Smart hardware in the big time: traditional manufacturers panic?

In the Internet Conference, more than in previous years, a layer of intelligent hardware exhibition, and more crowded than other sub-forum intelligent hardware Forums, have shown the intelligent hardware that unparalleled high degree of concern. This also confirms that sentence: this year no intelligent hardware is embarrassed to do science and Technology exhibition.

More than two years ago when mobile Internet was the most popular, many people felt that it was a very earthy thing to do hardware. But only two years later, the smart hardware becomes a hot bare, although it also faces many problems, such as a lot of hardware you can still only be tested at the exhibition, you could not buy; For example, you went to a lot of exhibitions, It turns out that there are a few smart hardware products, and not many new ones.

Is smart hardware really smart? Is it a devastating blow for a factory to enter a small, innovative company? NetEase technology is also trying to use the Internet Conference to find the answer again.

Q: What is real intelligence?

In the future, all the things in the physical world of human beings will be quantified and data, and all the data related to human behavior, such as waking up in the morning, sleeping at night, body temperature, weight and so on, will be created through the internet of things into some more viscous applications to users. If there is no complete input and output formed closed loop, intelligent hardware can not be called intelligent.

Intelligent hardware in the field of entrepreneurship, including three categories, a class of pure hardware innovation, one is the software as the control center of hardware, the last one is to expand the software and additional hardware.

The first kind of pure hardware innovation is often applied to the "line" in the community, this includes the Lok-line body sense car, Acton small speed and Hot Wheels, ghost four-axis aircraft, the great Xinjiang Unmanned aerial vehicle (although the Xinjiang can also be controlled through mobile phones, and can share photos in real time) and so on, there are Oculus, Ant Vision and other virtual reality equipment. Their intelligence is more embodied in the hardware of innovation and IntelliSense, technical barriers are very high.

Le Line CEO Zhou on NetEase Technology, Le Line in the near future will be on-line of the new body sensor in the sensors can be achieved under normal conditions of 0.01 degrees of error accuracy, can be highly accurate to identify the owner, and can be in the case of unmanned with the owner behind the automatic walking. ACTON CEO Wangyu also said that ACTON's new transport Tool "Hot Wheels" on the sensor can be perceived as dangerous, automatic "braking."

The 23rd kind of intelligent hardware, although there are some requirements for hardware, but they are more important services, such as how to transform the vast amount of data into a truly useful response. Such intelligent hardware is often easier to replicate, for example, the market on the emergence of intelligent watches, smart calls and smart bracelet, from the puzzle to spell the price of the smart hardware, this kind of intelligence is more competitive, and the mode of control through the app show this part of the intelligent hardware immature.

Health intelligent hardware has always been the start of the play, but the domestic young people in fact very much do not care about their health, on the one hand and in the subconscious hope to be able to pay more attention to their health, the two formed a wonderful paradox, on the one hand, health-type intelligent hardware is widely popular, On the other hand, people will soon discard the hardware due to personal awareness and battery reasons. In addition to constantly upgrading hardware, how to do hardware based services and design becomes particularly important.

In the Smart Water Cup Cuptime CEO Li Xiaoliang, hardware should be smarter than people, such as water cups, many people because of lack of health awareness or because of work to forget to drink, when people really feel thirsty is already in a state of water scarcity, So cuptime can tell you when to drink water and how much to drink, based on your actual drinking water situation. Cuptime's story is perfect, but a succession of hardware-skipping jumps and a debate about whether drinking water is "just needed" makes Cuptime's model questionable.

And the emerging market intelligence is also facing a variety of problems, for example, when a weighing scale on the need to open the phone to open the app, this is not a good experience, the most vivid experience when the need to weigh the time to stand up to complete, this time do not need to open the phone, because just stand up to understand the weight, When you need to look at the status of the last 15 days of fat and thin, this time the demand for software services, if the scales can be accumulated data for intelligent analysis, form reports and health recommendations, users will be satisfied.

Second question: The traditional manufacturers to enter, the start-up companies should panic?

Smart terminals and smartphones have become the industry's largest consumer electronics branch, last year 1 billion of smartphone shipments, already 3 times times the size of PCs, are recognized by the industry as the next milestone terminal is considered wearable, because wearable devices do have some natural augmented reality, and brain-wave interactions, There are a lot of sensors that are too big and too bulky to be ported to mobile terminals.

Such a large market has also been the attention of many giants, including Haier, TCL, etc. have been in the field of intelligent home for a long time traditional manufacturers, as well as Tencent, Baidu, Beijing East, 360, millet, including the internet giants.

A few years ago launched Haier u+ Intelligent Life platform, a period of time to promote the smart oven "baked dove", Haier another team in Qingdao launched two new smart home products, including Haier refrigerator health box and Haier's most smart intelligent water purifier. Many other traditional manufacturers have also launched or jointly launched intelligent hardware products.

But Haier U-home operations director Wang Zheng also said that his special anxiety, home appliances manufacturers face the Internet enterprises how to face. In addition, smart home can not rely on these like hand ring class simple products to set up, smart home should be used every household, such as washing machines, refrigerators, the real composition of every person living in the essential things. The anxiety of traditional manufacturers is how to find the traditional things and how to better combine the advanced productivity.

In the face of the awakening of traditional manufacturers, investors believe that there is a big competition is good. Gobi Venture investment director Yang Shiyi said, the free market competition can leave good team, not too strong team will be eliminated, this is the normal business rules, there is nothing to blame.

Gao Jiankei, the DCM senior investment manager, also said the possibility should be taken into account in the early stages of a team start-up. What is suitable for the team to do, what is suitable for the Giants to do, many big decision making process is more lengthy, if you want to know the team's ability is strong, which professional skills are not in the hands of the Giants, It is important to understand and understand what giants can and cannot do.

