Text | Lu Jiu Finance
Xiaomi's practice has proved that simple networking cannot crush traditional home appliance companies, after all, they are still alive.
When everyone is still talking about the traditional three strong american home appliances, Gree and Haier, Xiaomi, as the industry catfish, has quietly become a force that cannot be ignored, and even some industry insiders joke that the home appliance industry that has been involved for many years finally has a public enemy.
In the past ten years, Xiaomi's products have been various, from mobile phones to tablets, from computers to wearable devices, from small household appliances to white, black, kitchen appliances, and finally by the public as "Millet grocery store" nickname, of which televisions, air purifiers and other categories have achieved industry leadership.
At the same time, in 2016, Xiaomi released the Mijia brand, using a set of AIoT systems with the most access devices in the world to connect these home appliances, and then Xiaomi home appliances ushered in a highlight moment.
Now five years later, the networked home appliances are also networked, Xiaomi has also gained the largest market share in many fields, but then it is the time to really meet innovation, how to continue to drive the innovation of the home appliance industry? Because practice has proved that the use of simple networking can not crush the traditional home appliance companies, after all, they are still alive and strong.
The real IoT era is driven by technological innovation, what will the future be like for TVs, air conditioners, and refrigerators? This may be the problem that Xiaomi and all home appliance manufacturers are thinking about at present.
<h2>01 The black electricity has stabilized, and the white electricity still owes a fire</h2>
According to the August research report of Tianfeng Securities, the Xiaomi department has completed the comprehensive layout of home appliances such as white, black, and kitchen appliances, and its IoT consumer product revenue in 2020 has reached a scale of 67.4 billion.
Looking back at the past, Xiaomi does home appliances, which is roughly divided into three parts.
The first stage is the stage of enlightenment, when Xiaomi's strategy starts from home appliances with pain points.
2013 is the starting point of Xiaomi's home appliance journey, but also the downturn in China's home appliance industry, when the home appliance plate (BK.0456) only 3948.44 points, from the launch of the TV box in 2013, Xiaomi has successively launched TVs, air purifiers and other items that later became the industry leader, recruiting precision strikes, and now the home appliance sector has climbed to 14672.48 points.
The second stage is to further improve the small household appliance system and form a preliminary home network.
Since 2015, Xiaomi has successively launched water purifiers, rice cookers, electric kettles, sweeping robots, and a series of products have made Xiaomi's AIoT take shape.
Jingdong home appliance sales Ruichen told Lu Jiu Finance: "Xiaomi's entry period is very good, the industry is rising, there are dividends, Xiaomi's Internet genes have quickly helped its products to be Internet of Things, faster than peer updates." ”
The third stage is the stage of branching out, and the white electricity industry with many giants is also launched in this period.
In 2018, Xiaomi launched four home appliances: electric fans, air conditioners, electric heaters, and washing machines. In 2019, Xiaomi more boldly released a series of products such as refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, gas stoves, range hoods, microwave ovens, etc., and completed the full layout of black electricity, white electricity, kitchen appliances, and small household appliances.
Coupled with the assistance of the Mijia APP and Xiao Ai, Xiaomi's latecomers have become the "first person" of smart homes, and have single-handedly promoted the intelligent process of the entire home appliance industry.
What about the current state of the market? At this stage, Xiaomi has a large advantage in the field of black electricity, some small household appliances also have greater advantages, and the white electricity industry that entered the game late is not strong enough.
In terms of black electricity, according to Jiuqian Middle Office data, on the Tmall platform, in the past four years, Xiaomi TV video and audio products have occupied the first position in the industry's sales with absolute advantages, with sales as high as 3.449 billion in 2020, Hisense (600060), Skyworth (00081. SZ) and TCL (000100.SZ) are close behind, and Sony (SONY.US), which has been in the field of TELEVISION audio and video, is currently in seventh place.
In terms of white electricity, Xiaomi's sales of air conditioners, washing machines and refrigerators in 2020 ranked fifth, seventh and sixteenth, respectively. Facing the impact of Xiaomi, Haier Zhijia (600690. SH), Midea Home Appliances (000527. SZ), Gree Electric Appliances (000651. SZ) did not easily hand over its jianghu status, after all, for Xiaomi, the industry barriers in the field of white electricity are much higher than those in the field of black electricity.
In terms of small household appliances, Xiaomi has made explosive categories such as automatic mobile phone washing, electric mosquito coil, rice cooker, etc., and intelligent hardware such as smart door locks, sweeping robots, air purifiers, and fresh fans also has strong demand, and has given birth to stone technology (688169. SH), No. 9 Company (689009. SH) such a high-quality ecological chain company, air purifiers, fresh fans, sweeping robots, underwear washing machine shipments are ranked among the top three in the industry.
