The Internet of Things era is so tempting. As one of the most important components of the Internet of Things era, how does the “island” phenomenon of smart homes break?

The "First Financial Daily" reporter recently interviewed different companies in all aspects of the industry chain, from suppliers and trading platforms of intelligent hardware upstream components, manufacturers of intelligent terminal products, to third-party cloud platform access service providers, and E-commerce companies with powerful cloud platform capabilities, everyone has great expectations for cracking smart home "islands".

However, some industry veterans predict that it will take five years for the smart home products to achieve interoperability.

Brand appliances are not connected

As the e-commerce platform for China's electronics manufacturing supply chain, “hard egg” has been promoting the intelligentization of home appliances. Wen Dong, assistant president of Hard Egg, admitted that the communication protocols of intelligent hardware are not unified, and different cloud platforms have different communication protocols.

"Competition is inevitable, new markets will be chaotic, there is no unified standard." Wendong said, communication interface standards, there are WiFi, Bluetooth, etc.; operating system level, iOS, Android are two systems, manufacturers develop two App versions Solved; the bigger problem is cloud access, regardless of Ali, Tencent, Jingdong and other Internet companies, or Samsung, Haier, Midea and other manufacturers, their cloud access does not have a unified standard, "you pick me up, Can't pick up others."

A related person of an e-commerce platform also bluntly said that the pain point of smart homes is that there is no linkage between products. Old people's homes do not necessarily buy the same brand of home appliances, such as the US air conditioner, Haier refrigerator, Samsung TV, they can not be connected. Even though the major brands can communicate with each other in the vertical direction, there is a gap between the horizontal and other brands. This large e-commerce platform is planning to promote interaction between brands.

In fact, regardless of Ali, Jingdong, Suning, Gome, there are such ideas. The problem is that manufacturers also have their own concerns. The right to speak about user data and product usage data is not easy to let people know.

Sun Yingxi, president of Wanhe Research Institute, said frankly that companies are concerned about the confidentiality of their data. "In the future, data is money. Will you give money to others?" Therefore, there must be a game between the cloud platform and the manufacturers of large e-commerce, and powerful manufacturers will build their own cloud platforms.

Sun Yingxi said that from the perspective of Wanhe, product intelligence will go through the following three stages: first, "single product single cloud", one product docking one cloud, Ali sales products connected to Alibaba Cloud, Jingdong sales products connected to Jingdong cloud, 70 %~80% of the manufacturers do this; the second stage is “one product is cloudy”, one product is compatible with different clouds, and now there are third-party cloud service providers such as “tact cloud”, but the level of business cloud It is not very mature and stable, because the more factors are considered and the technical difficulty is greater; the third stage of “multi-product and one cloud” is the highest level, and different brands of products share a cloud platform. At that time, the user experience will be the most it is good. However, "a product is moving in the cloudy, multi-product cloud is still in the mud!"

The rise of third-party cloud access platforms

The "Smart Cloud" company is headquartered in Guangzhou and was established in 2005. At the beginning of its business, it mainly provided software technology services to European and American companies; five years ago, it cut into the ecological chain of peripherals around Apple. Because there are many electronic companies in the Pearl River Delta, such as sphygmomanometers, bracelets, etc., but they lack software strength, so they need partners to help them achieve hardware intelligence.

Looking back on the company's growth process, Huang Xixiong, general manager of "Smart Cloud", told the "First Financial Daily" reporter that the "service platformization" around 2012 is based on the fact that many small and medium-sized electronics companies cannot afford software development costs, so they take A charging model for commissions based on product sales. "Some products are less than 100 yuan, and sales should reach 100,000 yuan to cover development costs. So we have a cloud platform to monitor product activation and usage time."

It is logical that with the growth of the Apple Eco-chain, the business of “Smart Cloud” has also entered the field of home appliances. In fact, Apple has released the Homekit smart home platform two years ago, and Haier, Midea and others have become their partners.

Huang Xixiong said that their charging models are divided into two categories. For small enterprises, the model of service fees for platform sales is generally adopted. “Smart Cloud” provides one-stop product cloud access and management services in the form of public cloud; Enterprises, like Haier, Midea, etc., hope to build their own cloud platform, then "Tactic Cloud" provides technical support to help them build their own private cloud services, and the data of smart home appliances are mastered by these large enterprises.

"Intelligent hardware has three elements, sensors, cloud access, and intelligent systems on the server side." Huang Xixiong believes that big data will be placed in the cloud in the future. For example, the smart socket is small in size, and its computing, learning, and storage capabilities are all in the cloud, and the cloud is analyzed before telling the socket. For example, sensors such as temperature, infrared, and laser are the eyes, ears, and nose of a person, collecting information, and the cloud is like a brain. After gathering information, a decision is made, and then the terminal is notified to adjust.

