobile networks to the average user's home, the router has become a must-have hardware for every household. Because smart products can't escape the cliché of networking, routers have become the preferred device for intelligent control cores. Unlike smart routers, the advantages of smart sockets are the one-to-one discrete control that maximizes the concept of intelligence on a single product. Another advantage of smart sockets is the ability to quickly improve non-smart devices as smart devices. But in your home, there are also non-intelligent products such as electric lights and electric kettles, which can be intelligently controlled through smart sockets.

However, the world has two sides. It is difficult for smart routers to strengthen the depth of intelligent control when the scope of intelligent control is broadened. While smart sockets can increase the depth of control, they are based on sacrificing a large amount of material costs. Therefore, each has its own advantages and disadvantages.

The disputes in the industry have been debated, and the smart home center has been uncertain. Then some manufacturers came out and said: "Now the entrance of smart home is definitely not a single entrance. Now the obvious trend is multi-entry, decentralization, emphasizing intelligent senses and intelligent interactive experience. You can understand that the refrigerator is also an entrance, the speaker is also a Entrance, the mobile phone is also an entrance, this is a very normal and healthy phenomenon." In fact, the essence behind this view is to promote their own set of things, either the SDK, or the control protocol, the processor, the core is to let other families come Compatible with yourself and master the upstream position of the industry chain.

In fact, no matter how the manufacturers argue, an unavoidable fact is that almost all the smart home products that have been announced are operated and controlled by mobile phones. So why are almost all manufacturers deliberately ignoring this fact and constantly asking the question "Is the mobile phone really a control center for smart homes?" The answer is self-evident, manufacturers want their products to become smart home controls. Center to get the big data behind. Taking home appliances as an example, “smart” has brought a certain premium to the fiercely competitive home appliance market. At present, the cost difference between smart products and common products is mainly a network module, about tens of dollars, and the price of smart home appliances can be one or two hundred higher. However, there is no threshold for this. Soon, this part of the premium will be destroyed. By then, the intelligence can be brought to the manufacturer, and only the data is left.

Therefore, what manufacturers really ask is "Do we really have to hand over the control of users, products, and data to mobile phones, and then to Internet companies represented by BAT?" In order to retain user data, at present, several major manufacturers For the networking, control and interconnection of home appliances, different standards and protocols are adopted, which are difficult to interconnect. The inability to connect and interoperate has become the biggest obstacle to the development and popularization of smart homes.

Major platforms such as Midea, Haier, Jingdong Weilian and major manufacturers are trying their best to reduce barriers through “opening”. The platform continues to absorb small smart hardware products and some brand manufacturers' products into their own systems, such as Jingdong Weilian; manufacturers continue to integrate non-competitor resources. However, different brands and even different cloud service providers need different apps to control, and the user experience is not good. There is no interconnection between the platforms, which leads to the fragmentation of the scene of the smart home. If consumers want to experience a cool smart home, they must replace all the old ones at once. Users who buy new homes must also give up the choice of products and choose products only within one brand or platform. For example, you can only choose products in the Jingdong Weilian camp or products in the M-smart camp. But this is almost impossible for home appliances that naturally have the "update and slow" attribute.

How to solve the entrance dispute of smart home is a severe test for manufacturers. To solve this problem badly, the popularity of smart homes may only be an empty talk. What are the countermeasures for manufacturers, we may wish to wait and see.