Especially under the catalysis of the epidemic, the attitude of the market towards smart home has ushered in a great change. According to the report of market research organization, after experiencing home isolation, 76% of the respondents have improved their requirements for the quality of family life and will consider buying more smart home products.
Smart homes have been disturbed for so many years. What has the whole house intelligence become now? Is it accepted by people?
More wait and see, less customization
In 2011, Nest Lab, a star entrepreneurial project in Silicon Valley, launched the first Nest Thermostat temperature controller. With this contact of smart home items, the smart home industry was kicked off, and the embryonic stage of whole house intelligence began around 2012. At that time, the idea of Internet of Things and interconnection began to emerge. In the early stage, smart items such as smart switch, smart plug and intelligent curtain had simple functions, and the control of smart devices, information exchange between devices, consumer services and other functions began to be organically combined with the residential environment. Until 2020, with the comprehensive development of AI technology and Internet of Things technology, smart homes are no longer limited to simple remote control, but begin to connect and interact, bringing users some intelligent experiences.
In many cities’ smart home experience stores, we can all feel the happiness that the whole house intelligently liberates hands and brings users a relaxed life. The smart home we once saw in the video scenes depicted by the manufacturers has been realized. The intelligent experience of the whole house is to enter the intelligent life before opening the door: after the intelligent door lock is opened, the porch light will light up, the curtains in the living room will open slowly, the water dispenser will start hot water work, the sweeping robot will return to the charging base, and the voice assistant will remind you that the hot water in the bathtub has been put away and the interested music has been matched for you …
Contrary to the reality, although the experience has been upgraded, the response of whole house intelligence in the consumer market is still relatively dull, and there is no big splash. Compared with the reality of bone feeling, the report data of the survey is still somewhat fragmented. Consumers’ actual demand for customized whole-house intelligence has not been released by the upgrade of experience, mainly because:
1. Insufficient market education. Most people who know about the intelligence and experience of the whole house are young people with higher education and better education. These young people have not been out of society for a long time, but their purchasing power is limited. Middle-aged and elderly people with financial resources have limited access to smart products. The smart experience stores in the whole house are mostly located in the first, second and third tier cities, and the number of people who reach them is relatively limited.
2. The experience of whole house intelligence is good, but the customization of whole house intelligence also means the fixation of home experience. Intelligent technologies and scenarios have been iteratively updated, and the customized whole-house intelligent system is relatively closed. It is difficult to introduce new smart items and other subsequent systems, and it is troublesome to replace or keep the previous smart home equipment.
3. Personalized and holistic intelligent experience is limited. The existing smart customization of the whole house is basically the home equipment products provided by manufacturers, and some smart items or other devices that users like cannot be connected due to restrictions such as communication protocols, and cross-brand and some interactions are fragmented.
4 Looking ahead at high costs and having a good experience are not cheap. It is reported that a total of 690,000 smart home hardware was needed for the whole house millet purchased and transformed before. This is still too expensive for most people.
In the smart home industry, everyone has a consensus: industry giants work together to formulate a set of standards or launch a public system, otherwise the construction of the whole house smart or smart family will always be an armchair strategist, and the scenes depicted are all piled up with single items. The actual situation is that the giants have the heart to take the lead, but they are also pulling a site by one person. The small businesses in the ecology choose each hill, and the market divided by the giants is still dominated by the situation that each forest is the king.
New changes in the intelligence of the whole house
At present, one of the most obvious phenomena of each ecological giant is the competition for the entrance route of the whole house intelligent center. We know that the most common entrances in the whole house intelligence are voice assistants, smart speakers or mobile apps, and the different entrances mean that users need to adapt to learning different devices, and the habits cultivated in a center will also limit the way users interact.
Manufacturers began to split up at the entrance, and began to compete for traffic. Seizing the entrance means seizing the opportunity. The success of a single product means that it can drive the growth of peripheral hardware through deep binding with users in the future. For example, the presence of smart TVs and smart speakers has directly improved the intelligent transformation of other low-frequency products in family scenes.
A big change of whole house intelligence this year is the introduction of the central entrance of the central control screen in the house, and it is not just a central control screen. Different screens are introduced in different spaces to meet the interaction needs of various devices in different spaces. This multi-central control screen device initiative unifies the device interaction in the exclusive space, and all smart items, systems and scenes in this space can interact on this central control screen, which is more concise and clear.
