It will take five years for smart home interconnection and interoperability. What about the phenomenon of "isolated islands"?

[David Friedman also expects that the value of the IoT smart home appliance industry will reach $490 billion in 2019, with developed countries accounting for 60% of the market space. ]

　　The Internet of Things era is so attractive, as one of the most important components of the Internet of Things era, how to break the "island" phenomenon of smart home?

   "First Financial Daily" reporters have recently interviewed different companies in various links in the industry chain, from suppliers and trading platforms of upstream components of intelligent hardware, manufacturers of intelligent terminal products, to third-party cloud platform access service providers, and E-commerce companies with strong cloud platform capabilities have great expectations for cracking the "island" of smart homes.

　　However, some industry veterans predict that it will take five years for smart home products to realize interconnection and interoperability.

Brand home appliances are not connected

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

  "Competition is inevitable. There will be chaos in the new market, and there will be no unified standards." Wendong said that the communication interface standards include WiFi, Bluetooth, etc.; at the operating system level, iOS and Android are the two major systems, and manufacturers can develop two App versions just by Solved; the bigger problem is cloud access, no matter Alibaba, Tencent, JD.com and other Internet companies, or Samsung, Haier, Midea and other manufacturers, there is no unified standard for their cloud access, "You pick me up, just Can't pick up anyone else."

　A relevant person from an e-commerce platform also bluntly stated that the pain point of smart homes is that products cannot be linked together. Ordinary people do not necessarily buy the same brand of whole-house appliances at home. For example, Midea air conditioners, Haier refrigerators, and Samsung TVs cannot be interconnected. Even if the major brands can communicate with all their products in the vertical direction, there is a gap between the horizontal and the products of other brands. This large e-commerce platform is planning to promote interaction between brands.

　　In fact, regardless of Ali, JD.com, or Suning, Gome, they all have such an idea. The problem is that manufacturers also have their own concerns, and they dare not easily hand over the right to speak to user data and product usage data.

　　Sun Yingkai, president of Wanhe Research Institute, admitted 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 process between the cloud platforms of large e-commerce companies and manufacturers, and powerful manufacturers will also build their own cloud platforms.

　　Sun Yingkai said that from the perspective of Wanhe, product intelligence will go through the following three stages: first, "single product and single cloud", one product is connected to one cloud, products sold by Alibaba are connected to Alibaba Cloud, and products sold by JD.com are connected to JD Cloud. 70 %~80% of manufacturers do this; the second stage is "one product with multiple clouds", a product is compatible with different clouds, and now there are third-party cloud service providers such as "Gizwits Cloud", but the level of business cloud It is not very mature and stable, because the more factors are considered, the greater the technical difficulty; the third stage "multiple products and one cloud" is the highest level, products of different brands share a cloud platform, and the user experience at that time will be the best. Okay. However, "Yipin Duoyun is advancing, and Duopin Yiyun is still in the mud!"

The rise of third-party cloud access platforms

  “Gizwits Cloud is headquartered in Guangzhou and was established in 2005. At the beginning of its business, it mainly provided software and technical services for European and American companies; five years ago, it cut into the ecological chain of Apple's peripheral peripherals. Because there are many electronic enterprises in the Pearl River Delta, products such as blood pressure However, they lack software strength, so they need partners to help them realize the intelligentization of hardware.

　　Looking back on the company's growth process, Huang Xixiong, general manager of "Gizwits Cloud", told the "First Financial Daily" reporter that the "service platformization" around 2012 was only based on the fact that many small and medium-sized electronic enterprises could not afford software development costs, so they adopted A charging model that draws commissions based on product sales. "Some products are less than 100 yuan, and the sales volume needs to be more than 100,000 to cover the development cost, so we have built a cloud platform to monitor the amount of product activation and usage time."

　　It is logical that with the growth of Apple's ecological chain, the business of "Gizwits Cloud" has also entered the field of home appliances. In fact, Apple released the Homekit smart home platform two years ago, and Haier, Midea, etc. have become its partners.

Huang Xixiong said that their charging models are divided into two categories. For small enterprises, they generally adopt a model of charging platform service fees based on product sales. "Gizwits" provides one-stop product cloud access and management services in the form of public clouds; Enterprises, such as Haier, Midea, etc., want to build their own cloud platforms, so "Gizwits Cloud" provides technical support to help them build their own private cloud services, and the data of smart home appliances is controlled by these large enterprises themselves.