The reason for the above market situation, in fact, has a lot to do with Xiaomi's own genes, xiaomi, which is born in smart phones, has accumulated intelligent hardware resources in terms of screen, audio, projection, etc., so it is also a matter of course to emerge in the field of black electricity. However, in the field of white electricity, which is lined with giants, Xiaomi's brand penetration rate is weak, which is not only the reason why the accumulation of industrial resources is inferior to that of old brands, but also the reason that the white electricity replacement cycle is longer than that of electronic consumer goods.
<h2>02 The Melee of IoT Platforms</h2>
In fact, Xiaomi is not the only one who first practiced the intelligent Internet of Things in home appliances.
As early as 2014, Apple released the smart home platform HomeKit, amazon also launched the Echo in the same year; in February 2019, Huawei announced the "1+8+N" IoT strategy at the Mobile World Congress, that is, mobile phones + tablets, TV, audio, glasses, watches, car machines, headphones, PC Eight major businesses + extension business of major sectors; in November of the same year, Xiaomi announced a similar IoT category "1+4+X" strategy at its developer conference.
According to the public information of the Xiaomi IoT platform, the number of smart devices connected to the platform has exceeded 374 million units, and the number of users with 5 or more IoT products has exceeded 7.4 million, making it the world's largest intelligent hardware IoT platform. I have to say that Xiaomi is indeed the lucky "pig" on the typhoon mouth, but friends will not watch Xiaomi make the most of the limelight.
First of all, Midea, Haier, Gree and other traditional home appliance companies have realized the comprehensive intelligence of products, and have their own intelligent control APP, they also actively cooperate with various IoT platforms, so that their products can smoothly access mijia APP, HomeKit, Huawei Hongmeng, Jingdong Xiaojia APP, etc. At the same time, many intelligent hardware companies, including Mijia, have also actively launched products such as gateways and air conditioner companions to facilitate third-party devices to access the intelligent control platform.
It can be said that Xiaomi's scenery in the home appliance industry in recent years has found a way for conservative old home appliance brands at another level, and with the capital and reputation accumulated over the years, their intelligent strategic road has begun. On the one hand, such a fact forces the Xiaomi IoT platform to access more and more non-own products, and on the other hand, it greatly weakens the enthusiasm of the Xiaomi ecological chain to expand the home appliance category.
In recent years, HomeKit, which relies on Apple's ecology, has risen in the field of smart homes in China. HomeKit adopts a central control mode, and users can link each appliance to HomePod to realize the smart interconnection of the whole house through the voice assistant Siri, which is similar to Xiaomi. However, compared with Xiaomi, HomeKit has more stringent device access standards, which is also an important reason why homeKit device access is not as good as Xiaomi.
The momentum of major domestic technology giants entering the smart home should not be underestimated. Huawei's Hongmeng system has opened a docking with traditional home appliance companies such as Midea, Gree, and Jiuyang; Ali has never given up the "fat meat" of smart homes, cooperating with the upstream and downstream of the industry as a platform, continuing the logic of Taobao; Jingdong is of course also making low-key efforts, and its intelligent control platform Jingdong Xiaojia APP has also opened docking with various brands, and its strength should not be underestimated.
The information of the Internet of Things is the outlet has been very clear, and Xiaomi will surely usher in a wave of fierce competition.
<h2>03 IoT's halffield awkward moment</h2>
Xiaomi's home appliance layout, the most embarrassing situation at present is that the follow-up is weak, after the products are released, the update speed has slowed down significantly, and the problem of the long update cycle of the home appliance industry has not been hidden.
In Xiaomi's "1+4+X" strategy, 1 represents mobile phones, 4 represents TVs, smart speakers, routers and notebooks, and X represents a variety of intelligent hardware provided by ecological chain enterprises. If "1" and "4" are the core and hub of Xiaomi's IoT strategy, then "X" is the source of Xiaomi's imagination.
The book "Xiaomi Ecological Chain Battlefield Notes" once used "bamboo forest ecology" to describe the millet ecological chain, comparing millet to the root system of the bamboo forest to deliver traffic to various enterprises, and the ecological chain enterprises are the new shoots of millet to broaden its boundaries.
The common interests do make Xiaomi and the enterprises on the ecological chain feel sorry for each other, which is also an important reason why Xiaomi can bloom everywhere in the field of home appliances, but the pace of Mijia's launch of new products has slowed down recently.
With fewer and fewer new categories for xiaomi to reclaim in the pan-home field, coupled with the gradual dissipation of the novelty of the IoT concept, the xiaomi ecological chain with nowhere to expand will face the exhaustion of imagination.
If you can't find a new growth pole, there will inevitably be a change of mentality for the enterprises on the ecological chain, can they really live forever behind Xiaomi and hide their merits and fame?
