Named by CCTV 315, children's smart watches ushered in a good opportunity for reform

If it were not for the CCTV exposure, Xiao Lei would not have known that the original children's smart watch market would be so chaotic. In a special report on the evening of March 15, CCTV exposed many problems in low-end children's smart watches, the most serious of which pointed out that these children's smart watches frantically leaked user privacy and even became "walking voyeurs".

Speaking of smart watches, I believe that everyone will not be unfamiliar, from the birth of Apple Watch, the category of smart watches has existed in the market for more than 7 years and nearly 8 years, and with the continuous efforts of head mobile phone manufacturers, the market share of smart watches in the world continues to rise, and at the same time, pan-smart wearable categories such as smart bracelets have been derived.

According to information recently released by Counterpoint, global smartwatch shipments in 2021 were 127.5 million pieces, an increase of 23.8% year-on-year, and Apple still ranked first, with a market share of 30%, followed by Samsung, Huawei, IMOO, Amazfit and Garmin.

It is not difficult to see that three of the top six smart watch brands in the world are domestic brands, and IMOO, which is owned by BBK and focuses on the children's wear market, ranks fourth, closely following Huawei Samsung. But Xiao Lei was not surprised by this phenomenon at all, because Counterpoint pointed out that China, as the market with the strongest demand for children's smart watches in the world, will become the world's second largest smart watch consumer market in 2021, accounting for 24% of the world's smart watch market. In other words, the Chinese market's enthusiasm for children's smart watches has a long history, and at the same time, it also gives inferior, low-end children's smart watches a breeding ground for nourishment and germination.

With the CCTV report out, Xiao Lei believes that the long-neglected children's smart watch market will inevitably usher in a reshuffle and earthquake, and after the supervision keeps up, an industry reshuffle is inevitable.

Problems arise frequently, stemming from disorderly competition

In fact, the root cause of the low-end children's smart watch chaos disclosed by CCTV is not so mysterious, but it is nothing more than a word: cost saving. According to reports, these low-end children's smart watches lack advanced permission management mechanisms due to the use of an old operating system (Android 4.4), so it is easy to be invaded by third-party software and call hardware permissions, which ultimately causes privacy leakage.

Hearing this, I believe that most digital enthusiasts already know what this is all about, which is the same problem that happened many years ago when the rights management of Android mobile phones was not perfect. At this time, you may have questions, the Android system is basically open source and very well adapted, why do these manufacturers not directly use higher versions or even the latest version of the Android system? Here is still involved in the cost of the problem, these low-end children's smart watches on the e-commerce platform price is often only a hundred and dozens of yuan, so the hardware they use are outdated products, such as low-end SoCs several years ago, these SoCs due to the underlying architecture, computing power and other reasons, naturally do not support high-version operating systems.

Because they do not support new systems with higher versions and richer features, these smartwatches lack the ability to manage permissions, and any software call to hardware permissions can be without the user's consent, and if malware is installed on the watch, they can "do whatever they want".

In fact, from beginning to end, CCTV criticizes those cheap "low-end children's smart watches", on the contrary, those products that are positioned as high-end, or even head brands, are much more powerful in the system's permission management and privacy protection. First of all, at the hardware level, the head manufacturer will try to use the newer, more powerful chip to ensure the fluency of the foundation, relatively these chips have fewer hardware vulnerabilities and are not easy to be invaded by malware.

Secondly, even if the products of the head manufacturers do not use the latest and best chips, their systems will not directly take Android to use, either with low-power systems (such as RTOS) built for smart wear, or with wearable systems such as deeply customized WearOS, and at the system level, vulnerability blocking, elevated privilege management strategies, and prevent privacy leakage.

In the final analysis, low-end children's smart watches are chaotic, or because of disorderly competition in the market. A similar situation is not only in the field of smart watches, but also in the current TWS headset: the rapid development of the market environment allows small workshops to see opportunities for profit, while the rapid maturity of the supply chain cost reduction, allowing them to produce and sell low-end products at a very low cost, and occupy the market with a decent experience.

However, when they occupy the market, they do not care about the privacy protection of users, and even the quality of the product itself is difficult to guarantee.

But on the other hand, it should also be noted that the real mistake may not be these manufacturers of low-end children's smart watches, after all, it is not they who install various dangerous software on the product and steal user privacy, and they do not have the subjective will to do so. Their problem is only to blindly pursue the cost reduction and ignore the importance of blocking system vulnerabilities and providing user privacy protection, so that some criminals have an opportunity.

