Millet and Broadlink: which smart home road more opportunities?

If some people say that 2014 is the year of smart home, then basically can be judged that the people who say this is not the media is a layman: such a statement of Hisense Haier Siemens where to put? These can be old traditional household appliance enterprises, but also once genuine in the vast sea of smart home for a while, although to the end because of a variety of reasons were flooded a half to death, but also can be called intelligent home industry martyrs. Of course, this year the concept of smart home can be re-fried, this and two of the internet and hardware across the world have been announced to enter the field is inseparable: basically the time of the front foot of Apple launched HomeKit Smart Home platform, and Google announced the acquisition of Smart home Enterprise Nest Lab It can be seen that such a large number of companies really do not only affect people's hearts but also to absorb the eye ah.

Compared to the strategic direction of larger companies, more attractive to the attention of netizens should be popular gossip news: In these two days, the micro-trust in the circle of Friends in a series of such a hot news brush screen: A third round of the millet router was once known as a close partner supplier, suddenly counterstrike blamed millet treachery, Research your core skills and kick yourself out of your own (okay, I'll just point out the name, this supplier is called Broadlink), directly led to online and noisy days, there is a duty lei, there is no authentic, but also ridiculed broadlink for speculation pull investment not the bottom line, for this kind of Irrational behavior, I just want to say: if the millet steal technology and broadlink sign term when you do not see the scene and only rely on the so-called four "my relatives/my classmates/my neighbour/My friends" such rumors, it's best to keep your mouth shut and watch professional analysis. A highly skilled activity that is not suitable for you to attend.

Grab the gossip. It's not our style to rely on industry knowledge and experience objective analysis is the value of the intelligent television industry observation team, And then we'll spend some time analyzing the problem: Broadlink the existing technology program and millet preparation for independent development of intelligent home Platform what is the similarities and differences and which one can represent the real development direction of smart home?

Let's start with Broadlink. Broadlink Smart Home Program to choose the goal is to cover the stock of household electrical appliances market, mainly using the infrared control mode. According to our analysis, broadlink in this way more to consider their own as a start-up, the current stage of the goal is to expand the user to make the choice as far as possible. And for the infrared control This function we also here a little popularity, at home and abroad in a very early before there are quite a lot of highly integrated program, the most famous is the universal remote control, can be controlled by a number of brands of television, set-top boxes and other products, prices ranging from 5-35 yuan (most of the While the famous foreign products are tall on the Logitech Harmony Series, this remote control fighter even support programmable and synchronous operation of 6 devices such as high-end applications (too bad days have wood?) ）！

From the product function, the advantages of infrared remote control scheme are:

1. Relatively open infrared code (commonly used is NEC and Philips RC5 RC6, such as 10 sets of coding scheme);

2. The data is easy to obtain (So-and-so elves have been dragged by people to get all the data Get Infrared code flying);

3. Learn simple (Taobao Infrared Code Analyzer flagship model is also hundreds of yuan).

But what we're going to focus on here is the weakness of IR control: Based on the infrared scheme of signal transmission, is a pure one-way signal transmission process, that is, when the signal from the remote terminal, the receiver is fully received instructions and whether the implementation of the instructions, the launch end can not obtain any feedback, not to mention and the receiving end to confirm, This congenital flaw makes IR control a one-way simple control tool, and is likely to be low reliability (I believe the students with air-conditioning remote control have feelings, often pressed after the air-conditioning does not respond to the corresponding, but also need to press several times the remote control) so, rather than this set of equipment called smart home equipment, It might as well be called a control device.

Although the use of infrared control scenario relative limitations, but in some specific scenes, or has a unique value, here we leave a baggage, in the future article, will have a detailed exposition.

Now it's time to talk about millet.

Millet to do smart home, has long been not a secret: in this year's May Digital Television Festival, the relevant person in charge of Millet intelligent home has introduced millet for this trend (technology/communications/Internet media or from the media friends do not looked at each other, I know you do not pay attention to digital television This is not a big industry, of course, I am also very strange why Millet will attend this meeting ... , I can only take a few core points out to analyze the full text shorthand of the people concerned.

