Recently, the State Council issued the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Digital Economy", emphasizing that seizing new opportunities for digital development during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period will be able to effectively expand new spaces for economic development, and require the creation of a new digital life with wisdom sharing. This is of great significance to the smart home industry.
In 2022, the scale of the smart home market will exceed 600 billion, and the industrial track has also gathered cross-field giant players such as Huawei, Haier Zhijia, and Xiaomi, and the competition is becoming increasingly fierce. So, what are the similarities and differences between the layout of these three companies in terms of smart homes? What is the ultimate competition in the smart home industry?
Huawei: System and hardware building platform
First look at Huawei, Huawei, as a new player, thanks to its "net red" identity, just played the smart home sign has attracted a lot of attention.
The picture is from the Huawei Whole House Smart official website
Huawei's approach is to integrate home appliance brands, small household appliances, lighting, home furnishing and other manufacturers through the Hongmeng operating system and a set of PLC control buses, so that these manufacturers can join Hongmeng's whole-house intelligent ecology through unified standards. Huawei's whole house intelligence still focuses on the design and construction of software and hardware systems, and has not sunk to the level of home improvement and home furnishing.
If consumers choose Huawei Whole House Intelligence, they can only do the laying of indoor lines, which is equivalent to the "electric reform" link in home improvement. Other types of home improvement, home appliance selection and other services, need to solve their own.
Haier Zhijia: One-stop solution for three-winged bird
When it comes to smart homes, many people will also think of Haier Zhijia, because the name has a "Zhijia", and it is also one of the earliest players in the field of domestic smart homes.
In fact, Haier Zhijia entered the smart home field with Uhome as early as 2006, announced the smart home strategy in 2015, and released the world's first scene brand Tri winged bird in 2020. In the words of Li Huagang, president of Haier Zhijia, "The core of Haier's building of the Internet of Things ecological brand is the smart home, and the core of the smart home is the three-winged bird." ”
The picture is from Haier Smart Home public account
Tri-winged Bird is a one-stop customized smart home platform integrating home appliances, home, home decoration and home life. Users provide an idea on the platform, you can get a one-stop solution for design, decoration, commissioning and service in the three-winged bird experience store, and there are personalized packages such as overall decoration and partial transformation for users to choose.
To put it simply, Haier Zhijia's strategy is to integrate all parties in the industrial chain to form a one-stop smart home solution, reduce users' travel to the west, greatly save the cost of having a smart home, and improve efficiency.
Xiaomi: AIoT plus open platform
Xiaomi has mainly done some AIoT products before. Because there is a huge hardware ecological chain behind it, it has natural advantages in product categories, brands and price, and is thriving in the field of small smart products: such as smart sockets, smart switches, smart curtains, induction doors and windows, smart door locks and so on. Nowadays, the "Xiaomi Family Barrel" has entered many Chinese families.
Image from the MiJia app
Based on the industry's overall consensus on "whole house intelligence", in December 2021, Xiaomi released the whole house intelligence strategy, building an intelligent voice + AIoT platform ecology, and allowing all parties in the industry chain to join in through the introduction of standards, and make great efforts to catch up in terms of products and connections.
In summary, it can be seen that the similarity of the smart home strategies of the three companies is that they all agree that smart homes are not simple smart home appliances, or smart networking, but a complete set of whole house solutions. The difference is that Haier Zhijia focuses on providing one-stop smart home services, while Huawei and Xiaomi focus on standard building.
Smart Home Competition "Experience Innovation"
Since smart home is a complete set of solutions, it is completely impossible to rely on the previous sales of electricity, sell mobile phones and other single product business logic to provide services for consumers. The author believes that the most important thing in smart home is "experience innovation", that is, to comprehensively transform and innovate the entire smart home service consumer process.
Of course, the demand for smart homes is full of huge differentiation, and it is difficult to measure it with a standard. Some consumers want to design their own smart home, and considering the economy, they can choose AIoT products similar to Xiaomi, through the simple connection of WIFI, to achieve intelligent control of some home scenes such as curtains, lamps, door locks, sockets and so on.
If it is a rough house that has not yet been renovated, or a space in the home, consumers want to get a smart life without effort, and they can choose a three-winged bird. Just walk into the Three-Winged Bird Experience Store, talk to the designer about his ideas for the smart home, and then the designer can quickly give suggestions and design solutions. In the three-winged bird experience store, it has collected the decoration materials needed such as building materials, home decoration, and smart home appliances, and you can also intuitively feel the scene experience of each space. Consumers can choose building materials, home improvement services and design solutions according to their individual needs.
If consumers want to do the basic PLC bus control design, they can choose Huawei Whole House Intelligence, and then they can choose the small smart home products of each brand in the Hongmeng ecosystem.
The author believes that no matter what choice consumers make, the ultimate goal is to have a beautiful experience of smart home. The simpler and more attractive the process of purchasing, designing and installing a smart home, because being too cumbersome will reduce the consumer experience and discourage consumers.
In addition, from the perspective of brand positioning, smart home is a new category, and a new category must have a new brand. For example, Volkswagen has started a new brand for its new energy vehicles: ID. Therefore, smart home companies are best to give themselves a new name, which helps consumer identification.
epilogue
The final development trend of smart home is bound to be "experience innovation", and this track must be built with the concept of whole-process service innovation.
If the smart home is divided into three stages: technical standards, product layout and ecological creation, then Huawei and Xiaomi are in the smart home product layout stage, and Haier Zhijia's three-winged bird is in the third stage: the ecological construction stage, which is providing follow-up value-added services for smart home users through food networking, clothing networking, and water networking.
Like mobile phones and the automotive industry, the creators of new categories will inevitably enjoy industry dividends. Apple took 80% of the smartphone industry's profits, while Tesla's automaker accounted for more than 30% of the new energy vehicle market. Therefore, the leader of the trend of the smart home industry is definitely the biggest dividend recipient of this 600 billion market.
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Heart of Rock, author and reviewer of "Deciphering Xiaomi" and "Internet Black Hole, Chinese-style Enterprise Expansion Across Borders".