Home appliance enterprises are scrambling to run to the Internet Typhoon mouth

Stand at the mouth of a typhoon and fly to heaven! Now, home appliances Enterprises are competing to the Internet "Typhoon Mouth" run.

March 17, the United States and Alibaba (rolling information) held a strategic cooperation conference in Hangzhou, the use of Aliyun technology of the United States of the Internet intelligent air-conditioning official debut. On the same day, Haier announced the world's first intelligent living operating system in Shanghai, Haier said that through the system, users can only 12 seconds to achieve with all intelligent home terminals interconnection.

March 16, small swan third generation of intelligent laundry, the product accurate delivery of detergent error for the industry's lowest value.

There are industry insiders sigh, now that the household appliances industry will talk about intelligence, we all look forward to "standing in the typhoon to fly up", with the help of intelligent appliances and the Internet bridge, and then realize the transformation of the Internet.

However, the daily economic news reporter noted that it is not easy to reach the "Typhoon Port". On the one hand, white electricity, the characteristics of small household electrical appliances have determined that their intelligence is facing multiple technical bottlenecks, on the other hand, through the intelligent Bridge to achieve the Internet, facing the profit model and other challenges, while the traditional appliance enterprises are good at hardware manufacturing, the lack of internet genes, but also become another problem of Internet.

The Internet dream of the Enterprise

March 17, in the United States and Alibaba Cloud strategic cooperation press conference, the United States also released three appearance, eight models of Internet intelligent air conditioning, proposed to the 2016 to form a complete intelligent life industry chain, change the traditional industrial model.

Beauty tries to draw a line with "traditional home appliances". March 10, the United States Group in Foshan headquarters held M-smart Wisdom Home Strategy conference, at that time the positioning is, "rely on things networking, cloud computing and other advanced technology, the United States will be a traditional home appliance manufacturers, into a smart home creator." ”

Another electric giant Haier has earlier proposed the "Internet." 2009, Haier began to try to change from manufacturing enterprises to service-oriented enterprises, and 2012 put forward a network strategy, and launched a number of intelligent home appliances products.

According to "Daily Economic news" reporter rough statistics, in the field of white electricity, there are at least Haier, the United States, small swans, Mei Ling, zhi Gao, Lan shi, Hefei Sanyo and other companies elaborated their own "intelligent" strategy or the release of intelligent products.

However, intelligence cannot be equated with Internet. So how to connect intelligence with the Internet?

The idea of beauty is to build an open biosphere. The biosphere includes hardware, such as chips and sensor companies that collaborate to develop hardware products. There is the content circle, such as the introduction of ink weather, wine nets, to provide weather, merchandise services. The third is the platform circle, with Ali, Huawei and other enterprises to create a more open platform.

The white electricity is difficult to have "the Revolutionary innovation"

White Electricity Enterprise intellectualization process, need to use Internet technology, these technology let home appliance product and Internet have intersection, intelligent product also strengthened person and machine as well as the interaction between person and person, become the bridge that enterprise changes to the Internet.

However, white electricity, small household electrical appliances can be intelligent parts of the part is not much, to be intelligent in a major breakthrough is quite difficult.

Home Appliance analyst Liang, in an interview with the Daily Economic news reporter, said white home appliances are traditional machinery manufacturing, from the physical properties of products, compared to the intelligent color TV products many times, because the color TV products are electronic information industry, can be seen as a branch of IT industry, pan-Internet is easy.

Reporter combed The current white electricity can realize the main intelligent function, air-conditioning remote control, refrigerator automatic recommended recipes, washing machines, such as automatic.

The executive director of the Marketing committee of China Household Electrical Appliance Business Association Hong Shibin The current kind of intelligence called "maintenance of innovation", that is, the original function of the product to add some intelligent factors. These are not revolutionary innovations, he argues. In Hong Shibin's view, white appliances to truly intelligent, need to introduce enough to make consumers inseparable from the products.

But this revolutionary innovation is too difficult. Hong Shibin said, now smart appliances so lively, but sales have not seen a significant change.

In order to solve this problem, the United States and the relevant people, the United States and Ali in the server cooperation, and Huawei mainly in the Intelligent gateway, server processing, cloud platform construction and other aspects of cooperation, and Texas Instruments, etc. mainly in the Home Appliance Access module and access technology to achieve cooperation.

Cai Chiwu, senior vice president of the United States, said the technology is not difficult, the key is whether we are willing to promote market development.

Allwin Consulting Institute Dean Zhang Yanbin said, on the one hand, white appliances in the technology of intelligent breakthrough is not easy, on the other hand, consumers are not familiar with many intelligent applications. At a recent Shanghai home fair, he found that some consumers knew less than 20% intelligent functions and that the remaining 80% were idle.

Zhang Yanbin suggested that home appliances enterprises should pay more attention to consumer experience, strengthen pre-sales services, so that consumers more understanding of intelligent function.

The dilemma of Internet profit model

The reporter found that many internet companies profit model is to create cost-effective, and some internet companies from software into the hardware field, still follow such logic.

Millet through the low-cost connection between people to gather their own fan group, through the network channel sales minus the intermediate link, to the consumer "cost-effective" impression. Music video TV through the company's integration capabilities, and constantly introduce more than the consumer expectations of Low-cost television, in the industry, capital markets and consumer level, set off waves.