The second change different from the industry is that the whole house intelligence has introduced PLC network. The integration of PLC gets rid of the hard conditions of smart home for the network and solves the problem of gateway disconnection and continuous connection. All the hardware or systems in the home are connected through Wi-Fi6 and PLC networks, and then users can freely add all kinds of systems according to their needs, and because the line network is laid out in advance, users do not need to consider the line layout and other issues if they need to install corresponding modules.
No matter the changes in the network or the entrance center, we find that these changes have enriched the experience of the whole house intelligent ecology, but the root standards and communication protocols are still separated. Although the equipment and network technology in the whole house intelligence have been improved and popularized, it can not solve the closed ecological interest cycle chain, but can only accelerate the small home manufacturers to enter the circle. In addition to the difficulty in reconciling interests, the unified standard will also face the specific dilemma of landing, that is, the difference in iteration cycle of different products.
We know that there are many kinds of smart homes, and the upgrading speed of each product is also different. At the same time, it is impossible to reinstall the whole house when the standard is iterated. For example, the technology of smart speakers often iterates in a few months, but the manufacturers such as light bulbs and home appliances that adapt to it do not have such iterative support efficiency, and many traditional manufacturing enterprises may not have the corresponding development capabilities, which will lead to a unified ecological agreement that is easy to break down and will eventually return to the coexistence of multiple agreements. The unification of ecological agreements has a long way to go.
Empowering future home space
For the whole house smart industry, the smart home market is full of rich mines. Recently, IDC released the Quarterly Tracking Report of Smart Home Equipment Market in China (2021Q2). According to the data, the total shipment of smart home equipment market in China in 2021 was about 100 million units, and the annual shipment in 2021 is expected to be 230 million units, up 14.6% year-on-year. It is estimated that in the next five years, the compound growth rate of smart home equipment market in China will be 21.4%, and the total shipments of smart homes will be close to 540 million units in 2025. Whole-house smart solutions will become an important driver of market growth, and countless creators are surging in this trillion-dollar market.
For users, the core appeal is that the whole house intelligence has a strong intelligent experience, systematic linkage, cross-brand interaction and good interaction. At the same time, the whole house intelligence should have a natural and integrated sense of integrity. These demands put high demands on the technology, network, application and equipment of whole house intelligence, and the development of whole house intelligence has these trends:
1. The intelligent demand in front of thousands of people. We know that the core of the whole house intelligence is not the coolness of a smart item function, but the whole intelligent experience. The intelligent experience is a subjective judgment, which means the ability to customize the intelligent needs of thousands of people.
2. Smart devices in the whole house involving cloud computing and networking upgrade will also have higher requirements for system-level security, and need to be planned and deployed at the beginning of design, and be included in all processes of development and management to avoid being attacked and threatened by destructiveness.
3. The continuity of the intelligent ecosystem of the whole house needs to be kept open, and the introduction of fresh blood will drive the upgrade of the overall experience, so that these constantly updated and new smart devices can penetrate and grow. How to unify the network protocols and standards of these smart items across systems is the direction that the whole house smart industry still needs long-term planning and efforts in the future.
4. The upgrade of computing and storage capacity of host devices is not only running in the cloud now, but also the further upgrade of end-side computing and local storage capacity of some devices to realize localized intelligent services in the future.
At present, most ordinary users have experienced all kinds of smart single equipment, but the whole house intelligence is expensive. For most people, poverty is the biggest threshold (tears streaming down their faces). For the experience of whole house intelligence, the greatest desire of seed users is that the experience of whole house intelligence is no longer limited to the interaction of experience stores, and the most important thing is to reduce the cost and benefit more people. The rich have the happiness of the rich, the middle level has the freedom of the middle level, and the bottom level also has the choice of not being abandoned by the intelligent age. The enjoyment of intelligent grading in the whole house is also enjoyment.
If you describe the imagination of the whole house intelligent scene in the future, it is foreseeable that the scene may show dynamic changes. What does it mean? For example, on some special days, such as anniversaries, birthdays, festivals, etc., we can refresh theme scenes such as music and lighting, and we can also customize and combine some scene modes to make smart devices bring a sense of ceremony in Cyberpunk, and the transformation of these themes will also make the smart scenes at home more rich and interesting, so let’s sit on a small bench and look forward to it.