First of all, Millet's smart family strategy, basically abandoned the existing stock of household electrical appliances, and directly consider the future of the equipment between how to form a stable and efficient interconnection and interoperability. In millet, the stock of equipment products from the product definition angle is not designed for intelligent home system, if only from the switch and simple tuning (volume size, temperature and so on) this function to see the significance is not large, but also not to their own mind in the level of intelligent home.

Second, directly from the chip level to the home appliance manufacturers to support, is a very bold or even risky choice, but did hit the home appliances manufacturers, especially small appliance manufacturers pain points. For the traditional appliance industry hardware product research and development, the ability to develop the Internet service has been a short board, which from the traditional function of television to the evolution of intelligent television in the process of revealing incisively and vividly, also because of this, for millet this routine, small and medium-sized household appliances enterprises should be very welcome, After all, for those of you who are not large in volume, to feed a huge software service engineer team's cost is too high, and from the other side, Millet provides intelligent home interconnect chip, objectively also want to increase the BOM cost and development costs, this part of the cost of how to digest is also a big problem, If the chip can not reach a particularly large number will lead to very expensive, this is whether Millet will take nre or even BOM directly to subsidize the way to quickly expand their platform coverage, in fact, it is necessary to consider the LEI for this piece of perseverance and courage.

Thirdly, how to coordinate the relationship with large household appliance enterprises.

As mentioned in the preceding article, such as Hisense Haier Siemens and other large household electrical appliances enterprises, in fact, there has been or the formation of intelligent home ideas and are basically in their own system within the closed ecology, for millet this expectation will be the whole ecological chain to get through the train of thought, the traditional thinking of home appliances manufacturers or cautious attitude, So how to persuade the traditional home appliances manufacturers, especially large manufacturers, is the millet to face a challenge, whether to take more in-depth cooperation, so that the first from a manufacturer to open a breach (such as gree), it is necessary to see the LEI persuasion ability and sincerity.

Finally, how to coexist with other intelligent home ecology.

The beginning of the article mentions that Apple and Google also released their own smart home ecosystem or platform this year, so how to solve the compatibility with Apple and Google's respective platform, is also a problem millet needs to face. At present, Google's ecology is relatively open, as long as the software is compatible with the design of the normal interoperability and collaboration, but for Apple's HomeKit, now although the use of authorized chip authentication method, At this stage, it can be done with money (it's not a big deal to spend on the ecosystem), but there's no way to know for how long such conditional liberalisation will last and how to solve the problem.

After a detailed analysis of the above, we can draw the following conclusion: Infrared control scheme is more like a transition product, in a short period of time can let the geek and so on such a function with great curiosity of users to try, and from the bottom of the chip, directly to the interconnection of the technology base embedded in the future of the hardware ideas, We can see more opportunities from the whole industrial environment and business model. Millet Intelligent Home This road is able to go down, it is necessary to see Lei confidence and courage, whether can unswervingly follow the strategy to continue to invest, after all, smart home is still an industry to detonate, in the focus before the outbreak, or need to have a hard period of cultivation.

An article: About in the smart home industry, entrepreneurs have the opportunity.

In the end, answer the sponsor of this article, Ms. Li Yu a question: In the current smart home competition environment, individual entrepreneurs have the opportunity to do bigger and stronger?

We can say this: in any industry, entrepreneurs have their own opportunities, the prerequisite is to understand the direction of their ability, that is, what to do and what to do. Analysis of the current smart home competition environment, has become a big company happy enclosure of the new battlefield, for entrepreneurs, want to be bigger and stronger from the platform is very difficult things, but for such a new industry, the real contact with the user of smart home equipment products are still scarce, as long as the combination of their own advantages, Find the right entry point and make the product experience well and continuously optimized, then have the opportunity to occupy the user market and have enough voice to "challenge" the big company.