Lenovo Star's investment director Liouville also believes that 90% do not need to fear, because the Giants evil, another giant in the weak, the giants of mobile internet and Internet user means of understanding, resource flow, etc. very in-depth, but in the hardware field is often unprofessional, is also a layman, itself is a small department, small team, May be changed in minutes head, 90% is not afraid, there are 10% even said that small companies forget that they are small companies, do not do the big things will kill themselves, after all, there is a detailed intelligent hardware each iteration of the cost of expensive, can not lightly deal with the die, this death was killed by their own, There is no big company like this will die, so the overall fear.

Question three: What role do Internet giants play in the intelligent hardware industry chain?

In Li Xiaoliang's view, the eco-circle of smart hardware should include four types of companies, the first category is the pure hardware company, which is more of the original traditional factory, may have its own software, its own app, but this does not affect it is still a hardware company, because its business model is based on the sale of hardware products. The second type of company is a combination of software and hardware companies, mainly entrepreneurial team. The third type of company is platform-type companies, such as Jingdong +, Baidu, Tencent is currently doing platform-related things, will allow more hardware companies and hardware and software combined companies can access data to them. The fourth kind of company is the service class company.

These four types of companies have a cooperative relationship, pure Hardware company has its own product brand, will give the second kind of hardware and software combination of the company to provide the manufacturing services, pure hardware and software and hardware combination of the company will provide data to the platform company, pure hardware and software and hardware combined between the company's data will produce a variety of exchanges.

At present, Tencent, Baidu, Millet, 360 have entered the smart hardware market. Tencent in early out of the tepid small Q robot, but also recently launched a "universal WiFi", known as Plug and Play, can be swept code connection, into the game field. In addition, Tencent's biggest move is the formal opening of micro-letter intelligent hardware access services, micro-credit and hardware manufacturers contact has been more than half a year. At the beginning of July this year, Ihealth, Huawei and other four manufacturers of "micro-letter version" of the smart hand ring to sell; users only need to pay attention to their service account in the micro-letter, they can achieve data statistics, ranking and sharing a series of functions.

Micro-letter interface needs a huge cloud resources, Tencent Cloud platform general manager Chen previously disclosed that Tencent Cloud has launched micro-letter cloud, through the support and help micro-letter public account industry chain service providers for traditional enterprises to provide services. The future, Tencent Cloud Platform will continue to increase openness, especially to the hardware open.

And Baidu launched the "Baidu Inside" program, to join the planned hardware to provide cloud services and marketing, data support. Baidu Cloud chief architect Hou Zhenyu said that Baidu Cloud will provide hardware manufacturers with dual services, including cloud storage, data collection and analysis to achieve data realization.

In addition, at the beginning of this year, Baidu also launched the creation of "Innovative hardware open platform" for the partners to join the platform to provide technology, products, channels, marketing, data and other support, through the platform incubator intelligent hardware products will have "Baidu Inside" and Jingdong "jd+" brand logo.

BEIJING-East + intelligent hardware Platform Director Nasin said, now Jingdong products in the network can be networked equipment accounted for more and more high, the original less than 1%, to this year has been the growth of geometric figures.

Jingdong also launched three major plans, the first is with Baidu jointly created hardware open platform, to provide including the threshold of cooperation, marketing special resources, data sharing, including cloud computing, APP, smart chip modules on the technical support.

The second is the app Jingdong Cloud Assistant, can let the user in a system to complete many kinds of intelligent product control and interaction, but also can use a more fool way to make the product and product linkage, at present can do 60 different brands of different manufacturers of products to achieve linkage, Beijing East Cloud Assistant will be officially available next month.

The last is the new public-funded platform to help start-up hardware companies to promote and raise funds.

Compared to the other few, Millet has hardware experience, it is easier to form a "hardware + Software + cloud services" Integration system, but the low price of millet policy also makes millet into the intelligent hardware price killer, 79 yuan of hand ring let many thousands of hands ring silly eyes. Price war also gradually started, the recent 360 and fast button after the merger is also about to launch a free "Chi-key", have to say that this also has the credit of millet.

But the low price of millet policy has also aroused dissatisfaction in the downstream, a smart hardware manufacturers said, had had a deep contact with millet, but millet excessive pursuit of low prices, squeezing the behavior of the downstream caused their dissatisfaction, the final cooperation also suspended.

Compared to the other few, 360 determined to enter the smart hardware market and poor performance of the determination to form a sharp contrast, a 360 of employees said that the failure of the router and the Zhou of the hesitation has a great relationship, from the beginning to do the router to the end of the router, the middle after a few times repeatedly. 360 The current intelligent hardware is mainly adopted by Third-party outsourcing.

Four questions: What kind of smart hardware do investors prefer?

The rapid development of smart hardware has also begun to focus on the potential market for generations of factories, including Foxconn, which launched its creative platform Kick2real in July this year to help global entrepreneurs turn their ideas into products. In addition to providing manufacturing services, Kick2real also helps start-ups raise money and promote their products. Foxconn can invest directly in start-ups, and can also introduce investors.

At present, Kick2real has established a incubation base in Shenzhen. Kick2real internal staff on the NetEase technology, the current Foxconn is more optimistic about the health sector, smart home, four-axis aircraft and wearable virtual reality equipment.

In the field of intelligent hardware, there is a certain bias in the layout of the Jingwei venture. "From a single category of product segmentation, now the hardware of the two hot spots, one is wearable equipment, the second is smart home." However, the problem now visible is the increasing number of Shanzhai products. Wan Haoki said, relatively, in the hardware field, Jingwei more value platform class company.

(Responsible editor: Mengyishan)