However, home appliances enterprises through the intelligent into the field of the Internet, but there is no "cost-effective" the soul, in contrast, these products prices are going up. According to the reporter understand, the current market on the sale of some smart home appliances, prices than ordinary products much higher. For example, Mei Ling's Chiq series of intelligent refrigerators, the highest price of a paragraph of 13999 yuan, the lowest price also want 5999 yuan.

Liang said that many consumers believe that the smart white appliances is dispensable, in this case, if the price is much higher than the intelligent products, many consumers may not be willing to try.

To kill into the hardware industry, whether it is millet or music TV, the common point is to hope that the software to make money, more focused on sales content. The traditional home appliances manufacturing enterprises, based on the Internet platform available for sale of content is not much.

U.S. group of Technology and Quality management Director Sho Zhongxiao told the Daily Economic news reporter, "we do products + services, many products with back-end service value-added space." "Sho Zhongxiao, for example, uses smart washing machines, which automatically remind users to buy them after they have been used, and push the message to the supermarket to place orders automatically.

Based on this service thinking, the beauty of the incubation of the ecological circle by manufacturers and customers to expand to supermarkets, banks and other software content service providers.

In the case of the grant, the hardware product is free and may be the end point. Shen, executive director of the China market for ice washing, said that the free model could get a large number of users who would buy other products, and that would be the spirit of the Internet.

For the profit model of white home appliances, home appliance observer Liu Buzhong that the white electricity relies on "service" to make money is not easy, or should be mainly hardware, to other application services as a supplement to profitability.

He said, through the product intelligence to cooperate with Ultra, realize the value-added service is difficult to achieve in the short term, because the intelligent products accounted for is too small, ultra enthusiasm is not high.

The United States also mentioned that the current smart home appliances industry is one of the problems is operating service providers, home appliances manufacturers of industrial chain benefits distribution is not clear, the participation of the parties are not high.

Traditional home appliance internet gene Short board

March 18, iic-china2014 Spring Forum unveiled in Shanghai, Millet mobile phone co-founder Li Vanchang said in a speech, 5 years later, all companies will be mobile internet companies, or will be eliminated, according to the cost of hardware pricing will inevitably become the future consumer electronics standard business model.

Millet was founded in 2010, using an insignificant interactive platform-forum, supplemented by MIUI (Millet custom system) testing crowd binding enthusiasts. It is said that today more than 30 million users of MIUI, Millet Forum registered users to break 10 million. Millet Forum A huge amount of registered users is Millet marketing platform, is also the important guarantee of the success of millet Internet marketing.

Music video TV low Price kill into, become the home appliance industry subversive. Le Vision is also to start with the Internet, the music network of tens of millions of users, but also the video TV is essential internet marketing channels.

However, the traditional household appliances enterprises, no example of the field only in the hardware manufacturing on the frontier, and no Internet operating platform.

For such a short board, the U.S. plan in 3 years to build a TENS M-smart fan user community, based on consumer experience research and other content, to achieve accurate planning, customization, and ultimately to provide consumers with more intelligent, healthy, energy-saving M-smart home experience.

An important attribute of intelligent home appliances is to realize the interactive, Haier's Internet transformation is particularly valued the concept of interaction, so Zhang put forward the "three" requirements, that is, the enterprise platform, the staff of the creation of customers, user personalization. Previously Zhang even said: "In Haier, no value of interactive platform transactions should not exist." ”

However, from the properties of the product itself, mobile phones, television and other products, entertainment properties are stronger, and users are strong connection. Users can not be separated from the mobile phone at all times, which gives the third party software development company full power. Every day on the phone, there are different games, text, audio and video, and other applications are developed and consumed, which in turn enhances the aggregation capacity of these products, thus forming a virtuous circle.

The difference is, air-conditioning, refrigerators and other household electrical appliances products to the main practicality, and the user is weak connection, the consumer into a user is also more difficult. This product attributes to the white power enterprises to build a platform or create a fan group has brought difficulty.

Ai Media Consulting CEO Zhang in the "Daily economic news" reporter interview, said the company to different products and users of the connection between the long time research, similar to air-conditioning, refrigerators, such as white electricity products, with the user's connectivity is indeed weaker. He said that to build a fan group, must have a topic, so as to gather popularity, forming a circle. He believes that it is essential to change the mind and find some topics of interest.

In addition, the internet company "burning money" to build a platform model, traditional household appliances enterprises may not be able to adapt. Analysts pointed out that the traditional household appliances manufacturers do not burn money to spend two or three years to cultivate a platform of habit, the future of uncertain results, home appliances enterprises on the Internet industry, the natural risk gene is clearly lacking.

More importantly, the traditional home appliances enterprises burning is their own money, millet, music network is a typical internet company, the establishment of the first burning is the money of the venture. Venture capital has promoted the high risk marketing model of the Internet hardware, which makes the internet gene of millet and music as a kind of growth, which is the lack of traditional manufacturing enterprises.

Cai Chiwu admits that beauty lacks the genes of software and IT companies. He believes that cooperation is the only way to beauty. "We want to jump out of the inherent thinking, in some areas, do the Internet, smart home appliances must come from the Internet field of talent." He said that to integrate with such genes is the integration of talent, through cooperation to make up for deficiencies.