It takes five years for smart homes to achieve true interoperability

The Internet of Things era is so tempting. As one of the most important components of the Internet of Things, how can the "independent island" phenomenon of smart homes be broken?

Recently, the reporter has interviewed various companies in various links in the industry chain, ranging from suppliers and trading platforms of intelligent hardware upstream components, manufacturers of intelligent terminal products, to third-party cloud platform access service providers, and possessing powerful cloud platform capabilities. E-commerce, we all have great expectations for breaking the smart home "island."

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

Brand home appliances are not connected

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

"Competition is inevitable. There will be confusion in the new market and there will be no uniform standards." Wen Dong said that the communication interface standards include WiFi and Bluetooth. At the operating system level, iOS and Android are two major systems. The manufacturers develop two versions of the App. Solve the problem; the larger issue is cloud access, regardless of Ali and other Internet companies, or Samsung, Haier, Midea and other manufacturers, their cloud access does not have a unified standard, "If you pick me up, you can not pick someone up." .

A relevant person on the e-commerce platform also bluntly said that the pain point of smart homes is that products cannot be linked. People don’t necessarily buy the same brand of home appliances in their homes, such as Midea’s air conditioners, Haier’s refrigerators, and Samsung’s televisions. They cannot be interconnected. Even though major brands can communicate with each other within their vertical products, there is a gap between horizontal and other branded products. This large e-commerce platform is planning to promote the interaction between brand owners.

In fact, whether Ali or Gome, there are such ideas. The problem is that the manufacturers also have their own concerns, and they do not dare to hand over the user's data and product usage data.

Wan Ying Institute Dean Yingying Sun frankly stated that companies are concerned about the confidentiality of their data. “In the future, the data is money, will you give money to others?” Therefore, there must be a game between the cloud platform and the manufacturers of large-scale e-commerce, and the powerful manufacturers will also build their own cloud platform.

Sun Yingyi said that from the point of view of Wanhe, product intelligence will experience the following three stages: First, “single product single cloud”, one product connects to one cloud, Ali sells products to Ali cloud, Jingdong sells products to Jingdong cloud, 70 % ~ 80% of the manufacturers do this; the second phase is "a product is cloudy", a product is compatible with different clouds, and now there is a third-party cloud service provider "witty cloud", but the level of the business cloud It is not very mature and stable, because the more considerations are, the more difficult the technology is. The third phase of “multiple product and one cloud” is the highest realm. Different brand products all share a cloud platform. At that time, the user experience will be the highest. it is good. However, "a product is cloudy, and a product is still in the mud!"

The rise of third-party cloud access platforms

"ChiZiYun" is headquartered in Guangzhou and was established in 2005. At the beginning of the venture, it mainly gave software and technology services to European and American companies; it cut into the ecological chain of peripherals of Apple's peripherals five years ago. Because there are many electronics companies in the PRD, such as sphygmomanometers and wristbands, they lack the software capabilities and therefore need partners to help them achieve the intelligence of the hardware.

Looking back at the company’s growth history, Huang Xixiong, general manager of “Wisdom Cloud” told the “First Financial Daily” reporter that “service platformization” around 2012 was just based on the fact that many small and medium-sized electronics companies could not afford software development costs, so they took A fee model for commissions based on product sales. "Some products are less than RMB 100 and sales must reach 100,000 or more to cover development costs. Therefore, we have implemented a cloud platform to monitor product activation and usage time."

It is logical that, along with the growth of Apple's ecological chain, the business of “Wisdom Cloud” 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 there are two types of charging models. For small businesses, they generally adopt the model of collecting platform service fees according to product sales. “Wisdom Cloud” provides one-stop product cloud access and management services in a public cloud manner; Enterprises, such as Haier and Midea, hope to build their own cloud platforms. Then, “Wisdom Cloud” provides technical support and helps them establish their own private cloud services. The data of smart appliances is owned by these large companies themselves.

"Intelligent hardware has three elements: sensor, cloud access, and server-side intelligence." 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. After the cloud analysis, it tells the socket again. Another example is that sensors such as temperature, infrared, and lasers are people's eyes, ears, and nose, and they collect information. The cloud, like the brain, gathers information, makes decisions, and notifies the terminal to adjust.