Nowadays, the communication protocols for cloud access are different. At the level of home appliance enterprises, there are different manufacturers such as Haier, Midea, Gree, Hisense, TCL, Skyworth, etc. On the e-commerce platform level, there are Ali, Jingdong, Suning and Gome. As the United States opened up the agreement, Haier will not necessarily use it; first give Ali's smart products, maybe Jingdong Cloud will not access. “In the past year, the factory was very difficult. Jingdong, Ali, Suning, and Gome all required smart home appliances according to their own standards (referred to as cloud access protocols).”

This is the value of a neutral third-party cloud access platform. "We have cooperated with 70~80 communication module vendors, open source code, and manufacturers have found that through the wit cloud, we can contact a variety of communication module vendors." Huang Xixiong said that for different e-commerce platform agreements, wit cloud acts as a "translation" "The role, for example, "we get through with Jingdong Cloud, I am going to adapt you." Wisdom Cloud hopes to connect products of different agreements and make them interconnected.

The United States is also emerging as a third-party cloud platform service provider, like the "Iraland" created in Silicon Valley. David Friedman, CEO of Ayla Real Estate Co., Ltd., said in an interview with this reporter at the end of 2015 that the company’s self-built cloud platform has large investment and uncertain returns, and it saves money and services with the service of third-party cloud platform. . Apple, Google, Amazon, and Samsung are all acquiring IoT platforms to implement their own IoT strategy.

In China, BAT's three major Internet companies are also highly competitive. "Ira is not in a competitive relationship with them. We are doing enterprise-level cloud platforms and hope to cooperate with them. Amazon and WeChat have cooperated with us." He also expects that the value of the IoT smart home appliance industry will reach 490 billion US dollars in 2019, and developed countries will account for 60% of the market space.

At present, Ella IOT has completed the B round of financing, the financing amount reached 20 million US dollars; and Wisdom cloud also got 200 million financing last year, becoming the largest single investment in the domestic Internet of Things cloud service industry.

Only way

Despite the rise of third-party cloud access platforms, the giants such as Ali and JD.com are too bulky. To break the "island" phenomenon of smart homes, it is necessary for major manufacturing and distribution giants to "sit down" and promote open cooperation. . Wendong believes that this requires the guidance of the government and industry associations, and at the same time integrates in the process of marketization, and forms several major alliances around the world, like 4G has become two standards. Because if you don't cooperate, users will not have a good experience, and they will not buy the smart home.

As one of Alibaba's smart business partners, Shanghai Qingke is a supplier of communication modules. Ren Jianhong, vice president of Shanghai Qingke, told the “First Financial Daily” reporter that the smart home industry is still developing very fast. In 2015, there were more than 120 smart items on the Ali platform, but only 10 or more a year ago. It is estimated that there will be more than 300 smart items on the double eleven ali platform in 2016, covering all kinds of smart home appliances.

“We have served 500 customers. Last year, 150 customers produced smart products. It is expected that there will be more customers in mass production this year.” Ren Jianhong said that Ali's cloud access protocol is embedded in the WiFi module of Shanghai Qingke, so As long as manufacturers assemble modules into smart products, these smart products can access Ali's cloud platform. He revealed that Ali will promote interoperability between brands of home appliances this year. At present, Shanghai Qingke also has cooperation with Jingdong.

The promotion of home appliance faucets is also very strong. All air conditioners will be equipped with WiFi modules as standard after August 2016. Fang Hongbo, chairman and president of Midea Group, said in an exclusive interview with China Business News at the end of last year that hardware, software and cloud systems constitute the US smart home system. In 2016, Midea will release a full range of smart home appliances and beautiful smart home systems, and connect with all external systems.

The cost of WiFi modules has dropped rapidly in recent years, from about 100 yuan two years ago, to 20 yuan last year, and will drop to more than 10 yuan this year, or even less than 10 yuan. Therefore, Huang Xixiong believes that networking functions will gradually become the standard for home appliances. Only when it is connected will it produce value. For example, when the air purifier is turned on, it also drives the air conditioner to start; when the stove is turned on, the range hood automatically smokes the smoke. Once the depth of the smoke exceeds the standard, the smoke alarm will sound. "The lack of an open mind is the biggest problem now." In Ren Jianhong's view, the idea of breaking the "information island" of smart homes is to continue to promote the intelligence of single products. As long as they are connected to the Internet, through big data analysis, they can find the pain points of users more accurately through product iteration; The major standards alliances are further open to cooperation; the third is to call for more neutral third-party service providers, including hardware intelligent service providers, third-party cloud access service providers, and service providers of big data analytics applications to promote products. Interconnection.

Ren Jianhong expects that it will take five years for smart homes to truly achieve artificial intelligence and connectivity.