The Analysis of Smart Home Industry in the First Quarter of 2016

In 2016, the year in which smart homes and related industries broke out. All industries related to the Internet of Things are actively integrating smart home products. The entire industry is thriving. Here we will analyze and interpret the entire smart home industry in the first quarter.

I. Diversification of smart home product forms

The products and technologies provided by various smart home manufacturers come in a variety of forms and flourish:

1.1 Wired Smart Home and Wireless Smart Home

The smart home wired system is realized by bus control. There are representatives from foreign manufacturers such as ABB and Control4. From 2014 onwards, with the rapid development of wireless technology and more and more extensive applications, a wide variety of wireless smart devices continue to emerge, which has become a reality for the emergence of wireless smart home systems. The current rapid development of ZigBee Alliance products, Z-Wave Alliance products, and Enocean products and WiFi products, these are the use of wireless technology to achieve smart home system applications.

The advantage of wireless smart home products is that there is no need for cabling, and the conversion is simple. At the same time, it greatly solves the need for intelligent renovation of renovated homes. However, wireless also has problems with signal transmission distance, signal interference, and stability. The advantage of wired smart home products is that the system is stable and the transmission distance is relatively long, but the disadvantage is that wiring is needed and the price is high.

Based on current market feedback, the trend of wireless smart home products is much better than that of cable systems.

2.2 smart single product, smart home system, smart home platform, each have their own gameplay

In terms of product form, smart home manufacturers mainly have these types of system implementations:

Smart single product: Solve a certain application needs of smart applications. The advantages are fast promotion and high consumer acceptance. The disadvantage is that they can't really meet the user's smart needs.

Smart home systems: They are more advanced than smart ones, but the provided functions are still limited. This represents many manufacturers. ZigBee and most manufacturers in the Z-Wave Alliance are doing this.

Smart home platform: Platform ecosystem represented by big manufacturers such as Apple, Google, Jingdong. The system integration of multi-protocol and multi-vendor products can solve the user's needs well and provide the smart products that users want. The original intention of this kind of realization is to integrate the products of different manufacturers to the same platform through the platform's appeal of Dachang, to realize the interconnection of products through the platform, and to give the user a better choice of intelligence. However, this approach relied on the efforts of the big manufacturers, and more dependent on the number of integrated manufacturers. At present, this effect is not very good, and these platforms have not yet brought good results.

Second, industry pain points and explosions coexist.

Looking at this year's smart home products, the overall function is very perfect, but how good smart products can meet user needs and how well they can go is the problem that the entire industry needs to solve. The question of why consumers will pay for this is what each manufacturer needs to consider. Smart homes include all aspects of life, some have demand in the field of energy-efficient lighting, and some have requirements for security monitoring, and there are some areas where there are demands for various electrical controls, electric motor control, and so on. For manufacturers, what we need to do is to truly meet the needs of users in these different areas, and apply smart devices flexibly to design various scenarios that can solve users' pain points. Let smart devices land in a dedicated area of ​​application. Let the general public gradually realize the benefits of smart devices from such a segmented application.

Third, the smart home industry where the way out

It can be clearly seen from the development track of smart homes in recent years that the development of smart home products has experienced a development process from single product to system integration. Smart home is a systematic project. This system project includes all aspects of knowledge and usage scenarios, lighting control, home appliance control, environmental security, etc., and these devices must be interconnected. Interoperable. Intelligent single product must not meet such requirements. Intelligent single product can often bring about a certain aspect of application function, but it can not meet all users' use requirements effectively, and it cannot achieve the interconnection and interoperability between each single product.

After more and more manufacturers realize this point, they are all moving toward the smart home system. However, at this stage, the systems of various manufacturers are implemented with their own closed products. Can solve the interconnection of internal products in their own system, but the number of product types that each can provide is still limited. In particular, the wireless protocols chosen by various manufacturers are varied. In fact, each type of wireless association has its own characteristics. Have their own suitable use scenarios. There is no single wireless protocol that can really provide all products in smart home applications.

In a comprehensive view, using an intelligent gateway as a portal for users to use scenarios, integrating integrated systems with multiple wireless protocols may better meet consumer needs in the future. In such a system, suitable products can be selected according to different user requirements and different application scenarios, and products of various protocols can be completely interconnected within a system.