  "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 will analyze it and then tell the socket. For another example, sensors such as temperature, infrared, and laser are human eyes, ears, and noses, which collect information, while the cloud is like a brain, which gathers information to make decisions, and then notifies the terminal to adjust.

　　At present, the communication protocols for cloud access are different. At the level of home appliance companies, there are different manufacturers such as Haier, Midea, Gree, Hisense, TCL, Skyworth, etc.; at the level of e-commerce platforms, there are Alibaba, JD.com, Suning and Gome. Just like Midea's open protocol, Haier may not use it; first give Ali's smart products, maybe JD Cloud will not be connected. "It has been difficult for factories in the past year. JD.com, Ali, Suning, and Gome have all required to make smart home appliances according to their own standards (referring to the cloud access agreement)."

　　This is the value of a neutral third-party cloud access platform. "We have cooperated with 70 to 80 communication module manufacturers to open source code. Manufacturers have found that through Gizwits, they can contact a variety of communication module suppliers." Huang Xixiong said that for the agreements of different e-commerce platforms, Gizwits acted as a "translator". ” role, for example, “We get through with JD Cloud, and I will adapt to you”, Gizwits hopes to connect products with different protocols, so that they can be interconnected.

　　The United States is also on the rise of such third-party cloud platform service providers, such as "Ella IoT" founded in Silicon Valley. In an interview with this reporter at the end of 2015, Ella IoT CEO David Friedman said that the company's self-built cloud platform has large investment and uncertain returns, so using the services of third-party cloud platforms can save money and worry . Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung are all acquiring IoT platforms to implement their own IoT strategies.

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

　　At present, Ella IoT has completed the B round of financing, and the financing amount has reached 20 million US dollars; and Gizwits also received 200 million financing last year, becoming the largest single investment in the domestic IoT cloud service industry so far.

The only way

　　Although third-party cloud access platforms are on the rise, after all, Alibaba, JD.com and other giants are too large. To break the "island" phenomenon of smart homes, it is still 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. For example, 4G has become two standards. Because if everyone does not cooperate, users will not have a good experience, and they will not buy into smart homes.

　　As one of Alibaba's smart business partners, Shanghai Qingke is a supplier of communication modules. Ren Jianhong, vice president of Shanghai Qingke, introduced to the reporter of "First Financial Daily" that the smart home industry is still developing rapidly. On Double Eleven in 2015, there were more than 120 smart items on the Ali platform, while there were no more than 10 a year ago. It is estimated that there will be more than 300 smart items on the Alibaba platform on Double Eleven in 2016, covering all kinds of smart home appliances.

   "We have served 500 customers. Last year, 150 customers mass-produced smart products. It is expected that more customers will mass-produce this year." Ren Jianhong said that Shanghai Qingke's WiFi module is embedded with Alibaba's cloud access protocol, so As long as manufacturers assemble modules into smart products, these smart products can be connected to Alibaba's cloud platform. He revealed that Ali will promote the interoperability of home appliance products of various brands this year. At present, Shanghai Qingke also cooperates with JD.com.

　　The promotion of home appliance faucets is also very strong. After August 2016, all air conditioners of Midea will be equipped with WiFi modules as standard. 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 Midea's smart home system. In 2016, Midea will release a full range of smart home appliances and Midea smart home systems, which will be connected to all external systems.

     The cost of WiFi modules has dropped rapidly in recent years, from about 100 yuan two years ago, to more than 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 the networking function will gradually become the standard configuration of home appliances. Only when it is connected will it generate value. For example, when the air purifier is turned on, it also drives the air conditioner to start; the stove is turned on, and the range hood will automatically absorb the oil fume. Once the depth of the smoke exceeds the standard, the smoke alarm will sound. "The lack of an open mind is the biggest problem right 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 you connect to the Internet and analyze big data, you can more accurately find the pain points of users through product iteration; The major standards alliances will further open up cooperation; the third is to call on more neutral third-party service providers, including hardware intelligent service providers, third-party cloud access service providers, and big data analysis application service providers, to jointly promote various products. interconnection between.

　　Ren Jianhong predicts that it will take five years for smart homes to truly realize artificial intelligence and interconnection.