With the convening of this 315 evening party, I believe that the entire children's smart watch industry can sound the alarm bell, and the children's smart wear market can no longer develop in such a disorderly manner, and it is imperative to be serious and standardized.

Market shuffling, good for head players

With the report out of the street, in the short term, these low-cost, low-end problem children's smart watches will certainly make the majority of parents more vigilant, and some policies will be introduced to restrict the market supervision, but according to Xiao Lei's experience in observing "cottage" mobile phones in the past, it can only be said that it is difficult to make this low-cost product completely dead by relying on supervision alone. I really want to make the crisis-ridden low-end children's smart watch complete news, relying on the industry reshuffle and scientific and technological progress.

Xiao Lei believes that with the heat brought by this CCTV report, head manufacturers can carry out positive publicity, emphasize the safety advantages of their own products, and strengthen user cognition. Personally, I think that one of the important reasons why some parents choose to buy low-end children's smart watches is information asymmetry, they don't know that in fact, many regular manufacturers have legal compliance and full-featured low-end products, if they know that Xiaomi, Huawei, these brands have entry children's smart watches to choose from, I believe that the probability of them choosing miscellaneous products will be much smaller.

However, relying solely on the publicity of manufacturers may be difficult for parents to choose brand products, and there are more realistic problems in front of them.

At present, the competition in the children's smart watch market is insufficient, at least not sufficient. Low-end children's smart watches can be on the e-commerce platform the most fundamental point of the pandemic is cheap, from the CCTV report of the picture, the price of these products is basically around 100 yuan, and the price of the entry-level products mentioned above is rarely less than 200 yuan, but aside from the privacy function of the security level, these "low-end children's smart watches" can also achieve remote calls, photographs, location records and other functions, in other words, although the price is much cheaper, their basic experience and brand products are quite close.

For most consumers, they are not aware of the importance of privacy protection, and do not know what serious effects will be brought about by privacy leakage, while miscellaneous brands, low-priced children's smart watches look rich in functions, close in quality, and the price is worse than the brand products.

Therefore, if you want to completely eliminate these problematic low-end children's smart watches, the standardization and strictness of supervision is on the one hand, and the full competition in the market, especially benign competition, is the key. Due to the large difference between the children's wear market and the general consumer digital market, taking the children's smart watch as an example, its payer and service party are not the same subject, parents who pay for products generally do not understand the product, nor do they know how the specific experience of the product is, and the children who use the product do not know the value reflected in the price, this information gap allows manufacturers to take advantage of the opportunity, they can join hands to raise the premium, "forced" parents to pay.

Or take a head manufacturer's children's smart watch as an example, we can see that the price of its flagship products has reached a high level of nearly 2,000 yuan, such a price can even buy the previous two generations of Apple Watch, but we spent 2,000 yuan to buy the flagship children's smart watch, really in the hardware and software and ecological level beyond the old Apple Watch? I don't think so.

For children's smart watches, its product value not only has the experience value of software and hardware, but also the ecological value cannot be ignored. Taking the little genius watch as an example, he has built a social ecology that WeChat cannot shake among primary and secondary school students, and it is one-way open: only users who wear the little genius smart watch can join the exclusive social circle through the operation of "touching", and there is exclusivity. As the market share of little genius watches continues to rise, the power of this social circle is also continuously magnified, and this social demand has become the main underpinning of the brand premium of little genius watches.

Perhaps some of the unique advantages of children's smart watch brands (such as social attribute advantages) are still unbreakable for the time being, but Xiao Lei believes that the benign market competition is an opportunity to reduce the brand premium again, so that parents have the opportunity to buy products that can satisfy children at a more affordable price, rather than only cottage brands to choose from.

For example, the progress of science and technology, higher performance chips continue to be decentralized, cost reduction, so that low-cost children's smart watches can be used, which naturally can enhance the basic experience of the product itself, but also allow children's smart watches to support more functions, including privacy protection, etc.; for example, the formation of industry consensus, everyone regards privacy protection as the top priority, try to reduce the premium to benefit consumers, etc., the entire industry from the front end to the product to the back end there is still a lot of room for improvement.

For the entire industry, it is a good thing that the problem is exposed, which means that the introduction of the specification is not far away, and this is a rare opportunity for the head manufacturer. For the head manufacturers, the market has shifted from disorder to order, and capable manufacturers can always assume the role of rule-makers and push the rules of market competition to their own advantage. But before this, the market will inevitably experience a vigorous survival of the fittest, and the upper and lower limits of the entire industry will be raised simultaneously.