In fact, in recent years, the millet ecological chain has long opened the trend of self-reliance portal, which is closely related to Lei Jun's insistence that the profit of intelligent hardware does not exceed 5%, nike, the management of a company in the millet ecological chain, told Lu Jiu Finance that the sales volume of products cooperated with millet is indeed large, but the profit is indeed not high. For mature enterprises in the ecological chain, "de-milletization" seems to have become a trend.
According to an ecological enterprise, Yunmi and Huami, who first joined the Xiaomi ecological chain, have a different strategy from the Xiaomi ecological concept, especially Yunmi, whose overall concept is far from the original. Not long ago, the yunmi refrigerator had a crisis event that could not turn off the advertisement, which can be seen.
And Hua mi is also quite complaining. Huami, which started as a bracelet, has been going to xiaomi over the years, and even developed its own OS and chips. And Xiaomi is also doing its own brand of smart bracelet. In addition, in order to strengthen the management of ecological enterprises, in 2021, Xiaomi even wholly acquired purple rice, which is the main charging treasure.
Lim, the management of a strategy department of an enterprise in the Xiaomi ecological chain, told Lu Jiu Finance: "In fact, there is a trust problem between Xiaomi and the ecological chain company, and Xiaomi also encourages the ecological chain enterprises to maintain subtle competition, those who rely on the ecological chain are very insecure, and the capital does not recognize this unprecedented development model." ”
Feng Ke, a professor of economics at Peking University, agrees with Lim's statement that Xiaomi's investment in but not holding an ecological chain company means that the control of the chain owner is not strong, and the attitude of capital is reflected in the stock price. On July 9, 2018, Xiaomi Group experienced the tragedy of listing and breaking, except for the stock market year of 2020, Xiaomi's stock price has been struggling.
<h2>04 Can the ecological chain mode still be played? </h2>
From 2014 to the present, the "bamboo forest ecology" is certainly a good tool for Xiaomi to innovate products, but as more and more enterprises on the ecological chain leave independently, the market can't help but have doubts. There are various "rice" self-reliant portals on the ecological chain, is there any unknown interest dispute among them, and can the game of millet ecological chain still be played?
Lu Jiu Finance communicated with xiaomi's public relations department on the above issues, and xiaomi public relations responded: "The essence of the millet ecological chain model is an industrial alliance through investment layout, and it is to use the model that xiaomi has already passed to empower cooperative enterprises." Such an unprecedented model was not optimistic at first, but today, seven years later, AIoT has become a concept that all brands want to touch. Xiaomi has invested in more than 300 companies so far, and the survival rate is unique in the field of investment. ”
In addition, the enterprises in the Xiaomi ecological chain have both resource-poor start-up team types, such as Zhimi and Yunmi; and cooperative empowerment types that want to do differentiated products, such as Qingmi and Runmi; and companies like No. 9 Company that originally have mature products, Xiaomi mainly helps them improve efficiency and expand scale, and also encourages such companies to use their own brands. Ecological chain enterprises are bigger and stronger, and independent listing is also the return on investment of Xiaomi. Therefore, because the ecological chain enterprises are independently listed, those statements that sing the decline of xiaomi are really not fair. ”
Of course, the ecological enterprise has brought monetary returns to the original millet investment, and the current millet ecological chain has given birth to four listed companies, namely Yunmi, Huami, Stone Technology and No. 9 Company.
As of press time, there are also Millet ecological enterprises that said: The advantage of cooperating with xiaomi ecology is that the sales volume is large, and it can rush the brand in the short term, but the disadvantage is that the profit is low. Of course, giving profits to consumers is not bad overall.
However, nowadays, the story of IoT is becoming more and more difficult to tell, and in 2021, it is common to empower Products with IoT, and the threshold and cost are extremely low.
According to informed sources, a xiaomi ecological chain tried to list on the science and technology innovation board this year, but the final plan failed, and the technical card of Mijia IoT technology could not impress the CSRC.
It can be seen that the "pseudo-technology" that only relies on good speech has no foothold, such as Lenovo, which tries to return to A-shares, Yunmi, which struggles in the US stock market, and the "real technology" that relies on scientific research to settle down, will eventually have a head start, such as stone technology that focuses on innovation and no. 9 company that is willing to invest in research and development.
In the public memory, Xiaomi is the friend who sells mobile phones to make only one dollar, is the warrior who "illuminates" the user's privacy problems, is the smart brand that makes the home more comfortable, and is the big ship that drives the xiaomi ecological chain, but in the capital world where money never sleeps, this may be a more complicated story.
However, technology is always technology-based, xiaomi ecological chain has been established for 7 years, and IoT has also entered the second half. Obviously, the second half of lot will be a vicious battle of research and development, who can do innovation from the bottom, who will win the final market.
May Xiaomi once again shout to the market: "Are you OK?"