Smart home has broad prospects for development and needs to be solved in the industry "pain points"

At the 2016 Internet+Home Improvement Business Model Innovation Summit held recently, smart homes were often referred to as the industry’s hot vocabulary. According to a survey conducted by China Closet Network reporters, 90% of the people are interested in smart homes. Most citizens who are interested in smart homes can afford to spend 15% of their home improvement costs on smart configurations. The data released by relevant agencies also shows that by 2018, the national smart home market will reach 180 billion yuan.

The smart home has a huge development prospect

At present, the smart home market is still in its infancy and the overall body size is small, but the future is huge. According to the “Analysis and Analysis of the Development Trend and Investment Potential of China's Smart Home Industry from 2013 to 2018,” published by China Industry Information Network, the annual growth rate of the smart home market in China is 20% from 2006 to 2011 and is expected to be between 2012 and 2020. The annual growth rate will reach about 25%. The "China Smart Home Market Research Report" pointed out that due to the increasing number of smart home hardware products in the market and the increasing popularity of the consumer market, China's smart home market will show significant growth in 2016.

By 2018, smart home products will be accepted by the consumer market and the market size will reach 180 billion yuan. According to industry insiders, 2014 is the first year of smart homes in China. No matter whether it is an Internet giant, or domestic home appliance companies, IT companies, e-commerce companies, etc., they have entered the smart home with a high profile. At present, the bottleneck in the development of smart homes is an excellent and real user experience. It can be said that simple operation and ultimate experience should be the key to the rise of smart home brands in the future. At present, the smart home market is still in the cultivation phase. In the next 10 years, this industry will be in a rising stage.

Smart Home Enhances Popular Foreign Demands to Solve Key "Pain Point"

Although the prospects are huge, at present, there is not much demand for "landing." Among these, cost-effectiveness has become the biggest pain point. According to people in the industry, a set of smart home systems with relatively complete functions, including conventional remote control of lighting, remote control of electrical appliances, remote control of electric curtains, multi-room home background music and video sharing, security alarm and network video surveillance, adopt domestic brands. At least 20,000 to 30,000 yuan if it is a full set of smart home systems, domestic prices ranging from 30,000 to 100,000 yuan, while imports are as high as several hundred thousand dollars or even millions. This is related to high-tech R&D and small-scale production that keeps the cost of smart homes high. It is also one of the important reasons why smart homes are not yet available. In addition, in the construction process, smart homes need to conduct a series of integrated wiring, complex system configuration and installation and debugging, it will also spend a lot of manpower, the cost is not small.

There are also inexpensive smart items on the market, but the stability is not high and the sense of use is not strong. The quality of these smart items is uneven and the homogeneity is serious. Many smart homes have many functions, but these functions are not easy to operate. After many users have used smart home products, they find that most of them are not very practical. This actually does not achieve the expected effect of smart home, so it is difficult to obtain consumer recognition. In addition, at present, different standards and disruption of communication protocols have limited the development of the smart home industry. Smart home manufacturers basically do their own, there is no uniform standard, incompatible with each other. The lack of product stability and coordination has also constrained the development of the smart home market to some extent.

Unified standardization into smart home key points

The smart home industry is currently developing rapidly and all manufacturers are fighting for the market. However, the smart home industry must slow down, first do "quality" and then seek "quantity." At present, smart homes are more like connected homes, and there is still a certain distance between intelligent and smart homes. From the product point of view, whether it is hardware or software, it is also urgent to innovate some unnecessary functions or functions that consumers rarely use to be as simple as possible to enhance consumers' sense of experience. As far as the industry itself is concerned, it is critical that smart homes be connected and interoperable. The industry needs a measurement standard to unify products, interfaces, and technologies. However, the relevant domestic standards are uneven and there is no uniform caliber. Therefore, governments, industry associations, and enterprises should jointly participate in the development of unified standards for smart homes.

In addition, Wu Qiang, a senior analyst, said that in the Internet era, the decoration industry needs to integrate user needs and form an ecological environment. Enterprises should work together with other equally good companies to “build the ecosystem” to get through and be compatible with all these devices, and realize that “as long as one entrance, you can choose all the brands you are using”. For example, it is possible to connect and interoperate in the decoration company, hotel channel, real estate channel, and accelerate the landing of smart solutions through cooperation.

People in the industry have learned that many smart home companies have already cooperated with real estate developers and they can see smart homes in multiple real estate showrooms. Some developers chose to configure smart homes for some of their products to increase the gold content of the projects, while the residential housing market is undergoing upgrading, which also brings opportunities for smart homes.