Smart home into the next "Red Sea"

What is smart home? For most consumers, this is just a familiar word. However, in the eyes of a large number of home appliance manufacturers and Internet companies, it has suddenly become a market with a "trillion-dollar" prospect. From light bulbs, soya-bean milk makers to color TV vendors and e-commerce companies, “intelligence” has almost become the label of every enterprise at the just-concluded 2015 Shanghai Household Appliances Expo.

Internet cross-border performances

Shanghai Home Appliances Expo is a traditional show for hardware manufacturers, but this year, people accidentally saw the Internet companies.

Jingdong built a smart home environment with an area of ​​more than 300 square meters this year. Here, people can understand the “Super APP” that Jingdong has introduced to control different smart hardware devices. Yan Xiaobing, vice president of JD.com and general manager of the home appliances division, told the Beijing Morning Post that currently 300 smart products have been connected to JD Smart Cloud. Most of the over 1,000 products are connected to smart home appliances.

"Big data" made Jingdong decide to play the role of "integrator" in the smart home industry. In the Jingdong 2014 annual report just released, JD.com has 99.6 million active users, 50 million of whom purchased products of category 3C on the JD.com website in the past year. Through the analysis of these user portraits, JD.com unearthed about 15 million pairs of intelligence. The product is of interest to consumers.

Zhou Hong originally had to attend a forum during the exhibition. In the end, because of "physical discomfort", he was unable to attend the forum. But this does not affect the 360 ​​company to show their enthusiasm for involvement in smart home. The company's top management said that 360 will invest 10 billion in funds, combined with smart home businesses with potential for development, in the 360 ​​exhibition hall to show its air-conditioning cooperation with the Oaks, hood and other cooperation with the boss.

Traditional companies are also working smart

After several years of "hug the Internet" efforts, traditional household appliance manufacturers have become even more highly-advised in the introduction of smart strategies.

Haier has cooperated with Homekit, Baidu, Ali, Jingdong, 360, etc. in 2014. This year, it also released U+ smart living APP for users. The display of related products during the Home Appliances Show brought Haier's share price to a daily limit.

Skyworth, which had been focusing on the color TV business, invested 2.6 billion at the end of last year to enter the air-conditioning industry. Xiao Youyuan, president of Skyworth Air-Conditioning, stated that the main intention behind this strategy is to create a full-house smart home solution and constitute a complete product line. This year, Skyworth announced its strategy for smart homes. In the demonstration of the staff, when the user watches an adventure movie, the lights, speakers, air conditioners, and humidifiers in the home will work according to changes in the movie scene. The purchase process also guides the user to connect to the purchase portal of the devices required for various services of the smart home, and can realize one-click payment of the purchase device. All Skyworth diversified devices and deep partner devices can be automatically connected to the TV for one second.

“Smart families have come to the big screen of TVs.” Yang Dongwen, president of Skyworth Group, said that at present, Skyworth’s networked smart TVs have reached more than 10 million, and daily active smart TVs have reached more than 5 million, and 20,000 to 30,000 per day. The amount of new activation steadily increased.

Nearly 90% of users are dissatisfied with the status quo of smart homes

2014 was known as the first year of smart home development, and a large number of wearable devices, smart TVs, smart boxes and other products integrating hardware and software resources emerged. The 2010-2015 China Smart Home Industry Development Trends and Investment Opportunities Report predicts that the smart home market in China will reach 124 billion yuan in 2015.

However, with the constant influx of competitors, smart homes may soon become a Red Sea. Whether it is Google, Apple, or domestic Haier, Lenovo, Skyworth, TCL, Tencent, Ali, and even real estate and property companies including Vanke and Longhu Real Estate have joined melee.

On the other hand, there are also statistics showing that although companies have launched smart single products, consumers do not seem to buy it. According to the combined survey data of Orville Cloud and Tencent Appliances, the current level of user interest in smart homes has reached 95.2%, but 87.5% of users are dissatisfied with the status of smart homes, indicating that they are totally inconsistent with expectations, or lower than expected.