Text/Yang Jianyong
On the track of smart home, the main players with high attention are Huawei, Xiaomi, Haier Zhijia and other big manufacturers. Whether it is from the institutional research report or their own financial report disclosure, they can reflect that they are the largest players in the smart home market. In the whole year of 2021, Xiaomi's revenue from IoT and consumer products reached 85 billion yuan, an increase of 26% year-on-year. Haier Zhijia's revenue reached 227.556 billion yuan, if the impact of Kaos business is restored, it will increase by 15.8% year-on-year, and net profit will be 13.07 billion yuan, an increase of 47.1% year-on-year.
Demand for smart homes is strong, with shipments expected to exceed 260 million units this year
Smart home has become the most potential consumer technology market, mainly because consumers maintain strong demand for various smart devices, the market prospects are broad. From the perspective of shipment data, the shipment volume of the mainland smart home device market will exceed 220 million units in 2021, and the shipment volume is expected to exceed 260 million units in 2022, an increase of 17.1% year-on-year; it is expected to exceed 500 million units by 2026. This data comes from IDC's latest quarterly tracking report on China's smart home device market. At the same time, IDC pointed out that although China's smart home market has undergone several years of development, it is still far from being popularized.
On the one hand, there are still a large number of users who do not understand the smart home, and there is no shortage of potential consumers who are stuck out of concern about complex settings. Therefore, manufacturers not only need to streamline the operation steps from the product side, but also need to upgrade the channel services, improve the professionalism of front-line staff to improve the quality of reach, and actively cooperate with offline channels such as home improvement, strengthen demonstration instructions, reduce user learning costs, and accelerate the user education process. The author understands that Xiaomi and Haier Zhijia have continuously strengthened the sinking of channels in the past year and promoted the construction of integrated sales and service stores.
The channel sinks, and the scene is the best practice for smart home landing
In Xiaomi's new retail strategy, through the construction of sinking stores, through full-link digital operation, strengthen the professional training of store staff, and improve the sales connection rate of IoT products, so as to improve the efficiency of store operations. At present, there are 8.8 million users of five or more devices (excluding smartphones, laptops and tablets) connected to the Xiaomi AIoT platform, and 434 million devices connected to the AIoT platform. Among them, the revenue of smart major appliances (air conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines) in 2021 increased by more than 60% year-on-year, showing that the dual strategy of mobile phone + AIoT has achieved results.
In the key categories of IoT, Xiaomi TV ranked first in China and the top five in the world for three consecutive years; Xiaomi smart air conditioners shipped more than 2 million units worldwide, an increase of more than 70% year-on-year. It shows that Xiaomi has gained a lot on the track of smart home, and is undoubtedly the first manufacturer in the mobile phone camp to harvest the dividend of the smart home market. Of course, the hidden worry behind the ecological chain enterprises "de-milletization" process, as of December 2021, Xiaomi has invested in a total of 390 enterprises, Huami, Yunmi, No. 9 Company, Stone Technology is one of the most representative ecological chain enterprises, have increased the cultivation of their own brands, so that based on the ecological chain enterprises, the construction of intelligent voice + AIoT platform ecology is facing a test.
Haier Zhijia has built a total of 1317 three-winged bird scene stores, covering more than 1,100 building materials markets across the country. After consumers personally experience the full-scenario intelligent customization in the three-winged bird store, they can achieve user value improvement, including doubling the unit price of customers, and the offline channel experience is displayed as king. From the perspective of operating data, driven by the scene brand three-winged bird, in 2021, Haier Zhijia's high-end complete set sales increased by 62% year-on-year, accounting for 10.6 percentage points, rising to 37%; smart complete set sales increased by 15% year-on-year, accounting for 2 percentage points, rising to 17%.
Due to the scene stores all over the country, consumers can realize the improvement of user value by personally experiencing the full-scene intelligent customization in the three-winged bird store, including doubling the unit price of customers, and the offline channel experience is displayed as the king. Reach users with scenes, effectively drive the sales of complete sets of products, and then amplify the value of single users. At the same time, it not only enhances the value of single users, but also harvests high-end market growth opportunities. Taking the high-end brand Casarte as an example, in more than 1,000 three-winged bird stores, hardware sales are driven through scenes, and Casarte's revenue will reach 12.9 billion yuan in 2021, an increase of 40% year-on-year.
The significance of the three-winged bird is not simply to make the product richer and the connection smoother, but to provide users with a seamless intelligent experience in the whole process on the basis of these, and to cooperate with various high-quality ecosystems across industries and fields to create a win-win situation. Therefore, The Three-Winged Bird has the industry's only "one-stop customized smart home service" covering home appliances, home, home decoration and home life, reaching users with scenes and effectively driving the sales of complete sets of products, opening up performance growth space for Haier Zhijia.
At last
Xiaomi harvested the smart home dividend, benefiting from the huge ecological chain enterprises actively cultivated many years ago, as well as the strong demand for smart TVs, smart air conditioners, sweeping robots, air purifiers and other series of smart devices, bringing its IoT and consumer goods revenue to maintain a steady growth trend, and according to the current growth rate, 2022 is expected to break through the 100 billion mark. Haier Zhijia has transformed into a global Internet of Things ecological brand, and is the earliest enterprise in the industry to adapt to the transformation and upgrading of the Internet of Things era. Especially in 2020, the release of the industry's first scene brand, The Three-Winged Bird, allowed Haier Zhijia to officially embark on a new high-speed channel of scene ecology.
In the competition of the smart home market, Haier Zhijia's complete set of scenarios and the Internet of Things ecology, as well as the Xiaomi AIoT intelligent ecology, are all industry-leading layout achievements. Of course, Huawei's competitive strength in the smart home track cannot be underestimated. Overall, haier zhijia, millet, Huawei and other giants from the platform to the ecology, with a set of scenes, the whole house intelligence to promote people's smart family life to achieve at the same time, but also harvested the smart home industry development dividends.
Jianyong Yang, a contributor to Forbes China, is committed to in-depth interpretation of cutting-edge technologies such as the Internet of Things, cloud services and artificial intelligence.