Now the communication protocol for cloud access is different. At home appliance companies, there are different manufacturers such as Haier, Midea, Gree, and Hisense; at the e-commerce platform level, there are Ali. Just as the United States' open agreement, Haier will not necessarily use it; first give Ali's smart products, and perhaps others will not access. “The factory has been very difficult in the past year. Everyone needs to do smart appliances according to their own standards (referring to cloud access agreements).”

This is the value of the neutral third-party cloud access platform. “We have worked with 70 to 80 communication module vendors to open source code, and manufacturers have found that through the Wisdom Cloud, we can connect to a variety of communication module vendors.” Huang Xixiong said that for the agreements of different e-commerce platforms, JIT Cloud acts as a “translation. The role of "for example," we and Jingdong cloud open up, I go to adapt to you", wit hope to connect products of different agreements, so that they achieve interconnection.

The United States is also emerging as a provider of third-party cloud platform services, such as the "Iraly Federation" founded in Silicon Valley. In the end of 2015, David Friedman, the CEO of AERA, said in an interview with this reporter that the company’s self-built cloud platform has a large investment and uncertain returns, and uses third-party cloud platform services to save money and worry . Apple, Google, Amazon, and Samsung are all building online shopping platforms and implementing their own Internet of Things strategy.

In China, BAT's three major Internet companies are also highly competitive. "Iraq is not a competitive relationship with them. What we do is an enterprise-level cloud platform. We hope to cooperate with them. Amazon and WeChat have already cooperated with us." He also expected that in 2019, the value of the smart home appliance industry of the Internet of Things will reach 490 billion U.S. dollars, and developed countries will account for 60% of the market space.

At present, AERA has completed B-round financing with a financing amount of 20 million U.S. dollars; and Wisdom Cloud has also received 200 million yuan in financing last year, becoming the largest single investment in the domestic Internet of Things cloud service industry so far.

only way

Although third-party cloud access platforms are emerging, after all, the giants such as Ali and JD.com are too large. To break the "island" phenomenon of smart homes, it is necessary to "sit down" major manufacturing and circulation giants to promote open cooperation. .

Wen Dong believes that this requires the guidance of the government and industry associations, and at the same time it is integrated in the process of marketization, and forms several major alliances in the world. As 4G has become two standards. Because if you do not cooperate, the user will not have a good experience, on the smart home "do not buy it."

As one of Alibaba's smart business partners, Shanghai Qingke is a supplier of communication modules. Ren Jianhong, vice president of Shanghai Qingke Group, told reporters that the smart home industry is still developing rapidly. In 2015, it was double 11 and there were more than 120 smart single products on the Ali platform. However, there were no more than 10 models a year ago. It is expected that the smart home will double in 2016. There will be more than 300 smart single product on the 11 Ali platform, covering all kinds of smart home appliances.

“We have served 500 customers. Last year, 150 customers mass-produced smart single products, and we expect that there will be more customers for mass production this year.” Ren Jianhong said that Qingli’s WiFi module embeds Ali’s cloud access protocol, so As long as the manufacturers assemble the modules into smart products, these smart products can access Ali's cloud platform. He disclosed that Ali will promote interoperability between home appliances of various brands this year. At present, Shanghai Qingke cooperates with JD.

Home appliance taps are also very strong. All of the air conditioners in the United States after August 2016 will come standard with a WiFi module. Fang Hongbo, chairman and president of Midea Group, said in an exclusive interview at the end of last year that the hardware, software, and cloud systems constitute the smart home system of the United States. In 2016, Midea will release a full range of smart home appliances and Midea's smart home systems, and connect with all external systems.

In Ren Jianhong’s view, the idea of ​​breaking the “information isolated island” of smart homes is to continue to promote single product intelligence. As long as it is connected to the Internet and through big data analysis, it will be able to more accurately find the pain points of users through product iterations; The major standards alliances are further opening up and cooperation; the third is to call for more neutral third-party service providers, including hardware intelligent service providers, third-party cloud access service providers, big data analytics application service providers, etc., to promote each product together. Interoperability.

The cost of the WiFi module has rapidly declined in recent years, from about 100 yuan two years ago to more than 20 yuan last year, and this year it will drop to more than 10 yuan, or even less than 10 yuan. Therefore, Huang Xixiong believes that networking capabilities will gradually become the standard home appliances. Only connected can produce value. For example, the air purifier is turned on, and it also drives the air conditioner to start. When the stove is turned on, the range hood automatically takes the fumes. Once the smoke exceeds the standard, the smoke alarm will sound. "The lack of an open mind is the biggest problem now."

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